Our AnswersDotCom Twitter account has started inviting questions! Ask a question to @answersdotcom and it will check to see if we already have your answer. If we don’t, members of the community will often try to help.

I’ve been playing with it, and it’s actually quite fun, asking, answering, and just watching. Here was my favorite so far:

Try it, it’s fun (and sometimes even helpful):

• To Ask: Tweet to @answersdotcom. For example: @answersdotcom What is the battery life for the iPad?
• To Answer: Go to http://twitter.com/answersdotcom and see where it Tweeted that it doesn’t have an answer. Click on the link to submit the question to WikiAnswers. Often you’ll see a list of questions that includes a different wording of the same question, and you can just click that question wording to merge. Or try to answer the question on WikiAnswers. If there’s a good answer on the page, Tweet it back to the person who asked.
• To Just Watch: Yeah, this is fun for voyeurs. Open a tab in your Twitter client (or in your browser) searching @AnswersDotCom. And keep http://twitter.com/answersdotcom open. Enjoy the fun. For example, I just learned that:
  • Violin strings were made of sheep’s intestines called “catgut” http://bit.ly/aAHQ2k
  • Elephants trunks don’t have any bones, just strong muscles http://bit.ly/bFFB5S
  • We’re born with 300-350 bones, but by the time we’re adults we’re down to 206. http://bit.ly/9RoH0C

And this is being demo’ed at the 140 conference in New York today, so there should be lots of good questions & answers.

Let me know any cool Q&A you came across (or questions you have about the service) by commenting on this post, or Tweeting to @GilR.

Have fun!

Some Kings Live Forever

Recent reports of quality content’s death have been greatly exaggerated. The importance of quality content is going to increase, not decrease. If Answers.com (where I work) and Demand Media succeed, it will be because we succeeded in following Wikipedia’s model and creating high quality content that matches what users are looking for. What content does well in search engines? Content that generates incoming links, and that addresses the questions that users want answered.

The importance of becoming an authority site was my top conclusion from PubCon. Google values sites that other trusted sites link to. Google’s moves into personalized and social search are going to increase the social cues Google uses in determining what content users value.

The quality eulogies were kicked off by Michael Arrington, whose The End of Hand Crafted Content provocatively claimed that “Hand crafted content is dead. Long live fast food content.”

Great linkbait, made all the greater by how far off it is. Here are some points:

High Quality = High User Value

The best of the recent articles is Martin Bryant’s Audiences aren’t stupid, Quality’s not dead, which ends with this point:

“There’s an uncomfortable truth that ‘quality’ content producers need to bear in mind too. Sometimes content farms with their hyper-targeted approach provide exactly what an audience needs. Even if it’s cheap and rushed, an article telling you “How to make a breakfast nook out of a church pew” (for example) answers a specific question – one that people most quality outlets wouldn’t bother to answer in isolation.

Sometimes it’s the ‘low-quality’ content that fulfills an audience’s need. In that case, is it really low quality?”

Bryant’s point also answers the Forbes editor who warned students about Demand Media:

“They’re paying seasoned journalists five cents a word for their stories. They’re paying very skilled video photographers $2 per video. You’re not going to learn anything about a secret drone attack in Afghanistan on this site. You’re going to find stories like: What’s the best way to donate a coat in Saratoga Springs?

Forbes is a business & financial magazine. Are most of their stories about “a secret drone attack in Afghanistan?” And if readers are more interested in “What’s the best way to donate a coat in Saratoga Springs?” then which story provides more value to the user? It seems like Demand Media is doing exactly what Forbes is trying to do, provide quality content of interest to a commercial audience. But Demand Media may be doing it better.

At PubCon Google’s Matt Cutts encouraged web publishers to do keyword research to see what users are looking for, so that the publishers  can meet the demand. This is a good thing.

Quality: The Wikipedia Model

User generated content sites’ long term success is dependent on becoming a trusted authority. Back in 2004 I was asked to add Wikipedia’s content into Answers.com (then GuruNet). I resisted because Wikipedia was lower quality than the professionally published sources we were licensing. Studies now show Wikipedia quality to be on par with Britannica. When Chris Whitten approached us to purchase WikiAnswers I had a similar hesitation, because it was often lower quality than our licensed content. But like Wikipedia (though a few years behind), WikiAnswers quality improves every year. I’ll put a stake in the ground and say that within 12 months it will be considered the authority site for answers.

Quality Unique Voices Will Find Audiences

Ross Dawson and Doc Searls have also provided clarity in this debate.

Searls writes:

“I’ve been hand-crafting (actually just typing) my “content” for about twenty years now, and I haven’t been destroyed by a damn thing. I kinda don’t think Fast Food Content is going to shut down serious writers (no matter where and how they write) any more than McDonald’s killed the market for serious chefs.”

Searls later writes “what matters most is what each of us does better than anybody or anything else.”

Dawson expects “the rise of effective content reputation systems, that allow you to assess the likely quality of articles before you read them or even find them.” One way or another, I’m sure Google will figure something out here.

Quality and LinkBait

The Arrington post was classic linkbait, content that’s hand-crafted to maximize reaction and incoming links. While writing that post Arrington couldn’t possibly have believed the article’s premise, that hand crafted content is dead. The piece was a masterstroke of hand crafted content. BTW, it currently ranks 3rd (of 21 million) in Google for “hand crafted,” showing what good hand crafted content can do for you.

Linkbait has similar problems as TV news shows that interview extremists from both sides because that makes better television than interviewing moderates as they explain nuanced views.

A second theme ran through Arrington’s piece, that writers need to figure out a new disruptive way to win. Arrington wrote that daring innovators will thrive, and that we need to learn to deal with the changing models. But a thorough and intelligent exposition of that idea wouldn’t have generated much passion in the blogosphere. So Arrington went with the linkbait theme of “The End of Hand Crafted Content.”

If one were really worried about ways that people try to game the system to get poor quality content to rank, he’d focus more on this kind of Linkbait and less on Demand Media.

Conclusion: Quality Remains King

Quality content is more critical than ever to a content web site’s long term success, and the sites that want to be here for the long run are going to be paying more and more attention to it. They’ll become high quality, or die trying.

Google's definition link

There’s been a lot of coverage the last few days about Google changing its definition link to point to its own site. Since 2005 it had pointed to Answers.com, and before that to Dictionary.com.

A few key points:

• Answers.com announced this upcoming change in our November 4 conference call and in SEC filings. Google was kind enough to provide a heads up, and we passed the message along.
• We very much appreciate that Google valued our site enough to direct its definition seeking users to us for nearly five years. Google has every right to create its own definition service, and to decide for itself how best to serve its users. In this case Google is choosing its own fast, clean dictionary pages over Answers.com’s more robust pages that often include encyclopedias and specialized dictionaries (compare for example the pages defining annuity on Answers.com and on Google).
• When Google first decided to point their definition link to Answers.com, we were just making the transition from being a pop-up dictionary / encyclopedia focused on short data sources to a more robust product that today includes many longer entries from publishers like Oxford and Gale and over 6 million answered questions from our community. We actually have Google GUI guru Marissa Mayer to thank for suggesting that we move from a tabbed interface (where each source was on its own tab) to displaying our sources one after the other, which helped our site develop into a more complete information resource.
• The Google definition link accounted for only about 5% of Answers.com traffic in recent months. The bulk of Answers.com traffic today is to our community Q&A.
• In 2005 Google’s definition link really helped us take off. However it really has been the least significant component of our relationship with Google. Google continues to direct many of their searchers to the answers we provide. And the bulk of our revenue comes from Google AdSense, a contract we actually recently renewed to continue through January 2012.

In summary, Web users increasingly choose Google to find information. We thank Google for pointing their definition link to us for almost 5 years. We’re sorry to see that traffic go, but it was only 5% of our traffic. Google has built tremendous networks that connect information seekers, information providers, and advertisers. We’re glad to be a part of these networks. We will continue focusing our efforts on providing quality answers from licensed sources and from the community, and we hope users will continue finding us both directly and from Google search.