Demand Media is now officially a publicly traded company following its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, in which it raised $151.3 million. The deal values the company at nearly $1.5 billion, making it one of the largest Internet IPOs in recent history.
Early indications suggest that concerns over Demand -- which owns sites like eHow and Trails.com -- being at the whims of Google’s search algorithms are not worrying investors. The company increased the size of its offering by nearly 20% and also raised the offering price, with investors pushing shares another 40% higher when they debuted.
Last week, Google wrote about its plans to take on search engine spam and so-called “content farms," a category that Demand is often lumped in with because of the way it produces its content, with thousands of low-cost freelancers authoring stories that target popular search terms.
Specifically, Google said that, "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.” For its part, Demand defends the quality of its content, but acknowledged its dependence on traffic from Google search in its filing last year.