[hackinthebochs]

All this hate for about.com just goes to show how much of a bubble some of you guys' internet activity exists in. As far as "content farms" go, they are very good at what they do. The quality of their articles have always been very well done (for the information I was looking for). I never got the feeling of landing on an SEO spammer site when I landed about.com. Actually, I used to spend quite a lot of time on about.com many years ago. Their sections are more than just content farm pages, they're also communities centered around specific topics. Think reddit without the childish memes and BS. The quality of discussions there were always much higher than you'd find on most popular places on the web today.

Much value exists on the internet outside of the techcrunch echo chamber. Dismiss it at your own peril.

[tmh88j]

>Think reddit without the childish memes and BS.

I agree, however, for simple answers I've had some very good luck on r/explainlikeimfive. If anyone here hasn't seen that subreddit I suggest taking a look at it. There are plenty of things that I had no idea about and someone can explain it very simply in a very short paragraph, compared to a wall of text that other places might provide (assuming I just want a simple answer).

Take this for example.

http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ywh1y/eli...

[hackinthebochs]

I didn't mean to imply any hate towards reddit in my original post. While the quality of some parts is questionable, reddit is undoubtedly a hub filled with great content and knowledgeable people. Amazingly interesting and insightful posts await those who are willing to dig for it. My reddit addition is just as strong as anyone's.

[sharkweek]

r/askscience is one of the best moderated forums on the web when it comes to keeping things on topic -- I have asked several questions there that have received brilliantly scientific explanations by experts in their respective fields

[shardling]

I'd agree with this -- if I do a google search for something pretty general and get the typical array of search results, I'll always check out about.com result before any similar site.

Because they actually do their job and provide good answers a decent percentage of the time; and generally feel less spammy/scammy than most sites.

[Apocryphon]

I agree. About.com has a lot of decent "here's the basics" and "how-to" type articles. I don't even understand why it's seen as a content farm, since their contributors are of better quality than say those who write articles on AOL.

[dotborg]

About.com was nuked out of google serps, because it has terrible usability statistics:

  - high bounce rate
  - 90%+ search engine traffic vs direct visits 
  (even though they buy traffic from other (cheap) sources)
  - very low time spent on site
  - very low returning visitors ratio

Their website design is quite pretty, yet the awful usability stats.

Website called as "content farm" and poor usability stats, coincidence or..?

[lmkg]

Web analyst here. Those stats make About sound fantastic, as a matter of fact. There is no such thing as a universal "usability" metric, and everything is relative to the site and its goals and use cases. For About, those statistics are exactly what you would expect if the site is doing its job well.

The use case for About is you have a specific question, and you find a page that answers it. If the page actually answers your question (i.e., the site is doing its job), then you will have no need to view other pages, so your bounce rate will look high. If it answers the question succinctly and efficiently, your time spend on that page will be low. And if your problem is actually solved, you won't have to come back. And lo, that is actually what we see.

If About isn't doing its job, then there are two common "failure" scenarios. The first is they spend a bunch of time on the site, trying to find the info they're looking for. The second is that they exit the site and go back to Google. The first failure scenario has a higher "usability" score that the success scenario; the second failure scenario actually looks pretty much identical to the success scenario. Google could distinguish between the two by seeing whether users come back or not; you didn't provide that data, so I can't tell.

About.com is not a content site the same way as a news site or a blog. If you judge it by metrics suited for such a site, it will appear lacking. If you judge it by its own goal, it might actually be succeeding (but you need more data to tell for sure).

[cdcarter]

Agreed. It's pretty much my go to web resource for entertaining. A fairly good curated selection of recipes, good explanations of flavor combinations, good crafts, theme ideas, and everything else. Lots of the sites with reader contribution end up being pretty awful.

[meej]

I agree. For example, atheism.about.com is a very well-curated section, run by an experienced and knowledgeable guide. It deserves more attention than it gets.

[antidaily]

Nice try, Ask.com employee.

[dotborg]

What makes you think that he is an Ask.com employee?

[untog]

Ironically, "Nice try, x" is a Reddit meme itself.

[antidaily]

Yep. I was joking.