When Google admitted that they don’t know how to do SEO, we should have known something was up. It’s taken a bit over a year, the content farm wars are in full swing, and now we can see what’s really happening:
Google Likes Search Engine Optimization after all. Content Farms, too. The GOOG has invested in Hubspot.
If you’ve never read my explanation of how Hubspot works and why you DON’T want to use it, you’re missing a treat. It’s one of the most popular pieces at Answer Guy Central, and exposes the flaws-for-its-customers parts of what looks like a great service.
And my props once again to Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan for thinking like The Grateful Dead, a group of musicians who saw the business change light shining on them a long time ago.
But here’s the deal:
Google, in buying Hubspot, is basically saying that content farms work. Which flies directly in the face of tweaking the Google search algorithm to reduce content farms’ efficacy as tools of Search Engine Optimization, as Google did a couple of weeks ago.
In buying Hubspot, Google is saying that content farms are OK, as long as Google’s the farmer.
There’s one important aspect of Search Engine Optimization that’s been on my mind but I’ve never written about before: when SEO is done by aggregating content—good or bad—on a content farm, it’s the farmer who makes all the money. The sharecropper, on content farms just as on farms where real crops are grown, gets the short end of the stick. There’s a business opportunity here, by the way, if you’re a Hubspot Consultant.
That’s actually OK in many situations. Whatever you think of content farms, I’m betting that you have more respect for the companies that run them than you do for the mostly-nameless-and-faceless writers whose words make up the content farm’s harvest. But in the case of Hubspot, the content farms’ serfs are the people who pay for the privilege of being there.
Hubspot might bristle at the idea that they’re running a content farm, and as I’ve made clear in the piece about Hubspot mentioned at the top of this article, Hubspot is a bargain and a great tool for hosting a web site and getting your feet wet in Search Engine Optimization, until it isn’t. But make no mistake: if you host your website on Hubspot’s servers, part of the SEO juice you accumulate for your business will go to Hubspot, rather than to you.
Do the math: Hubspot has four thousand customers. Since the minimum cost of doing business with Hubspot is $250 per month but they sell some plans that cost several times that, let’s guess that the average revenue from each Hubspot customer is $500 per month. That’s $6,000 of revenue times 4,000 customers, or $24 million in annual revenue. Google and some other venture capitalists invested $32 million in Hubspot yesterday, and Hubspot was previously backed by more venture capital money; as of now the total Venture Capital behind Hubspot is up to $65.5 million. And I’m quite certain that the venture capitalists who have sunk all that money into Hubspot don’t own the entirety of the company.
Hubspot isn’t worth that much money as a marketing and web hosting business. But that’s OK, because Hubspot is a content farm.
Business change comes in many sizes and shapes, and I have no problem with Hubspot making a business for themselves. But Google is judge, jury, and executioner in Search Engine Ranking, and by downgrading “low value” content farms while buying a content farm of their own, Google is abusing their own system—the system we all have to play in.
Is that the Department of Justice at the door, Google?
If you need help with your Search Engine Optimization, The Answer Guy can help. Contact Us Here.
Repost This Article
[...] not be about aggregating traffic or selling ads based on the hits to your web site. And besides, The Content Farm Wars are going in an ugly direction.If it’s purely about satisfying your ego, well, that’s OK, but your ego better not need [...]
[...] go ahead and call me. We can talk about Google Buying Hubspot because they like content farms, or Rock Star SEO, or pretty much anything; I’m just that kind of [...]
[...] when even Google admits that Content Farms are where sales come from, you’d better be a content [...]
Jeff, thank you for the many posts on Hubspot. I have a client using them and I needed to assess Hubspot’s SEO prowess. In search google for information on this topic, Hubspot comes up over and over, almost flooding the top search results for Hubspot and SEO.
However in reviewing their “success” stories and then checking the search ranking of Hubspot’s client successes, I see that none of them rank in the top 100 listings for the search terms they are competing for.
I found that odd until I read this article on Hubspot being a content farm. That explains why Hubspot itself has great rankings and why their clients are getting penalized for being part of that content farm.
Now things shift constantly in Google’s algorithm but that’s a pretty risky move for a business to hope that Google makes a change so that once again Hubspot’s client rankings improve.
Michael, I appreciate the response. And, of course, that we seem to agree.
The biggest problem with Hubspot, aside from what you’ve echoed and the fact that getting yourself OUT of Hubspot is nigh on impossible, is that using it still requires USING it.
As with most tech tools, assuming that anyone other than geeks will do so is a mistake. Sure Hubspot wraps everything in what amounts to a pretty nice Executive Dashboard, but the work needed is still … WORK.
We do a lot of CMS work here, along with SEO. Years ago, we would tell our clients that getting into a CMS would make it so they could edit and add to their own web sites without having to constantly call us/pay us to be Webmaster.
We’ve stopped saying that. Using a CMS is CRITICAL in the Web 2.0 world (and later), and SEO is one task that a CMS makes not just easier, but let’s face it … possible. But we’re careful now to say that using a CMS makes is EASIER to manage your own web site, but you’re unlikely to do it.
And yes, Hubspot is a CMS. and not a bad content management system at that. But … just stay away. Hubspot mostly helps … Hubspot
[...] That’s right: Google LIKES Search Engine Optimization. [...]
[...] What’s funny about Google punishing content farms—and they should, by the way—is that soon after Panda started rolling out, Google bought a piece of Hubspot, which for all its facility is really just a big content farm. [...]
[...] Google’s questionably-motivated investment in Hubspot. Ignore silliness like the results of the query “Who Really Caught Osama?”, a long-tail [...]
[...] their upcoming price changes, and how, several years after I started paying attention to the now-partially-Google-owned marketing tool, Content Management System (CMS), and Content Farm, I’m still finding Hubspot’s business model [...]
[...] That’s business change. Tell the truth: you wish you could do that to with your customers. Hubspot has done it (oh wait; Google owns a chunk of Hubspot). [...]
[...] I’ve been outspoken in my belief that when you add a comment to a blog it’s not only OK to leave a link back to yourself but that you actually add value to the blog where you’ve done that small bit of self promotion and Search Engine Optimization by doing so. But if Tasini wins his suit, that opens the door for anyone who’s ever upped someone else’s site “value” to sue on the same grounds. Well, Cool. If you’ve ever been a Hubspot Customer I guess that means you now own a piece of Google. [...]
[...] If that’s OK with you, go ahead: buy Hubspot. Google did. [...]
[...] there’s good news in the “Google Apps Are No Longer Free” story. Just as Hubspot (partially Google owned, by the way) has thus far never raised prices for existing customers, Google hasn’t started [...]