I’m not against good quality websites and adding value to the market, but I’m more and more concerned, just like many other online people are(including the guys at techcrunch) that there are too many high-quality-spam-websites out there. Let me describe you a scenario:

You are a small business somewhere, and decide to go online also with an online store. You invest a lot of money in creating and maintaining the website, updating the prices, etc. Then, you’re being told: hey, you need SEO, you need a company to optimize and promote your website! You get one of these companies to work for you and they do a pretty good job – you’re pleased…

Guess what: once you’re being “up there in the top 10″ for some major keywords, there are several calls each day from some super-amazing SEO companies that are ready to “optimize your website“, do “email marketing for your website“, do “article marketing” for your website, or “social media gurus” trying to contact you via email, twitter, facebook, etc. Aside from all these, there are some websites that literally start with nothing, and they take some of your content + put it on their website(they organize it by categories, tags, etc). You’re just one of the many companies they “list” on their website, creating a good link system in-bound and out-bound…. So you’re happy: they properly introduce your company, your website, etc. You may get some visits from them, and even some orders…. In 2-3 months after they start sending you visitors, they start sending you emails: “Hey, do you need us to update any of your details on our website? Is there any other pictures, details, etc that you want us to put on your page on our website?” – yuppy! Of course you wanna do that, so you add either some products, pictures, details, etc….

This “haven” lasts for at most 6 months when this type of websites email you / call you / send you a letter saying, If You Still Want To Stay on our website, you need to pay an annual / monthly fee… the benefits are: 1. When someone searches for your name, we’re right there behind you, amost taking over in google! 2. We have hundreds of thousands of visitors because of businesses like you from whom we took the rightful visitors… 3. We send you lots of orders! (yeah right!), etc.

Examples of such websites? In the UK, there is TheBestOf, FindTheNeedle(which is more like “get lost on our website”), and many-many others, even shopzilla.
Here is the tricky part: there are so many such websites that are packed with solid links yet adding so little value to the internet, that you can safely classify them as spam websites. It used to be “web directories” where you would find the websites you’re looking for; today it’s these website aggregators / ecommerce directories, which are just a composition and compilation of links organized – with very little to offer but – pointing you(hopefully) to where you want to go! So confusing! So many superfluous articles written about certain areas/products that when you search for something on google it will take you AGES until you get to the real thing / the manufacturer / the origin… Someone needs to clear up this mess, kill / diminish the importance of some of these websites, and “clean/purify” the mess online!

I’m not saying “they all are useless and should not exist“, I’m just saying that this kind of websites are so many and so similar + so well optimized that PEOPLE(the real people who actually search and are interested to find things…) are CONFUSED and many times directed to websites that don’t offer them what they are looking for… too much spam content online that does not offer you any value + does not lead you to where YOU want to go…