For a long time, Associated Content was a publishing platform where many internet marketers and home business owners have been visited regularly. Yesterday, Yahoo announced it is shutting it down while relocating its content (at least most of it) to a new publishing platform, Yahoo Voices.
And Then Came Panda…
Associated Content founded in the beginning of 2005 by Luke Beatty and quickly became one of the favorites publishing platforms (sort of an article directory) of many authors who have been offered money incentives, depending on how many visitors their articles draw. Additionally, the company was attracting many investors.
In May 2010, Yahoo have acquired Associated Content for the incredible amount of a little more than $100 million. The acquisition turned out to be very disappointing when Google released the Panda update in February 2011, which negatively impacted Associated Content tremendously as Associated Content was dependent on Google traffic incredibly (the traffic dropped estimation ranges from 60% to 90%).
Moving To Yahoo’s Domain, Fighting Panda
Now, With the shutting down of Associated Content, Yahoo has retired the domain associatedcontent.com completely and if you try to enter it you will be redirected to the new Yahoo Voices which located under Yahoo’s domain (voices.yahoo.com). We can (safely) assume that they relocated it into Yahoo’s domain in an effort to battle with Panda, as Yahoo’s own domain considered very authoritative.
Yahoo also made several other changes that can be related to Panda and to improving the quality of content on the site:
- More strict submission guidelines with clear emphasizing on unique content.
- Complete deletion of 75,000 pieces of content out of more than 2 million (less than 4%).
- Asking contributors to flag content for deletion.
Yahoo didn’t satisfied with all these changes and updates- The company planning to launch in the beginning of 2012 an interactive learning program for contributors, to give them the knowledge and tools to create quality engaging content on Voices.
Chances Of Success?
I believe that Yahoo Voices chances of success aren’t so high because today, people are sharing their opinions and knowledge on other places like the social media or even blogs much more than these kinds of publishing platforms. Additionally, many internet marketers are focusing less on them (again, due to Panda).
However, i can certainly understand Yahoo’s efforts- It is pretty difficult to give up on a $100 million investment before exploiting all other options…