The Huffington Post sold for $315 to AOL this week, and Demand Media recently completed an IPO. In many ways, these events validate the strategy of gaming the system. Google is a beast that can be gamed, and both these operations did it very well.

HuffPo is notorious for hysterical headlines and their lefty slant, but they were also very well organized and filled a void in the marketplace. In many ways they deserve their success. But, a big part of their success has to do with gaming Google’s search results. Their editors find interesting stories, do a post on it with a link back, but HuffPo usually gets all the search traffic. The other sites usually don’t complain, because links from HuffPo provide really good traffic as well.

Demand Media also fills a void, as they use their own algorithm to find potential search results that need to be filled with content. Then they pay know-nothing writers (well, I guess some of them know what they are writing about) to create a short article covering the topic. AOL is even trying to copy the strategy. Many now refer to sites like Demand Media as content mills, and Google might be addressing the issue, but Demand Media has already scored their IPO and Google’s search results are littered with lame content at the top.

Gaming the system pays.

A recent blog post from Google discusses renewed efforts to take on spam in the search results, but also goes on to say that Google will try to address the issue of content farms.

As “pure webspam” has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to “content farms,” which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. In 2010, we launched two major algorithmic changes focused on low-quality sites. Nonetheless, we hear the feedback from the web loud and clear: people are asking for even stronger action on content farms and sites that consist primarily of spammy or low-quality content. We take pride in Google search and strive to make each and every search perfect. The fact is that we’re not perfect, and combined with users’ skyrocketing expectations of Google, these imperfections get magnified in perception. However, we can and should do better.

The issue of content farms has been in the news even more lately as Demand Media expands its growth and tries to complete an IPO. There are scores of articles covering the strategy, and you can start with this article on TechCrunch from Ashkan Karbasfrooshan from WatchMojo.com as he addresses the quality and cost issues of online content. We also addressed the issue back in 2009 when we addressed AOL’s strategy to emulate Demand Media.

Hopefully, Google is serious about this. There’s no reason a short article on a subject written by an unknown teenager for $10 should be #1 in Google ranking just because it’s posted on a URL owned by AOL or Demand Media.

AOL has been very impressive with its new emphasis on content. New sites like Asylum and Lemondrop have produced cool content in their respective niches. It also doesn’t hurt to have them linked up from AOL’s high-traffic flagship site.

The Wall Street Journal, however, is reporting that AOL will also get into mass-produced content (sometimes referred to as garbage content).

AOL is putting the finishing touches on a high-tech system for mass-producing news articles, entertainment and other online content, the linchpin of Chief Executive Tim Armstrong’s strategy for reviving the struggling 25-year-old Internet company after Time Warner spins it off next month.

Mr. Armstrong’s goal is to make AOL, which has been losing visitors and revenue, a magnet for both advertisers and consumers by turning it into the top creator of digital content. He hopes to do so in part by turning some media and marketing conventions on their ear, and potentially blurring the lines between journalism and advertising.

“Content is the one area on the Web that hasn’t seen the full potential. Hopefully, we will spark a revolution of people doing content at a different scale,” says Mr. Armstrong, a former advertising executive at Google.

AOL is betting it can reinvent itself with a numbers-driven approach to developing content, based on what Web-search and other data tell it is most likely to attract audiences and sponsors.

As pointed out this the article, this strategy mimics the approach taken by companies like Demand Media and Associated Content. Wired has a long profile covering Demand Media’s strategy, which uses an algorithm to pick narrow content subjects that could generate significant revenue from sources like Google Adwords.

Thousands of other filmmakers and writers around the country are operating with the same loose standards, racing to produce the 4,000 videos and articles that Demand Media publishes every day. The company’s ambitions are so enormous as to be almost surreal: to predict any question anyone might ask and generate an answer that will show up at the top of Google’s search results. To get there, Demand is using an army of Muñoz-Donosos to feverishly crank out articles and videos. They shoot slapdash instructional videos with titles like “How To Draw a Greek Helmet” and “Dog Whistle Training Techniques.” They write guides about lunch meat safety and nonprofit administration. They pump out an endless stream of bulleted lists and tutorials about the most esoteric of subjects.

In one sense the strategy is brilliant. There’s obviously some demand for content in each of these areas, and companies like Demand are meeting the demand (what’s in a name?) and profiting nicely from it.

On the other hand, much of the content is crap, and the crap from these big companies who get massive love from Google will often rank higher than similar content produced by others. This raises another question – will quality ever matter in search results? The criteria used by the search engines, which heavily rate factors like incoming links, are easily manipulated by content factories like Demand Media.

Manipulating Google results is obviously a big business these days, and companies like Demand Media and AOL are just doing it on a much larger scale. But we’re getting to the point where content is turning into a commodity, and Google is feeding the beast. In the long run, it will be interesting to see if Google adjusts its secret sauce, or whether the content factories will litter the web and the search engine with second-rate content.