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| Adam Afriyie profile: before any plot, there was always a word farm | Adam Afriyie profile: before any plot, there was always a word farm |
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| British prime ministers have started out as chemists, barristers and academics but should the ambition of Adam Afriyie ever be realised, he would surely be the first "word farmer" to run the country. | British prime ministers have started out as chemists, barristers and academics but should the ambition of Adam Afriyie ever be realised, he would surely be the first "word farmer" to run the country. |
| Afriyie, the MP for Windsor, who was forced to deny any ambition to unseat the PM, has made a multimillion-pound fortune from businesses that include an operation employing hundreds of young writers to churn out thousands of news stories a day about anything from car roof racks to the best way to cook Christmas lunch. | |
| Afriyie owns businesses that include Adfero which bills itself as "the UK's leading dedicated online news provider". It produces thousands of short articles for corporate clients who need fresh content on their websites featuring popular keywords in the daily battle to appear near the top of Google's search rankings. | Afriyie owns businesses that include Adfero which bills itself as "the UK's leading dedicated online news provider". It produces thousands of short articles for corporate clients who need fresh content on their websites featuring popular keywords in the daily battle to appear near the top of Google's search rankings. |
| The targets set to the mostly novice writers are eye-watering and raise serious questions about the quality of content billed as news in certain reaches of the internet. A former manager told the Guardian that Adfero staff are asked to produce around 30 articles per day, each of around 200 words – a rate of one every 15 minutes in an eight-hour shift. The stories – many written from press releases harvested systematically – are then sold to clients at a price of around £18 per time to clients. | The targets set to the mostly novice writers are eye-watering and raise serious questions about the quality of content billed as news in certain reaches of the internet. A former manager told the Guardian that Adfero staff are asked to produce around 30 articles per day, each of around 200 words – a rate of one every 15 minutes in an eight-hour shift. The stories – many written from press releases harvested systematically – are then sold to clients at a price of around £18 per time to clients. |
| "I estimate I wrote roughly 25,000 news articles of 150-200 words each over my almost-five years at Adfero," said Bob Bardsley who worked at the company from September 2006 until June 2011 as a writer, editor and manager, and still has friends working there. "For a time I was on performance-related pay, so my output was higher than the typical employee. At one point, in a managerial role, I held personal responsibility for the delivery of probably around 50 clients' monthly quotas of news. With quite a few new team members who had not been fully trained, I had to pick up a fair bit of slack – if I remember correctly, I single-handedly produced 101 news articles in the space of a 31-hour shift, during which time I slept twice, for an hour each time, with my laptop switched on and resting on my chest as I slept.." Adfero is part of the burgeoning industry of "search engine optimisation" and to make sure Google puts an organisation's website high up its list of search results whenever an internet user inputs search terms that relate to that organisation's trade. So by writing stories about a film star such as Jennifer Lopez and posting them on a film rental website, when a movie fan does a Google search for Jennifer Lopez, there is a higher likelihood of the company's site appearing in the search. | "I estimate I wrote roughly 25,000 news articles of 150-200 words each over my almost-five years at Adfero," said Bob Bardsley who worked at the company from September 2006 until June 2011 as a writer, editor and manager, and still has friends working there. "For a time I was on performance-related pay, so my output was higher than the typical employee. At one point, in a managerial role, I held personal responsibility for the delivery of probably around 50 clients' monthly quotas of news. With quite a few new team members who had not been fully trained, I had to pick up a fair bit of slack – if I remember correctly, I single-handedly produced 101 news articles in the space of a 31-hour shift, during which time I slept twice, for an hour each time, with my laptop switched on and resting on my chest as I slept.." Adfero is part of the burgeoning industry of "search engine optimisation" and to make sure Google puts an organisation's website high up its list of search results whenever an internet user inputs search terms that relate to that organisation's trade. So by writing stories about a film star such as Jennifer Lopez and posting them on a film rental website, when a movie fan does a Google search for Jennifer Lopez, there is a higher likelihood of the company's site appearing in the search. |
| While rivals claim Adfero's "word farming" is not the most effective or best value technique, the Canary Wharf-based business is doing well. In 2011 Adfero turned over £9.4m, employed 251 staff and made a pre-tax profit of £1.3m. Afriyie is the biggest shareholder and he and his fellow directors split dividends of £2.2m in 2010 and 2011 and shared directors' pay of £3.6m over the last five years, according to accounts filed at Companies House. | While rivals claim Adfero's "word farming" is not the most effective or best value technique, the Canary Wharf-based business is doing well. In 2011 Adfero turned over £9.4m, employed 251 staff and made a pre-tax profit of £1.3m. Afriyie is the biggest shareholder and he and his fellow directors split dividends of £2.2m in 2010 and 2011 and shared directors' pay of £3.6m over the last five years, according to accounts filed at Companies House. |
| Google has issued guidelines to websites which urge them to "make pages primarily for users, not for search engines", but the practice is not prohibited like "scraping" (copying other content onto your own website) and "spinning" (using software to subtly change content to try and trick the search engine into believing it is fresh and worth ranking highly). | |
| Google declined to comment on Adfero specifically. The search engine said improvements to its algorithm meant unoriginal content that lacks in-depth analysis is now more likely to appear lower down its search results. | Google declined to comment on Adfero specifically. The search engine said improvements to its algorithm meant unoriginal content that lacks in-depth analysis is now more likely to appear lower down its search results. |
| Neither Afriyie nor William Bracken, a co-owner of Adfero and its chief executive, returned calls and emails asking for comment. | Neither Afriyie nor William Bracken, a co-owner of Adfero and its chief executive, returned calls and emails asking for comment. |
| Bardsley said it appeared the company was now moving away from their former core offering of online news, and into more general content marketing under a new name, Axonn Media. | Bardsley said it appeared the company was now moving away from their former core offering of online news, and into more general content marketing under a new name, Axonn Media. |
| Its website says promotes its "high quality, regular, keyword-optimised and audience-focused content". | Its website says promotes its "high quality, regular, keyword-optimised and audience-focused content". |
| "If nothing else, the size of the market alone makes it a good move, while any new regulation of news providers following the Leveson Inquiry could make it wise to have interests in non-news content," said Bardsley. | "If nothing else, the size of the market alone makes it a good move, while any new regulation of news providers following the Leveson Inquiry could make it wise to have interests in non-news content," said Bardsley. |
| The stories running on Adfero's home page this week were six months out of date. It proclaims it has built its success on "core values of speed, impartiality and unparalleled depth of coverage", but instead of highlighting the war in Mali or rows over new high speed rail links, the headlines were more than six months old and include Roger Federer beating Andy Murray at Wimbledon and the latest injury news from last summer's England vs South Africa test cricket series. | The stories running on Adfero's home page this week were six months out of date. It proclaims it has built its success on "core values of speed, impartiality and unparalleled depth of coverage", but instead of highlighting the war in Mali or rows over new high speed rail links, the headlines were more than six months old and include Roger Federer beating Andy Murray at Wimbledon and the latest injury news from last summer's England vs South Africa test cricket series. |
| The company has adopted several different guises. It is also known as Content Plus, NewsReach, DirectNews and Axon Media, all of which are registered at the same address. | The company has adopted several different guises. It is also known as Content Plus, NewsReach, DirectNews and Axon Media, all of which are registered at the same address. |
| Reports of Afriye's wealth vary from £13m to £100m. The 47-year-old who grew up in social housing in Peckham now owns two large houses, one in Westminster and a former 17th-century monastery near Windsor. Afriyie is also chairman of Connect Support Services, an IT support company. He owned two-thirds of DeHavilland, a political andparliamentary monitoring and news service which was sold to Emap in 2005 for £18m. | Reports of Afriye's wealth vary from £13m to £100m. The 47-year-old who grew up in social housing in Peckham now owns two large houses, one in Westminster and a former 17th-century monastery near Windsor. Afriyie is also chairman of Connect Support Services, an IT support company. He owned two-thirds of DeHavilland, a political andparliamentary monitoring and news service which was sold to Emap in 2005 for £18m. |
| Afriye worked for Jeffrey Archer on his aborted mayoral campaign in 1999 before the peer was jailed for perjury. In 2003 Afriyie was already being talked of as a possible candidate for prime minister and told the Observer: "The Conservative party did elect the first Jewish prime minister, the first bachelor prime minister, the first woman prime minister. Who knows? Anything is possible." | Afriye worked for Jeffrey Archer on his aborted mayoral campaign in 1999 before the peer was jailed for perjury. In 2003 Afriyie was already being talked of as a possible candidate for prime minister and told the Observer: "The Conservative party did elect the first Jewish prime minister, the first bachelor prime minister, the first woman prime minister. Who knows? Anything is possible." |