Type the words “sushi” and “Toronto” into Google and the first three entries are from the site blogTO.
Actually, type any word and “Toronto” into Google and blogTO is bound to show its face. The local news and listings site has Google search results in a headlock.
But as mighty as blogTO is at search optimization, it’s often a midget when it comes to actual content.
For instance, here is the site’s “review” of an outpost of the sushi chain Bikkuri, unsigned, in its entirety:
“Bikkuri is a popular sushi restaurant on the fringes of Toronto’s Financial District. A good friend of mine swears by this place as the only sushi joint she’ll get takeout from in Toronto.”
An interesting take, I guess. But why didn’t the good friend just write the review? Doesn’t seem like it would’ve taken that long. Maybe the fact that she gets all her takeout sushi from one place means she doesn’t have the depth to write the two sentences?
A full review of Sushi & Salad, also unsigned, is equally mystifying.
“Sushi & Salad sells just what you’d expect – sushi and salad. Makes for a cheap and healthy lunch.”
I’ve been there, and I admit this review is spot-on. Sushi & Salad does in fact serve sushi and salad.
I can’t be the only reader expecting more from a restaurant review, can I?
As it turns out, no. Google, the search engine that blogTO’s so gamely conquered, also thinks there should be more content in articles online.
Last week, Google announced new measures to combat content farms, sites that mass-produce what it calls “shallow or low-quality content.” This means articles with little value that only exist to appear on searches, lure in users and collect money from display advertising.
Google is unleashing an extension for its browser, Chrome, in which these articles can be flagged and dropped from searches. See here.
So is blogTO a content farm?
To be fair, the site produces a very generous amount of real content and listings, and is nothing like a full-fledged content farm. (I would rather go to blogTO than DineTO, a restaurant site that reroutes all restaurant phone numbers through its servers so it can record your calls for reservations.)
But at the same time, its one-line “reviews” that crowd out real reviews are the very definition of bogus content.
Tim Shore, publisher of blogTO, disagrees. “With thousands of stores/restaurants in Toronto, we simply don’t have enough resources to post full reviews of all of them. But we’re trying!”
He compares the reviews in question to those of social networks like Foursquare or user-review sites like Yelp! He says dubbing his site a content farm “fails to consider that many readers come to blogTO for the same reason they go to Yelp!, Urbanspoon, etc – to find a place to shop or eat.”
But I can’t vote down the review of Bikkuri or add my own, as on Yelp! or Foursquare. It’s been on the site, in all its unhelpful glory, for more than three years.
The reality is, blogTO is neither a social network nor a user-review site it is a commercial media site, and over the years has become a very successful one at that. With all the site’s strong content elsewhere, it’s time blogTO gave up the factory farming approach.
joshuae@nowtoronto.com
