Does Google’s Panda speak English?
In a previous blog post about content spinners I made the statement that people either love spinners or hate them. As a rule, few people seem to be in the middle ground (at least, few people at the popular Internet Marketing forums).
Since Google's Panda update, the haters have been out en masse, making wild claims about Google's supposed new ability to know if content was created using a spinning application. Using a content spinner will now hurt your rankings or get you banned from Google, they proclaim.
Rubbish.
As always, these kinds of statements are made without sharing a single shred of proof in evidence of the claims. As I've stated in the past, people think far too much of Google's ability to do just about everything.
Google is a piece of software. A very complex piece of software, but software all the same. At its absolute best, software can only be as good as its creator at doing anything. Google is no exception, and it often falls far short of the amount of insight that its engineers surely posses. That's because it's (so far) impossible to create software that can even come close to achieving your brain's ability to understand and interpret what it takes in.
So let me debunk the nonsensical view that using a content spinner will hurt your rankings in Google. It's a simple exercise. Let's take a look at these three sentences:
- Recently I made the decision to take a stroll.
- Without delay I chose to go for a walk around the block.
- Not long ago I determined to go on a hike.
Can you guess which of those sentences is the original, unspun sentence, and which ones are the spinner-generated ones? Go ahead, take a guess.
Can you point out anything wrong with these sentences? Each one uses proper spelling and grammar. Each one makes perfect sense and uses wording that would not be considered unusual in the English language. In short, they're all good quality.
Do you think Google's pet Panda would punish an article which contained any of those sentences? Why not? If they're spinner generated, surely Google would slash the rankings of any sentence that read like that!
(Oh, and by the way, whatever sentence you chose as the original sentence, you're wrong. They're all spun. The original isn't in the list. Gotcha!)
I think you get the point. Sentences are simply the combinations of words. If the rules of the target language are respected, it doesn't matter whether software generated the sentence or a human typed out each sentence one word at a time. The end result is still quality.
This is again where the haters fail to realize that their argument only holds some truth if a content spinner is used to generate content with bad grammar that is difficult to read or makes little sense. Sadly, some people do use content spinners for that purpose, letting the automated parts of the software do their work and never going back to edit out synonyms that don't make sense in the context of their article.
It's true that poor quality content is much harder to rank in Google, but it doesn't require software to create poor quality content. Go read some of the comments posted on news items at Google news if you don't believe me! Some people's spelling and grammar are atrocious, and yet many of the sites which host such comments still do very well in Google's search results. I guess the Panda was off eating some bamboo when it was time to rank those sites!
You see, Google's Panda doesn't speak English. Google is pretty good at parsing out the most important words used on a page, and they use linking data to back up those algorithmic decisions. Google is also pretty good at knowing what words are related to other words based on the frequency with which they appear in the same documents (this is known as "latent semantic indexing").
But Google does not understand English (or any other language for that matter). All it can go on are the words on the page, how they relate, and how the external factors such as links reinforce those connections.
The bottom line is, if a human being cannot distinguish an article that was produced with the help of a content spinner, neither can Google.
Please post your thoughts and questions in a comment below.
Enjoy this article?
April 29th, 2011 - 15:04
It is not surprising that there are skeptics of spun content. The concept sounds like it would produce lousy quality writing. Really though, when done right, the content can be just as good. I don’t see how search engines will ever really be able to detect spun content.
April 29th, 2011 - 08:22
When Google talks, people listen. I am a firm believer that content is king. If its spun, it better be good and I can be. If a person has a good site with clean and relevant content, why worry. Its those who do not that may want to re think things. Thanks for the post, it was a great read. I enjoyed the threads too.
April 27th, 2011 - 06:08
I do agree Jon.
Since English is not my mother language sometimes I try to use Google translate. And what Google did? The translation result was very different meaning in its original language and the grammar was damaged. It means that not all Google software are perfect.
April 26th, 2011 - 20:23
That’s a really good way of explaining it.
I will keep that explanatory approach in mind for future. Thanks Jon!
April 23rd, 2011 - 21:42
Jon, I don’t know if what I am about to print is pro spinner or pro your comments or con on all of it. I will show you what I am talking about. Sometime back I wrote and article and put it on several article sites. It began to be picked up and published. Some of those went through spinners and some were not. I will show you a paragraph of one that did and how it should read, yet it is on page one of google for the chosen keywords.
This is the original paragraph.
Vitamin C is practically the do-it-all vitamin for aging baby boomers. I would even call it the guard dog for the body. It helps watch over our immune system, works with other agents to prevent and/or protect from such diseases as Parkinson’s Disease and even helps in the formation of collagen.
Now the spun paragraph that has made it on page one.
Vitamin C is nice-looking a great deal the do-it-all supplement pertaining headed for baby boomers. identification perhaps convene it the protection afflict of vitamins representing individuals. It bottle assistance inspect above our bodies, factory together with discrete agents headed for preclude and/or safeguard commencing undeniable kinds of remedial circumstances such as Parkinson’s Disease next equal bottle be beneficial representing the formation of collagen.
I was not given credit for this article and thankfully so. Clearly, Google is not concerned with content in an intelligent way to allow this to rank on page one.
George Hollis
April 23rd, 2011 - 09:34
I don’t think Google is as interested in targeting spun content as poor content and spammy sites which are against everyones interest. It is possible they will find a manual or user generated rating system in future to make sure only helpful sites stay up.
April 22nd, 2011 - 12:51
Hi There,
I recently tried an experiment, I wrote a resignation to quit my job then spun it a few times and asked a few people which they thought was the best, 3 out of 3 people including me which is 4 picked the spun resignation.
Just in case your wondering why, I wanted to be as unreal as the organisation I was working for, I wanted to treat them like they treated me, mechanically.
I even put written by machine in small print on the bottom.
Thanks for the opportunity.
April 22nd, 2011 - 11:02
Of course, the real power over the SE’s is right in front of everyone reading this blog post. Jon has started a debate on a topic that inspires a fairly large group of people to opine at great length – the amount of unique, genuinely human-generated, high quality, engaging content produced must run to many hours. You can bet that this won’t do Jon’s position any harm at all. Look and learn people!
April 21st, 2011 - 23:23
Good reminder Jonathan, thanks. Sometimes we forget that the search engines don’t see our spin syntax. The problem arises with the sites that a lot of the spun content goes to. At the end of the day, I guess it comes down to how good your spinners are.
April 21st, 2011 - 18:19
Hey Jon
Since ezinearticles has changed their policy on a few things and are reviewing submitted articles closer now,
how does that effect the articles that are being sent that are spun? Are they accepting them?
Should you only submit a few? I’m thinking of getting senuke. You can load a bunch of the spun articles and
drip feed them to the directories. Again does it mater how many as to not throw up a red flag or am I just worring to much?
Thanks for the feed back
Cydnie
April 21st, 2011 - 18:09
Excellent logical post. Thanks.
April 21st, 2011 - 14:59
Really thoughtful and helpful blog post Jon. Thanks… The basics of SEO still hold true – relevant content, good backlinks (amongst others).
April 21st, 2011 - 09:30
Jon,
A quick little story to illustrate the limits of Google’s ‘insights’ into our lives.
Depending on who you listen to, Google knows everything about every body. Use their analytics, Adsense, Gmail, and Google Docs and they will know everything about you. But, correlating all that data is a monumental task.
I have all of the above account plus an Adwords account. My Adwords and Adsense accounts are linked to different email addresses, but all of the associated names and billing/payment addresses are the same (I don’t play any games with fake accounts, etc.)
These accounts are years old – plenty of time for the mighty Google software to determine that the same person owns them all. But, I regularly get new-customer offers for creating an AdWords account that can only be used by people starting a new account. These are always full color glossy booklets on heavy paper.
Google cannot figure out that 2 accounts with the same name and mailing address are the same person. That mistake costs them printing and postage costs every time they mail me an offer I cannot use.
Imagine how well they would do finding someone who is actually trying to trick them and did a decent job covering their tracks.
Andrew
April 21st, 2011 - 10:42
Excellent example Andrew.
April 21st, 2011 - 12:44
“But, I regularly get new-customer offers for creating an AdWords account that can only be used by people starting a new account. These are always full color glossy booklets on heavy paper.”
Hi,
That’s because they would rather waste money bombarding people with useless “improperly targeted” junk mail, then to use their money to create a system to rank sites correctly.
April 21st, 2011 - 02:12
totally agree! Furthermore my whole experience with all GG products, “help” , documentation, decision making as well as their “punishments” (disabling accounts) convinced me that the bigger a company is the least competent coders they hire (same for “FaceBUUk” and “mikrosssoft”..) all is in the control of the software, no reasonable person would expect magic from a software. Thanks for the insightful articles please keep doing those posts as often as you can.
April 21st, 2011 - 00:39
I agree, AWESOME posting
Thank u Jon
April 20th, 2011 - 21:14
Hi Jon,
I agree with you on the text sentence, but what about the HTML? I guess I read somewhere that Panda does check HTML part too? what do you think about this, Jon?
April 20th, 2011 - 20:16
A content spinner can make numerous effective articles or it can make numerous articles that make very little sense. It’s all at the control of the spinner. Like all in life some produce quality and some produce junk looking for the quick buck.
April 20th, 2011 - 18:38
Hi Jon,
You make a very good point in reference to what Google can or cannot read. People overate Google as if it is an invisible technological spirit, most poeple believe Google is not a software, they believe Google is human and can see your every move. I strongly support your point. There is no way on earth that Google can guess or detect if an article is spuned, if the spinner does not give away the hint. The hint are the basic after spun article checks etc, etc.
Great Article.
See you at the top!
Jimmy
April 20th, 2011 - 18:34
Hi Jon,
I usually don’t post replies but anytime the chance arises to hammer google and their lies, I’m in.
I can tell you for a fact their duplicate content spank is BS. I have dominates the front page of google in my small little niche for four years. Then one day when I checked, I seen some of my new and older blog post titles move to the front page. It turned out the articles were under a different site name. These were my original content articles, that a new site had stolen from me. They were word for word and nothing was changed and ranking on the front page.
My point is, that if they can;t even see word for word duplicate content, I can’t see them having the ability to tell if content has been spun or not.
In my opinion, it is just another scare tactic thrown out there by the wannabe I control the Internet google.
Just my opinion,
Gary Ortlieb
April 20th, 2011 - 16:47
I use spun content a lot and TBS is fantastic for me. I cant see anything wrong with spun content provided it is done properly and carefully. A lot of my sites with carefully spun content continue to rank strongly.
Andy
April 20th, 2011 - 15:57
Great points Jon. I think so many people miss the importance of quality spinning and general software practices. It’s nice to see someone put their finger right on it illustrating that the difference between quality spun articles and garbage is often user-interaction.
April 20th, 2011 - 15:24
About a week ago you sent an email out about something to do with API. I just glanced at it but didn’t have time to read it thoroughly. Now I can’t find the email. Could you resend it to me please? Thanks.
April 20th, 2011 - 13:51
This has been one of the most interesting threads I’ve read on this subject. I belong to the loath spun article brigade even though I have used it in the past. I was not comfortable with it and like others, found it far quicker to write a fresh article.
You gave examples of native English people using the unnaturally sounding sentences cited in your example. I’ve no reason to doubt you, but I actually find this terrifying! It is no doubt due to the reader viewing so many unnaturally written articles which now flood the web.
Most writers understand the importance of reading the material they are trying to emulate. These blog posters and commentators obviously do not read anything of quality if they are using this unnatural phraseology.
Interesting as this is, I think in a few years time we will look back on this and smile as I think what will eventually happen is Google and the like will introduce some kind of quality control involving human editors who will vet sites for top listings.
I use the web extensively for research and find it less and less useful. Most of the top spots are being occupied by light weight material which has been rehashed from other sites. Eventually Google will have to get really tough.
April 20th, 2011 - 14:23
Or perhaps it’s only your opinion that the phraseology is unnatural, and others do not share your opinion? It would be rather conceited to assume that we alone are the last word on what is or is not “proper” writing. If it fits the rules of grammar and spelling in the target language, and if it easily understood by the reader, then who are you to say that it’s “unnatural” or inappropriate?
April 20th, 2011 - 18:09
The very point you make applies to your own comment.
As a speaker of “English” English, I can tell you that your comment does not read as if it’s been written by a native English speaker. No offence intended.
Bear in mind that even the greatest writers sometimes break the rules. Shakespeare, for example, wrote “the most unkindest cut of all”. A double superlative from the greatest playwright ever? Yet it works.
As a British person who sees, hears and reads a lot of the output of Americans, I can tell you that my teeth are constantly set on edge by the differences between us.
How I would love to impose my own very strict rules of language on everyone else. Sadly, I fear that day is as far away now as it was when I was born. And just for the purpose of clarification, this paragraph is entirely tongue firmly in cheek!
April 20th, 2011 - 13:22
Jon, all great points. I think your spinner is a great tool, but one still needs to put some thought into how you are spinning. Even using The Best Spinner you can turn out articles that are not acceptable, and that is what Google rightfully is looking for. A poorly written article whether original or spun will get slapped.
April 20th, 2011 - 13:25
I agree. A poorly spun article, or a poorly written one that wasn’t spun, both deserve to get slapped. It doesn’t require software to write badly.
April 20th, 2011 - 13:07
i think alot of people are missing the point on spun articles, they are NOT for getting the spun article to rank. only for backlink purposes. the reason we spin is so we can get more value out of the article. if google determines 100 links and 95 of those are duplicate content, then a majority are not going to give us much juice but if all 100 are seen not to be dupe, then we are getting more bang for our buck.
and do they really care about grammar on an article thats not even in the top 500 for that keyword phrase. and will they actually start to penalize for bad grammar since most people read and write at a 7th or 8th grade level.
April 20th, 2011 - 13:55
I get the point, but I don’t think “Big G” does.
Actually if “Big G” would find a better way to rank sites except for the number of back links, it would not only provide better search results, but cut down on the amount spam it forces people to produce to rank.
Whenever I check to see what site is ranking #1 for a particular KW I want to rank for it is (most of the time) always a manic marketer with a ton of friggen back links but the same old regurgitated information.
Along with a ton of comments they never even bother to answer, why?
They are too busy building back links…lol
In plain English their site sucks. (This sentence wasn’t spun)
Is this what “Big G” wants?
It must be, they are the ones creating this mess.
With the billions of dollars flowing through their business you think they could come up with a better solution than they have so far.
I run a real website that actually interacts with it’s visitors, and I am on page 15, why?
Because I spend more time helping my visitors and not creating a bunch of back links.
So, in the end, does it “really” matter if content created solely for ranking purposes is hand written or not?
You could be hosting a great website (with hand written content), but without all the back links “Big G” ignores you, they created the problem if you ask me.
Then they whine about it, change the algorithm, which will only change the way the problem will grow, not solve it.
I say they should spend a few billion dollars and figure this out so back links don’t carry so much weight, then people will stop creating spam to get back links.
In the end, do you think people would be so focused on creating back links if Google didn’t make them so important?
I think the problem is the way “Big G” ranks sites…period.
They reward/encourage the spammers, and then they want them to go away.
Is Google really part of the US government?
Scott
April 22nd, 2011 - 10:45
I think you are spot-on there Scott, but with the caveat that Google are responding to people trying to game the system, so it’s always going to be a mess. The sites that have spun content are often boring, not very informative and for the most part, obvious. Condensing human interaction down to a few simplistic algorithms isn’t going to fool a real person looking for specific information, so what use is the site to a real person, other than the site owner that needs to play games like this, so as to be heard above the cacophony of ‘me-too’ article processors?
People are pointing out that the rules of grammar aren’t being broken and that people have every right to say things however it suits them, but if a person spoke like that in the real world, people listening would start avoiding them and passing each other knowing glances pretty quickly, I suspect.
Google won’t change its ways – there is money involved and if it works for them, they carry on regardless and besides, Jon is right – they simply won’t be able to identify enough sites using spun content to make a dent in the practice.
So you either say “I can’t beat them – might as well join them.” or you simply put what you want on your site for whatever your reasons might be.
April 22nd, 2011 - 11:22
Hi Mike,
You know what the funny thing is?
I still get 14,000 unique visitors (according to my Google Analytic account) every month, and my site is on page 15 for my main keyword phrase.
What does that tell you?
People are not finding what they want on the first 14 pages of Google.
Their algorithms suck.
I am with you on the stance you either give up, or fight fire with fire.
I totally agree.
The thing is you and I not the ones who created this fire in the first place…Google did, and then they act surprised.
If Google (and all the other SE’s) want this problem to end, they are the ones who need to change the way sites are ranked…period.
There is a HUGE opportunity here for some company who wants to revolutionize the search engine industry, by getting rid of the backlink ranking system, and incorporating a more accurate ranking system.
If there was someway to verify every banklink on the web, how many do you think would be authentic and not self-promoting?
I mean backlinks from people who were actually were interested in updates from that website?
The percentage would be tiny…lol
I will start building backlinks (like everyone else) I owe it to the people looking for “good” information in my niche.
The problem with the way things are progressing online today is most webmasters focus on being 95% marketer %5 authority on the niche they are promoting…that equals SPAM.
I don’t care how you package it (hand written or spun), it is still spam, but we need it to rank, right?
We didn’t make the rules, we just have to live by them.
I love working online, and I am here to stay.
I will do whatever is necessary to get my information in front of the people you need it.
Scott
April 20th, 2011 - 12:29
I looked at a few of the spinners, but everything I found took more work to create a spin ready article than it takes to just write another new and original article. Also, it seems absolutely absurd to me to spin out 100 copies of one article. I suppose submitting those spun articles is OK as long as you use a pen name as the author, but I would never want my name on those spun articles or my credibility as an author would go down the drain. I prefer to hire ghost writers over at Fiverr for my articles that I don’t have the time to write myself. There are a few excellent writers there that will create 2 or 3 good articles for just $5 bucks, so that’s the route I take.
And to agree with Alexa Steele, all three of those sentences are “unnatural sounding” and I would not use them in an original article.
April 20th, 2011 - 12:58
You’re right — as a rule, it takes longer to rewrite an article once using a spinner than it does to create one new unique article yourself. But that’s not why most people use spinners. They use spinners to produce dozens or hundreds of unique versions of the same article. They do this because it’s far easier to get Google to index what it sees as “unique” content than it is to get duplicate content indexed. If your content isn’t indexed, your links aren’t counted. If your links aren’t counted, your sites don’t rank.
As to the “unnatural sounding” sentences, what do you think of these?
“Recently I made the decision to give up my dependency on the automotive commute.” (came from a blog post)
“Recently I made the decision to migrate away from DotNetNuke.” (another blog)
“Recently I made the decision to aggressively pursue a dream that I’ve had for a long time.” (forum)
“Recently I made the decision to port my existing asmx services to WCF.” (a respected tech site, stackoverflow)
According to Google there are at least 41,000+ other examples using the same phrasing. I think you’re seeing “unnaturalness” because you want to see it, not because it’s actually unnatural in tone.
April 20th, 2011 - 12:27
I think every time the Big G makes one of these changes, everyone goes into a panic. And with many of the sites out there providing no real value, they have reason to panic. If all you have is auto posted content from other sites, then maybe you should panic.
Provide good quality, spun or original, and your sites will be fine.
April 20th, 2011 - 12:00
Hi,
The Panda, is this the same as the farmer update, or is this a new algorithm change?
It is hard to keep up with the latest crisis.
But why worry about google updates?
If you want something to worry about, the Mayans predict the world is ending next year. :O
But, if your PC doesn’t have the correct date because it wasn’t Y2K compliant, it won’t say the correct year, so you”ll be spared.
Whew! I’m glad I am still running windows 3.1
Panic, it’s what’s for dinner.
Brought to you by the council on worldwide panic.
Can I get my panic to go?
Scott
April 20th, 2011 - 11:53
Why don’t you geeks go create software and leave writing to writers?
{snip: this site is G rated — no swearing allowed in comments}
April 20th, 2011 - 11:54
Oh yes I forgot to ask which sentence was spun?
April 20th, 2011 - 13:02
Great idea! I vote that you throw away your computer, smash your typewriter to bits, toss your ink pens and that notebook paper you have in the closet. Go out and catch a pigeon, pluck a feather and dip it in some mud. While you’re outside you can pull up some of the grass from the yard and weave it together. Leave it outside in the sun for a week to let it bake into a nice parchment.
Because THAT’S how REAL writers write. No technology allowed to make writing or printing easier. No way, that’s cheating.
April 20th, 2011 - 16:59
The tools are tools… the creativity is priceless…
April 20th, 2011 - 11:48
I don’t have much experience with article spinners, and I’m willing to admit they may have their place when it comes to link building; however, when it comes to writing high quality content and connecting with the reader, nothing beats a good writer.
The three spun sentences in your article are a perfect example: while they are technically correct, they sound unnatural (would you really say “Without delay I chose to go for a walk around the block” in the course of your average conversation?).
You’re probably right that Google can’t tell the difference, but readers can. Always choose a human to write the content that counts.
April 20th, 2011 - 12:11
Many writers do, in fact, use that exact phrasing. Query it in Google and you’ll see. Don’t forget that a well spun article always starts with a well written article. The software doesn’t “write ” anything.
April 20th, 2011 - 13:00
No native English speaker would ever say this: “Without delay I chose to go for a walk around the block”. Nor- unless you were attempting to sound “antiquated” or something- would you ever write this.
April 20th, 2011 - 13:16
Really? How about this native English speaker using a similar sentence structure:
“I was relieved to finally locate an Xbox 360 with a 250 GB drive on The Microsoft Store website. Without delay I placed my order, then went to bed.” (blog post)
If you read that blog post it’s very, very clear that the writer is a native English speaker.
Or how about this one, written by Michele Jones a CASA Volunteer and posted on voicesforkidsofsv.org in June 24, 2010:
“I remember spending a couple of days browsing through the pages of phone books and records at the court house, endeavoring to locate other family members that may be able to adequately care for the child. Finally, it paid off. Without delay, I contacted them and made an appointment, at which time they expressed their desire to help.”
Also an obvious native English speaker. Neither of those examples are of people trying to sound antiquated.
Are you beginning the see the problem with making these kinds of assumptions? Just because you would not write a certain way does not make it improper or wrong. The English language allows for a wide range of flexibility.
April 20th, 2011 - 18:19
Taking those sentences in isolation can make them look very odd. I doubt that many people would have a conversation using “Without delay I chose to go for a walk around the block”.
However, in a written piece of work it could be perfectly aposite. Try this:
“Having seen who was coming the other way, I knew that my number was up if I didn’t get out of there, fast. Without delay I chose to go for a walk around the block.”
Ok, that sounds like the beginning of some pulp fiction – or perhaps the end. What we would call in England a “penny dreadful”, perhaps. But context makes a huge difference to everything. Have you ever seen this phrase written down as part of a sentence?
“had had had”
Hard to imagine how you could use that, right? Let’s try this:
“Where Stevens had had ‘hadn’t', Jones had had ‘had’ in his evidence, so we were left with no credible witnesses.”
Looks pretty odd on the page, though, doesn’t it?
April 20th, 2011 - 11:43
Thanks for your/Interesting/Great insight. The Best Spinner/TBS is still/continues to be/remains the best! I certainly/definitely/undoubtably/surely agree that Google cannot detect/determine/discern a spun article from the original/primary/first quality article.
April 20th, 2011 - 12:17
Spun:
Thanks for your Great insight. TBS is continues to remains the best! I undoubtably agree that Google cannot determine a spun article from the first quality article.
Typical – that sentence sucks and this is why the Internet is full of an increasing amount of garbage content.
April 20th, 2011 - 12:28
All that proves is that proofreading is needed when spinning, just as it’s needed when writing manually. I can’t begin to tell you how many badly written articles I’ve seen that weren’t spun. It doesn’t require software to write badly.
April 20th, 2011 - 10:46
I completely agree. Spinning gets a bad rap because it’s often done badly without proofing resulting in gibberish. When done well, it’s an efficient method to leverage content.
The real issue in my mind is whether syndicating the same article works. I think it does and I do it. But I also spin. I mix up my strategies. When I spin, I spend time ensuring each article will be cogent and helpful. This takes time, but it leverages a good article.
April 20th, 2011 - 10:37
The all mighty Panda has spoken…”.Right” Spinning is what make rich content. Linking to sites with rich content makes better ranking bottom line .
April 20th, 2011 - 10:12
After a long time worried about my spun content, here I got the point.
Thanks for sharing.
April 20th, 2011 - 10:01
First of all, I forgot to tell you: I love TBS!!
I was a developer myself, I think I know what it takes to build that awesome spinner. You encourage me to write some testimonial, but maybe later. I’m kinda busy with work right now
As for this Panda bear, I honestly knew it after reading this post. But I did have a slightly thought the concept of it. I agree 100%, softwares can’t be like human brain. Maybe it can in the future (I’m an optimist), but not now, that’s for sure.
That’s what makes me investing on your spinner. Yes it is not perfect, but as a tool it close to perfect if compared to others (that i always asked for refund).
Even without you having explained about this, I think TBS will do just fine.
Thanks for introducing me to this Panda. Very useful information (at least for me), and I think I’m gonna grow some bamboo now.
Here’s to your success John!
Regards,
Brian
April 20th, 2011 - 09:57
You’re exactly right. People love to jump on the band-wagon and say.. “this no longer works”. It’s been my experience, it’s about having a balanced source of links that make the linking look natural. And spun articles and blog posts can be a key piece of the puzzle.
Jonathan, have you done any research on what percentage unique that spun articles need to be on the average?
April 20th, 2011 - 09:35
I’m going to have to disagree on a couple of points. The first thing I thought when I looked at those sentences was that they were all spinner generated.
Do I think software could figure that out? It’s moderately unlikely, for now.
Unless, that is, google bought your spinner and scraped your entire thesaurus. Then wrote a program that said some like: if article has more than X% of these synonyms, flag it as spun content. Now, that would be easy and effective.
I do agree that spun content still works.
April 20th, 2011 - 09:41
If Google did that it would result in billions of individually written, unspun documents getting tagged with false positives, because there’s nothing in the TBS database that doesn’t already exist in those billions of other documents.
April 20th, 2011 - 09:56
Right. Which is why spun content still works if done well. Some other software, not TBS, has a really poor thesaurus and spun articles end up almost unreadable. I think we all know who the /chief/ offender is here though.
If you are generating gibberish with your spinning, you are doing it wrong. If it is readable, you should be fine. TBS is capable of producing content that is very hard to distinguish from a human.
April 20th, 2011 - 10:03
Lol! I hear ya!
April 20th, 2011 - 09:59
Right. I didn’t say they were doing that. Just that it would be possible. It would screw over so many legitimate sites in the process though that it would be unreasonable. Which is why spun content still works if done well. Some other software, not TBS, has a really poor thesaurus and spun articles end up almost unreadable. I think we all know who the /chief/ offender is here though.
If you are generating gibberish with your spinning, you are doing it wrong. If it is readable, you should be fine. TBS is capable of producing content that is very hard to distinguish from a human.
April 20th, 2011 - 09:25
I could tell right away that all three of those sentences appear to spun for the simple fact that no one speaks like that. You and I would say “I decided to go for a walk.” But not “Recently I made the decision”, “Without delay I chose” or “Not long ago I determined”. That’s got spinner written all over it. But can Google make that determination with an algorithm?
I don’t think it can because there are no visual queues and it doesn’t personally know the author. I used to be a programmer and I can’t write logic like that. There would be a lot of colateral damage. It could be someone speaking the Queen’s English or someone learning English who is unfamiliar with what is considered “normal” conversational English. You don’t penalize someone because of it. There are millions of pages on the web where people speak in urban slang, intentionally use bad English, say “sale” instead of “sell”, etc. A computer can’t make a determination. It takes a human.
The whole spun thing is more than just replacing words. It’s the content as a whole. Google’s point is, no matter how you slice it, dice it and say it, it’s all been said before and users are telling them they don’t want to see more of the same. Google is trying to force unique, original content to keep its users engaged so they don’t go elsewhere. That’s the type of content that will rise to the top. Everything else gets shoved past page 40 in the SERPS…or does it?
Take for instance the Japan tsunami. Google this phrase: Japan Quake Captured By Underwater Mic
Were the TV call letters and city in the title enough to make it unique? Why? The content’s the same in every single one of those syndicated articles. How come it’s not hiding the duplicates and posting this statement: “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ### already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.”
Google does what it wants, when it wants. Just play nice and write good content because IF and WHEN Google finds you, you’ll come out a winner.
April 20th, 2011 - 09:36
While I generally agree with your comments, google the exact phrase “recently i made the decision” and you’ll get about 47,000 results — none of which I looked at showed any evidence of being spun. So that phrase IS a normal way of writimg. That just further reinforces your comments, though, because one person’s way of writing is another’s “unnatural” language. Who’s right? How does Google make that assessment if even intelligent human beings can’t agree on it? The simple truth is that an algorithm can’t do this.
April 20th, 2011 - 09:13
Most time-saving tools show how to use their software with a few click and it’s off and running, but most of those packages will work better with a little extra time taken by the person running it which will to give even better results, of course reading thru spun articles is an example of that. The work people are trying to achieve is still done in a fraction of the time, even doing the extra proof reading, just to use as an example.
Bottom line, the demo your we say to buy a software tool usually showed results with a few clicks, if we really look at what it’s doing and get a better understanding we will get more power and better results out of them.
April 20th, 2011 - 08:47
Jonathan,
Thank you for an informative article. You’ve given me a lot of food for thought.
I definitely will be investing in your software, “The Best Spinner”.
Warm regards,
Dottson
April 20th, 2011 - 08:38
At the end of the day Jon, if peopled can’t be bothered to go back and check what their spinning efforts have produced, and they end up being nonsensical, then these people will ultimately reap what they sow….
April 20th, 2011 - 08:55
Amen.
April 20th, 2011 - 08:37
I always assume that any content spinner relies on human editing. If your spinner really produced those sentences without human editing, then you have a great product. Fortunately, since so many have free trials, I’ve been able to try some out, always having to edit them myself. I tend to use them as much to untrack my thoughts as anything else.
April 20th, 2011 - 08:35
I’ve tried a few different content spinners, junked the ones that produced the worst results, kept the better ones, but ended up in the long term of actually doing the “spinning” myself by rewriting, rephrasing, deleting, enhancing, etc. It’s often the quickest way to get the quality results that satisfy me.
April 20th, 2011 - 08:23
Jonathan,
Thanks for clearing up this issue about using spun articles. I am a user of The Best Spinner. I spin articles and ensure the spun articles are of good grammar and spelling is correct.
April 20th, 2011 - 08:09
I listen, I watch and I scratch my head in wonder…
I have 5 young adult children who have discussions similar to this one either directly with me or amongst themselves about all things. Youngsters are wonderful to listen to going into what I call “genius mode.” They don’t have a clue about what they are talking about yet they have some set in stone opinions.
The question I always ask them when they are done with their rant is: How Did You Get That Thought?
I know the black hat world is roaring with laughter at this conversation and ones similar to it. I have an old spinner that spits out junk regardless of the quality going in. I can use this software…and still get ranked. I knock the dust off it once in a while to test theories like the conversation here.
Secret to life: Your brain is not your friend. It has nothing to do with google and the way some software processes data. Its the thing between our ears that that has the most trouble.
Its not what we know that gets us in trouble! Its what we know that ain’t so that gets us in real trouble. Google understands this secret… and loves to mess with the minds of the masses to engage conversations like this.
Its the white hat world that is concerned about this. The Blackhatters scoff at the idea, run tests and move on.
Now everyone all at once… lets take out our frustrations on the Black hat folks and hate them and blame them for this LOL, LOL,.. get control of your brain.
Keep laughing it makes everyday enjoyable
April 20th, 2011 - 08:04
Regardless of what is churned out on the page there is still the human element that “approves” the end result. So if you are spinning content and not proof reading for errors and clarity then you are a big stupid, even professional writers have their content proof read for errors.
April 20th, 2011 - 08:00
Well said, I think most haters just don’t want to do the work necessary to properly spin a good quality article, it’s much easier to say nasty things about you and your software.
April 20th, 2011 - 07:59
I totally agree… Every printed word is different and spinning articles is no different. Reading lots of books and articles I find that some are very alike when with same subject. Its just we put our personality into the piece. So there is no way that Google or any other search engine can tell it not to be…
April 20th, 2011 - 07:53
Everyone must realize that Google is as much a propaganda machine as it is a Search Provider. They fully understand the implications of everything they say and do. I am sure they have been measuring the response across the internet to this update. It is easy for them to simply say they have a capability and then everyone across the web instantly reacts. I let my websites and my ACTUAL Rankings do the talking for me and right now, with almost 140 auto blogs to my credit and with numerous number #1 rankings to my credit, I can tell you the Panda update is mainly hype. Yes, quite a few junk sites got slapped, but based on what I saw, they probably needed to be. If you build a value added site, regardless of how you created the content, your sites will succeed. Just like Jon said, the GoogleBot is just a computer. Not a magician.
Mike
April 20th, 2011 - 07:14
Yeah, google works with algorithms which continuously go on improving with time for searching quality and relevant content. That’s why it does not matter of fact to understand any language because google running on their own techniques.
April 20th, 2011 - 07:03
For those like me who speak another language much better than English, TheBestSpinner is a real help in learning the English language. It’s amazing how fast my vocabulary is improving every day with the use of the software. If we are not allowed to use software in our work than Google should be banned from customers of using software. Google should go manual:))
April 20th, 2011 - 06:44
Hi
I think most of this discussion misses out the most important factor, everybody is so busy worrying what Goggle may or may not be doing or be able to do that they forget the goal. Internet Marketers are or should be aiming to sell products or services to people. SEO is a means to an end not an end in itself.
If I visit a website or read an article looking for something and the page I land on has some useful information about what I am looking for written in an engaging way then I will probably read it and click on from it, if it is not relevant, badly written or simply not engaging then I bounce straight back out, if you are searching for something you also soon recognise the inumerable copied and spun articles, maybe Google can, maybe Google cannot, (actually probably cannot else they would not be there in the results) but your potential visitors can.
Spinning articles and content to say the same thing in different words may be unique content in Googles eyes, but your visitors are not so easily fooled, and writing it in certains ways and words will be engaging and in other ways will turn people off, that is why good copywriters charge big bucks.
Good engaging content written with SEO in mind but not as the sole target is king.
April 20th, 2011 - 06:48
Most people spin articles in an effort to get more backlinks indexed or to get their articles ranked for a variety of keywords, not to have multiple listings for the same keywords. So it accomplishes the goals you state while drawing as much traffic as possible.
April 20th, 2011 - 06:41
Jon as alway top marks for bringing some sanity to this paranoia filled discussion…
If I had a pound for every scare story that is going around about ‘big brother Google’ I would be able to give up Internet Marketing and retire to the Bahamas…
If you are doing something that is trying to get ‘under’ Google’s radar, then you will be weeded out and I for one am glad, there’s enough ‘crap’ out there as it is…
However if you are providing great content for people whether you have spun it to aid distribution or not then there is nothing wrong in that.
Sure if you use a spinner that writes rubbish, then once again you deserve to be penalized, but as I’m sure everybody here knows who uses your software “The Best Spinner”, spun content, as you proved above, is as good as manually rewriting an article.
So if people run scared of spinning, fine, do it the hard way… And while your at it, stop using a computer at all and get you quill pen out…
Rock on Jon…
Steve Nelson
April 20th, 2011 - 06:31
It is important to recognize hysteria for what it is and carry on. Hysteria, intentionally created panic, has been a tool of marketers who thrive on fear tactics and people who just like mayhem for the sake of mayhem for ages. I think we can all remember the adsense is dead and duplicate content hysteria of a few years ago, and there are still a few people milking the duplicate content myth for all its worth. We can defend ourselves against hysteria by applying common sense and staying informed in our field. For Internet marketers, that means having a basic and current understanding of search engines, content, how to use content, and how to properly use the tools at our disposal that help us do business. It is unfortunate that a relatively small but noisy group, such as the spinner haters, can spread so much upset. For our part, we need to remain calm, stay the course, and stick to what we know to be true.
April 20th, 2011 - 06:21
People really worship Google all mighty! lol What’s next? Human sacrifices?
April 20th, 2011 - 06:18
What people today said about spinning the articles related to SEO is going to banned by google are totally crapp!!!… actually no body know what are the google algorithm….. we one knew few of them.
April 20th, 2011 - 06:04
Whenever I see anything that says spinning will no longer work, I get worried. Thanks for the reassurance.
April 20th, 2011 - 05:22
Hi Jonathan,
Totally agree with you here – spinning gets a bad name because there are many people who use it who can’t spell or construct a sentence properly, or they use automatic spinning.
I’ve found nothing but benefits from using spinning, providing you use it to create content that is high quality and makes sense.
Cheers,
Suzanne
April 20th, 2011 - 05:21
You got me! Point well made.
April 20th, 2011 - 04:54
Hi Jon,
Worth pointing out. I used 2 of your tools for a tester site. (see the email address used) . I’m skeptical like many, and was being told your tools were the bees knees. So I used the Instant Article Wizard to pull the content, then used the TBS to spin it out. (couldn’t get the IAW to spin it the same).
The site sat #15 and got stuck.
Then the update hit and that pretty much bumped up that software generated website to #7 ever since.
Also done some articles and mass submitted when the update happened.
Guess which ones ranked.
The spun ones. Original got lost.
IM folks are always putting out scary stories. Hard to believe any of them.
So I don’t.
Test, test, test.
Sometimes it pays off.
All the best
Robert
April 20th, 2011 - 04:25
I use your article spinner all the time and I think often come up with a better article than the original? The only real problem seems to be to make the title interesting to Google and the searcher, without being to competitive.
April 20th, 2011 - 03:58
The sentences may be grammatically correct, but there’s a difference between ‘perfectness’ and ‘naturalness’. There’s something ‘odd’ about the three sentences… the construction is not natural.
Look at:
“made the decision”
“Without delay I chose”
“I determined to go on a hike”
If I can sense it, perhaps Google’s software can, too.
April 20th, 2011 - 03:55
Totally agree with you Jon. Using spinning the right way there is absolutly no way you can find out it was spun but if you put garbage in…it will surprisingly output garbage.
April 20th, 2011 - 03:30
Hi Jon,
I would just like to say that I bought my copy of the Best Spinner a few months ago, it was the best decision I ever made! Frankly, I am not using it to please Google, I am using it to create content that reads really well, is interesting and that I can feel proud of when I publish it – rather than just churning out hundreds of gobbledygook articles in the hope of getting links, publishers who receive my articles through UAW love my articles created with TBS – they provide real value for their readers.
I think this is the biggest change since the ‘Panda’ update, publishers want to put quality, unique information on their sites and if you want links for your own sites, you need to get your articles published – TBS is, in my opinion, the best way to ensure this. Inferior spinners that produce incomprehensible rubbish just won’t hack it anymore!
Of course, TBS is fantastic but it can’t work miracles, you need to write a good article in the first place and check through a few ‘new spins’ of your article when you have finished spinning it to make sure you have not made any mistakes with grammar or syntax – if you are prepared to spend those extra few minutes on each article TBS is amazing!
April 20th, 2011 - 03:28
Totally agree with Mike Keesling comments. It is the person behind the content as humans are the living soul of a display in intellect and ideology. Until the day C3PO (Star Wars) or I Robot hits the scene I don’t think there is anything to worry about.
The Best Spinner is an extension of my , your and every other users persona , a tool that provides synonyms, alternatives and suggestions of English vocabulary. How each of us which to make a paragraph, story or phrase live or exist is through human choice.
April 20th, 2011 - 03:28
Some suggest not to use spinning on a word basis, but instead nested spinning thinking this method will always pass through. Simple spinning takes me 1 hour to perform for each word with 3 synonyms but i wonder if i should change my method from simple spinning to advanced spinning which will take two times more time.
April 20th, 2011 - 03:27
I was not going to comment on this is public. There will be those who have doubts and those that disagree. That is fine. But here it is straight. The big update was not about a duplicate content change in the algorithm. It was clearly anything but. Have I got your attention? Here goes: 1. Google Lies (No big surprise or revelation.) 2. Google said that the first site to publish the content was the authority. 3. Google says they want unique content. So if your site posts unique quality content then you should be in great shape. Now lets take a look at the Ezine Article rules: 1. It must be unique (we have to publish it first) 2. It must be of good quality – According to the propaganda they would be the authority. However as we all know – Ezine Articles was the big loser. On the other hand – Amazon which has duplicate content everywhere was not touched.
This was a hit list. The fear mongers would like us to believe that Google has X-Ray vision and can read our minds. A good spinner article produces good content. A bad spinner article produces bad content. That simple. Garbage in Garbage out. If Google thinks it is garbage – then they will treat it as such. So far – Google has had to rely on other means like the footprints of spam sites and human review to spot it. – Wait, I need to put my foil hat back on so that Google cannot put messages into my brain.
April 20th, 2011 - 03:16
Agree it’s not spinners or spun content that causes a problem per se, it’s poor quality content, and that can occur whether you spin content or not – if you take the time to ensure any spintax only creates quality output each time it’s ‘spun’, it’s no different to manually rewriting the articles/content lots of times, only a whole lot more efficient.
If you use spintax however to create garbage output, then you can’t expect much by way of ‘results’.
April 20th, 2011 - 03:15
Well explained at last.
There is much hype and theories about this change and do be honest unless you are being totally daft the only ones who will be badly affected are the ones who just copy and paste their content from other sites.
As I enjoy writing my own articles I have nothing to worry about at all but it is interesting to know the facts.
Thanks
April 20th, 2011 - 03:14
Hi Jon!
Thanks for the great tools and for always taking time to cut through all the IM crap! Your communications are much appreciated.
Q: Can “The Best Spinner” control [vary] the number of paragraphs present on the original article that’s to be span? [is there are a code that we could place in the original article at different locations that would get us the spun articles of varying paragraph structure as well?]. “Using TBS” and loving it! Have some issues when used from within SEN software so I spin articles directly within “TBS” and then copy and paste in to SEN.
April 20th, 2011 - 02:54
Jon,
Everyone, seems to be missing the obvious!
Its the English language; that is spoken, used and written around the world!
With the millions of people that utilize it daily, it would be hard to not find any two
people using the same words, either spoken or written. With all that has been said
and written through out the years, in letters, books, journals, newspapers, maga-
zines and now online. How is anyone, let alone a software package, going to dictate
that a sentence, phrase or whatever, is just a copy or reworded version of someone
or something else!
Thanks, for letting me express!
April 20th, 2011 - 02:43
Hi Jon and @mike keesling, indeed!
I can confirm, a spun campaign I did with SEnuke X last week delivered incredible results already. As long as you spin everything correctly and drip it onto the web from various places and ips you are good. Nothing changed actually in my opinion, actually most rankings improved.
But who cares if the word is being spread it is not working anymore, come on people abandon spinning! Better for the guys that stick
What I did notice, if the source of an article is Reuters and an other news source publishes the same article ->without<- any editorial efforts, Google now does a better job showing the Reuters for the article first (do a "phrase" search on a long idententical sentence).
April 20th, 2011 - 02:40
Don’t worry so much Jon, we all know that people like to latch on to the negative aspect of anything and spread the bad news.
Added to that the fact that they want to cover up their own failings in not doing enough work and you know why.
April 20th, 2011 - 02:38
Thanks for the update, intersting information, regarding spinning articles..
Keep up your good work Jon…
Libertyed @)
April 20th, 2011 - 02:38
Don’t usually comment, but I totally agree with you. I am subscribed to many “Guru” lists and all are sending out ‘panic’ emails. Now the obvious reason for this is so that they can sell you more so called excellent services.
I also agree on the Google just being software aspect and so far Artificial Intelligence is no where near what it needs to be in order to understand a fraction of what we say, LOL. I am sure that one day AI will be predominant and robots will rule the world, yada yada, but that day is a very, very long way off.
Loving using TBS by the way, still finding all the brilliant little tricks it can do. Keep up the good work (and updates of course
April 20th, 2011 - 02:37
Spun data is only as good as the original data because garbage in equal’s garbage out.
I don’t know how Google’s algorithm works, but it’s easy to identify words, sentences, paragraphs and other blocks of text including the article body, header and footer. Each individual text component of an article can be broken down into binary and a value applied to each without understanding the meaning or quality of the article. It would be so easy to store those values in a database and compare those values for uniqueness without having to compare one article with another.
Assessing article quality is easy as any MS Word or White Smoke user knows. The technology has been around for years and simple for Google to apply.
April 20th, 2011 - 07:03
Sorry but I have to completely disagree. It’s easy to write articles that completely pass MS Words checks but make absolutely no sense. You probably feel it’s easy because it’s easy for you — using your human brain. But it’s vastly more difficult for a machine to judge quality. On top of that, we are not talking about spotting bad grammar here, but spun articles. A well spun article does not contain bad grammar.
April 20th, 2011 - 02:35
Jon
Whilst Thomas above has a point – because we have no way of knowing if Google have a ‘trigger’ for spun content, that is something we can do nothing about. Now while i think the best spinner is probably actually just that – the best- I would never use it as intended. I actually never ‘spin’ an article in the normal sense i actually write three or four different sentences for each sentence in spin format for my article before pasting it into the best spinner. I then am very selective about which synomyns i use in the nested spin format. I NEVER automatically let the software spin the article EVER! Why because its just too much work to go back after to read/reread and amend all that automation, I do let TBS offer the synomyns at which it is superb at.
I have been doing it this way for years and even today it has never had a negative effect on rankings – I’m an SEO (professional – not a made up freelance) so this has been thoroughly tested and pages that i have created on sites using this method invariably rank well in the search engines for the chosen phrase.
Just thought i’d share
Iain
April 20th, 2011 - 02:33
Lazy peeps give good spinner software a bad name. Spinning text in the way you suggest Jon, makes perfect sense and there is no way that Google will punish us for it.
Google punishes bad and low quality content, so we’re led to believe. But. as you say, Google is far from perfect at figuring out the rubbish from the interesting, but the PANDA update is a move in the right direction.
April 20th, 2011 - 02:20
Thanks Jon. I don’t use a spinner, but if it produces quality content, I can’t see the harm in using it. I think we should all waste less time worrying about what Google can and can’t do or will and won’t do – should give our productivity a substantial boost! Common sense plus quality content remains a winning combination
April 20th, 2011 - 02:15
Whether Google can or can’t detetct is not really the biggest flaw in the haters argument. Its the notion that you can get deindexed for doing it.
If G can do it then it’ll place very little or no value on your links created.
If it deindexed websites , there would be a rush of new companies called “Competition DeIndexers” whose job it would be to promote the hell out of its rivals with deliberately badly spun articles!
April 20th, 2011 - 02:13
The bottom line here is, if you create quality that people can read and enjoy – spun or not – then there is no worry. Create spammy spins that are unreadable and you risk wasting your minimal efforts.
April 20th, 2011 - 02:00
Ever since I discovered the wonders of “The Best Spinner”, I just can’t understand why any webmaster should do SEO without it or any other similar tool.
I must confess that I was terrified when just after the google panda update my best ranking and best money making site just dropped drastically from page 1 and of course earnings disappeared. I later found out that it was due not to spun articles but the fact that a number of directories to which I submitted a bunch of articles were discontinued.
So the drop was not caused by Panda or any other animal but my backlinks vanishing. Now the site is back because I continued to get more backlinks.
Yes I agree that google sometimes likes to play God and then send chills down the spine of webmasters who depend mostly on SEO.
Good English, quality content, good spinning and fairly good interaction with your visitors should not cause you concern google or no google.
April 20th, 2011 - 01:56
Thanks Jon, More rubbish by the ignorant few exposed! I am loving the spinner – I didn’t understand it’s power till I actually sat down and used it – far out piece of kit, many thanks for creating it. Now we can turn out multiple versions of our best content for everyone’s benefit.
April 20th, 2011 - 01:45
You can never compete this with an algorithm, there are too many variables. Google can classify documents how it wants, but it can’t tell what ‘was the first’ as the first doesn’t even exist, unless it is totally new such as a series of words which make no sense. The subject fat loss, has 1000′s of various articles all talking about fat loss, also only so many words are used in the English language on a daily basis, about 6000 on average in the New York Times for example.
April 20th, 2011 - 01:43
I agree, but let’s look at the human side of things. Fact if you are trying to sell something if you don’t set your hook in the first few words, even in the title or header, of your posting then you will sell nothing. People cruising around the net looking to buy skim read, so there is no point sticking in 1000+ words because they are not going to be read. If you cannot edit a 700 word spun article then you are seriously lazy (takes about 2 minutes) and you might as well not bother. Just fill your site with offers and open thousands of them. If you are writing an info article and you are putting yourself forward as an expert, then don’t insult your readers intelligence buy sticking in rubbish. Take a bit of time and it will pay dividends. Apart from anything else if you are doing SEO then you have got to put in your keywords, latents and backlinks anyway. Otherwise what is the point.
April 20th, 2011 - 01:36
Only God the almighty knows… ridiculous why anyone would have a notion, ignorant people trying to fool people, thanks!
April 20th, 2011 - 01:32
I always tell people that properly spun articles, ie: articles that you take the time and care to spin with correct grammar aren’t an issue.
Google Panda update or any other update isn’t going to make a fig of difference if you spin quality articles.
April 20th, 2011 - 01:30
I’m agree too, that is great technology for detecting grammar but google can knowing the same page. So the article in the spin will still make the unique article .
April 20th, 2011 - 01:26
Great information here Jon. I think it’s always down to testing. We can make assumptions but trough testing then we will find the answer. Glad I purchased your TBS.
April 20th, 2011 - 01:20
google can’t understand 1 simple truth – internet marketers CANNOT be removed from the game. Whatever updates they will spit out to kill affiliate or similar sites, it’s impossible.
April 20th, 2011 - 00:57
Hi Jonathan, I bought TBS several months ago – and its great. I notice that when people give articel spining a bad wrap, it is always because they read those really bad ones that are not edited at all, and yes they stand out a mile (to the human eye) as being spun because they read like garbage. However, I always edit and check through each of my spun articles before I post them anywhere, and no one would no they are spun articles. In fact, they read a lot better than the huge amount of cheap outsourced articles on the net that are written by people from non-native Englidh countries.
Spinning saves me a whole bunch of time, even with manually editing each one. Spinning is great if you spin smart…. and the Panda update hasn’t affected my online earning at all, which is great, because it is my job, I don’t do anything else!
April 20th, 2011 - 00:46
Jonathan, you are so right, again! People will try anything to trash a good piece of software because they were basically to stupid to use it properly. Then again there are so many people who will pounce on the slightest chance of contributing something negative, rather than being positive about something. That is why Confucius says “If you are afraid people may think you are a fool, open your mouth and remove all doubt”
April 20th, 2011 - 00:44
I again agree totally with you Jon. Last year I bought an auto blogging software that to be honest I have never used due to these rumours. With that kind of software I still wonder if it’s worth setting it up as I can’t be sure what kind of info it’s going to churn out so God knows why I purchased it in the first place.
Oh I know why now…..it was a push button system that was about to make me a million over night
April 20th, 2011 - 00:28
I have a theory. Google knows what each and every one of us is doing. They know that no matter what we call it — white hat, grey hat, black hat etc — they know what we’re doing.
Whether we leave an SEO optimisation footprint or we have a dreary site being back-linked, when in fact no-one in the world could possibly be interested, if we’re getting links by any other means than just sitting and waiting for them, Google knows what we’re doing.
But that’s OK. I really think Google LET’S US GET AWAY WITH IT as long as we play the game by their rules. As long as we’re reasonable in what we do, and as long as we obey the ONLY rule: Provide the searcher with great content.
Google will be fair as long as we’re fair dinkum. They make their money from only one thing — providing accurate search results with good content. If we help them do that, they’ll leave us alone.
Happy spinning folks . . . just make sure you take the time to do it well!
April 20th, 2011 - 00:28
Jon,
Your funny, you certainly know how to throw the cat amongst the birds – if not to watch them flutter their wings, to cherp like mad!!!
Anyhow, you are absolutely correct on all counts, but it sure is fun reading some of those comments where people say “you can get banned for using spun content” – because it’s true, and you can.
But, then if you decide to use the software {properly|with real english|in a manner where it would be undetected} – then it has more chances of winning the Euro Millions Lottery on a Friday night.
Those who start the tittle tattle are the ones who are green with envy because people can actually achieve better results in SERPs from the higher LSi value in spun content, than someones original version in EZA!
But here is a better tip – write blog posts like this guys, and you will rank anyway through the pure fact of community conversation, da daaaaa!!! lol
Happy Day’s – Keep on Spinning!!
Darren
April 20th, 2011 - 00:26
You’re right that if an article is high quality then there is unlikely to be a problem with Google.
However, Google is utilising human eyeballs as well as the algorithm changes to weed out bad content sites so any tell tale signs of article spinning/duplication are likely to be flagged.
Just ask anyone who has had fun with the adwords lot if that is possible!!
April 20th, 2011 - 00:18
Jon,
You’re the best. You just cut through all the crap. This whole time I felt this Panda thing is really silly. Nothing really has changed. Write good content and get links back to get from as many domains as possible.
I use the TBS to leverage content creation all the time (I own 4 licenses) , then syndicate this content across the web for as many links as possible. We even build links back to my links. Crazy, right!
It is what it is.
Google is just a bot, people give it too much credit. Updates like this just get to get IM’ers to sell more crap to scared people.
I work with 100′s of sites now and I haven’t seen any harm from using spun content to leverage time and speed up syndication for links. FYI, we don’t publish crap though, it ain’t the next Pulitzer Prize winner, but it’s readable.
April 20th, 2011 - 00:14
Jon,
I think the end result is that we all have to agree with you, yet disagree with you. I say this because making a statement that Google can or cannot read all articles and discriminate against some of them is not a provable item.
The truth is that Google may be able to discriminate against SOME spun content, where that content is low quality and has not been properly checked by the author, or is processed by someone whose first language is not English (or any language used for their website).
So, it may be better to state that Google will not kick out quality spun content, but may kick out poor quality spun content. I think there has to be a condition that the content produced by the spinner has to be quality, and the spinner has to be used sensibly and as a tool to attain an end goal.
Great to read through your thoughts on this issue.
April 20th, 2011 - 00:01
For what it is worth – i feel the internet is becoming a spam machine. Lots of rehashed “stuff”. If you want to write about somehting search the internet and re-write what you have read. I dont’ know how many have done this – I know I have – and most of the “Gurus” seem to recommend it. I hope that people who create original content (really original content) get acknowledged by Google.
Just my 2c worth.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:52
Jon, I am constantly amazed at how many poorly written, disconnected, grammatically incorrect and incoherent articles there are on the web. I find myself rereading a sentence 2 and 3 times to understand what the writer is trying to say. So if Google is supposed to be so great, how did these articles fall through the crack? It makes me wonder, you know? I use TBS and I publish an article every day and rarely have rejections. But I spend time (probably too much) proofing my articles to make sure they make sense and are easy to read.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:48
Jon, I agree. People are overcomplicating things instead of simply taking action. Can you imagine how much energy and creativity we would free up if we could trust our instinct instead of looking for outside verification if we are doing the “correct” thing or not.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:44
My two cents is simply this, do people really believe everything that is written about what Google can and cannot do? Google being able to pinpoint whether or not content is spun (professionally done of course) would be nothing short of a miracle. All hail the mighty Google! Man, when will all the dribble about Google end? I’ll answer that. NEVER!
Thanks and God bless.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:35
It’s easy to see how rumors could get started. Some people are more paranoid than others. Some see computers as all-powerful, all-knowing intelligent pseudo-beings, which they are certainly not.
But a logical analysis, using some understanding of the powers and limitations of computers and the nature of language debunks the rumors rather quickly. English, especially, is a language of many words and many ways of saying the same or similar things. If you had a stack of 100+ spun copies of a well-spun master you might be able to conclude that they were all spun from the same master. But you encounter one article on the Net? And are going to compare it with billions?
Naah. That wouldn’t work. The cost for the computer power required would be much more than it was worth to find out…!
One of my favorite bumper stickers reads, “Help! Help! The paranoids are after me!” We should lighten up…
April 19th, 2011 - 23:35
It is still impossible to make a computer think like a human perfectly. At least for today. In my own opinion except if search engines are able to understand the core meaning of sentences, sentence rewriting and even spinning is still ok as long as conducted in the right way.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:32
Thanks for that blog I get people telling me that spinning content is just wrong however I have found it to work great for me. Your product is a big help by the way.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:28
Great points. I cannot tell which sentence is the original cause they all make perfect sense to me. Way to reinforce the value of a good spinner:)
April 19th, 2011 - 23:27
I don’t, and have never used content spinners, but I’m not opposed to them as long as the sentences and overall content makes sense. A spinner is only as good as the person using it I guess, but you are right Jon, there is absolutely no way Google could tell the difference between 3 different articles that make perfect sense in English but basically say the same thing.
A good spinner would beat a non-English speaking article writer all day long I would imagine. But one is written by a human, and the other by a piece of software. I have read some terrible articles written by real people that don’t speak great English. Like everything, spinners are a tool, and a quick proof of their output by the original writer should be able to correct any flaw they would have. Google is smart, but not that smart.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:22
Jon, let me second that – rubbish.
Spun or not, relevant targeted and unique content will always be the way to build a solid online business. Fads & software come and go, but if you provide what your visitors are craving, you will win.
April 20th, 2011 - 06:59
There is no substitute for good, unique content, and to me it doesn’t matter how you come up with it – as long as it provides value to the end user.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:20
really agree.
Google Panda maybe can not speak in not english language:D
for example, my blog with very low quality never affected by panda. but until now the index and traffic still grow.
thanks for share
April 20th, 2011 - 01:47
precisely the point, nice one Hadie you rock.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:18
Is it possible to programatically possible to detect a spun article? I believe so.
I think G has the processing power, and the knowledge to compare two articles and determine if it has been spun.
How? It’s really simple… They wouldn’t look at an articles words, like your explaining, it would look at an article with all possible variations of words. Imagine G created a “spin ready” version of every article it looked at, with all possible combinations. Instead of comparing one article to others, it would compare any article against the “spin ready” version of itself, and others as well.
I’ve been programming for over a decade, I could probably create a small scale version of such an application in a couple hours. Jon I’m sure you would be able to create a working version of such an application, with your database.
Bottom line, is the technology possible? Absolutely.
Could G be using it? Yeah, it’s definitely possible.
Is there a way to beat such an application? Absolutely.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:28
As a programmer you must surely realize how many false positives that would generate! Google would be tagging all kinds of articles as “spun” versions that were uniquely written by different authors.
April 24th, 2011 - 21:01
Are you saying a sentence match? Yeah sure… But if it matches 50% or more of an article, that’s not gonna be a “false” positive.
You would have to look at matches, run through the data, and figure out what’s an acceptable match.
April 24th, 2011 - 23:15
That’s the thing, though — a well spun document would NEVER match 50% of an article. In fact, no single sentence of a well spun document would match any single sentence of any other document.
The only positives Google would find comparing sentences is completely duplicated content (such as syndicated articles). They would not find any spun documents that way.
In order to determine if two spun documents are the same, you would have to compare three or four word segments of the articles. For well spun documents that would result in VERY few matches, but likely it would find a few.
But THAT would result in a MASSIVE number of false positives, since those same three and four word segments would be repeated endlessly over the billions of pages Google has in its index.
April 20th, 2011 - 02:48
I tend to agree with Joe, with a different method: by patterns.
For instance:
I don’t, and have never used content spinners, but I’m not opposed to them as long as the sentences and overall content makes sense. A spinner is only as good as the person using it I guess, but you are right Jon, there is absolutely no way Google could tell the difference between 3 different articles that make perfect sense in English but basically say the same thing.
Let’s say I ‘spin’ a few synonyms so it would look like this:
I don’t, and have never used content spinners, but I’m not opposed to them as long as the sentences and overall content makes sense. A spinner is only as good as the person using it I guess, but you are right Jon, there is absolutely no way Google could tell the difference between 3 different articles that make perfect sense in English but basically say the same thing.
A good spinner would beat a non-English speaking article writer all day long I would imagine. But one is written by a human, and the other by a piece of software. I have read some terrible articles written by real people that don’t speak great English. Like everything, spinners are a tool, and a quick proof of their output by the original writer should be able to correct any flaw they would have. Google is smart, but not that smart
So, no matter the words used to replace those, you would still find the others in a pattern. Will changing the way paragraphs show up make a difference to throw off the pattern showing up? Will it then ‘flow’ naturally?
In your example of the 3 sentences, Jonathan, you took a single sentence with almost ALL the words changed. How many go to that extent? Can the Big G develop software to read patterns?
Why not?
April 20th, 2011 - 04:06
I believe you are right that Google primarily uses word groups or an index of each document to describe that document and may possibly compare those to the indexes of other documents.
I use sentence level spinning for this reason. To make it slightly harder for an algo to see the same group of words and the same count of sentences.
However, if Jon says that Google attempting to use this method would create loads of false positives, I tend believe him.
I also believe my own eyes.
And what I see from their propaganda compared to the rankings of actual sites, is that their claims do not match their real capabilities.
Did you hear about that large retail site – was it JC Penny? – that was ranking for some high traffic terms through thousands of whole-site footer links from tech forums? Unbelievable for an all-knowing engine to not miss that – no?
Did you see the Google Groups forum of legitimate business owners whose sites were affected by Panda? It was shocking to read. LOTs of geniune false positives. There were people there who had spent $40 per article and now had crappy sites ranked above them.
All I can say – programming an algo ain’t easy.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:06
There’s no way I’m able to create contents manually with 70 over minisites. Some of them lose their ranking with recent goggle updates, but some also rank even higher. I believe every words you said you Jon.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:59
Combine a non English speaking person with a spinner and you can end up with a {horrible|ghastly|uncomprehensible} mess! I read an article the other day which had me sctatching my head, it was talking about “colorful” energy. Then I realized they meant “green” energy. Gotta laugh!
April 20th, 2011 - 01:50
You don’t have to find a non English speaker to do that chum. Try some of the free sites floating around and see what beauts they come up with.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:58
We must also remember that not only is it difficult to make a computer think like a human, but that Google is processing one of the largest moving target of data in the world. I used to work for a company that always relied on a “map of the world”. Talk about a tough job and a moving target.
But I digress…
So not only must Google’s algorithm be discerning but it must be FAAAAST or it would never get done. Obviously even if it is POSSIBLE to do certain things Google has to make decisions as to if it SHOULD be done. Granted Google probably has a pretty big budget for computing power but still….
Rex
April 19th, 2011 - 22:58
It’s more important to realize that spun or hand written, if you are posting on ‘article directories’ you are now considered ‘content farming’ and google bans for that, and your SERPs go down the hill anyway. Better to find quality sites to actually write for, write actually good content, and let folks interact with your content based on what you’ve written and you are doing the work required to rank correctly. There’s no real other way around it for the long term. Otherwise your rankings are only temporary and will drop like flies.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:05
Interesting theory, but there have been a number of people commenting on this blog who do exactly what you describe and yet continue to get traffic flowing in from Google.
April 20th, 2011 - 00:34
If you are only working article directories, it would not appear very organic and I suspect the Google team has a factor that tracks the nature of the sites that refer to the target via links.
Better content will attract more consistent attention and love, which Google will see as well. I imagine that it is also a factor among many.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:55
‘Google Attempts to Play God’ in the lives of all of us who make our living on the internet.
The majority of us, who make a living on line, are always concerned that we may do something that will upset Google.
This Blog is a classic example, of what Google is and is not capable of.
As you know I am an online writer, just earning a living. And very often my clients will request X amount of content or articles, both in original and spun format… Usually they request that I write an original, and then send them 3 or 4 additional articles that were spun from the original.
I have owned ‘The Best Spinner’ since the beta, and could not do without it!! And the reason is simple… Unless I tell my client, they never know which article was the original…
Thank you Jon for clarifying this for all of us who earn our living on line… And thank you for all of your fantastic programs; you have saved me many hours and a lot of hard work.
HoneyJo
April 19th, 2011 - 22:53
Yes, I agree with you Jon. If a human can’t tell the difference between a spun article and an unspun one, then neither can Google. If you’re going to use article spinners, definitely proofread your articles to make-sure they make sense.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:50
I disagree, why did many article directories, and web 2.0 sites lose traffic and de-indexing of their content
because too much of it was the same, too many people were rewriting successful EZA articles
do you think Google wants 1000′s of similar articles basically saying the same thing and expressing the same idea, what about newspapers and magazines, how many articles are similar
if you basically have to rewrite every sentence 3 or 4 times before you actually spin it, might as well write unique articles which express unique ideas
create real value
fine, Google is a software program, but is spun content what they really want,
why did they buy applied semantics
April 19th, 2011 - 22:57
Those sites lost ranking, not because of the similar content, but largely because of their linking patterns and lack of internal links.
Read my blog post about this.
And if you’re rewriting sentences 3 and 4 times each, it gives you the ability to generate HUNDREDS of unique versions of your article — something that would take infinitely longer to do by hand.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:50
Great Post Jon!!!
Completely agree with Jon, my blog-pages are based on spinning content and I keep ranking up in Google without any problems.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:49
{Jonathan Leger debunks latest “spinners are evil” claims about recent changes to Google|Those who hate content spinners are wrong about Google’s latest changes says Jonathan Leger|Google cannot detect spun content says Jonathan Leger in his latest blog post}
April 19th, 2011 - 22:48
Jon, I agree with you to a certain degree, but I also think that Google’s algorithm can probably identify similar articles, up to a point.
That doesn’t mean it can identify an article as having been spun, but I think it’s likely that if there are two articles that have essentially the same sentence structure and overall layout, only worded differently, that could be identified.
As you say, if a human can’t recognize something, how can a computer? But I think if you put two or three versions of a spun article in front of a human, they could identify them as being effectively the same article, only with different wording.
Your example of three sentences is not easy to identify as being spun. But the longer the content gets, the easier it is to spot patterns and similarities, and start to identify it as rewrites of the same basic thing.
It will depend on the amount of work you put into spinning, however. If you do it well, it will be more difficult to spot.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:54
I agree that it would be possible for a human being to discern that kind of similarity if you’re talking about only spinning on the word level. But when doing sentence-level or, as many TBS users do, paragraph-level spinning, I’d argue that any algorithm attempting to identify the spun versions would make an enormous number of false positives, thus rendering the process useless.
After all, many articles share similar facts and words and statements. News items are a good example, but that’s not the only one. Any algorithm meant to identify and devalue spun content would also hit a large amount of unspun content.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:02
Another point I’d like to make about this: how, exactly, would a machine be able to discern that two sentences are the same? Any algorithm used to compare sentences would have to be able to actually understand the sentences. A human is capable of this, but a machine… not so much.
Copyscape uses four word “phrases” to determine uniqueness, and it often returns false positives. The reason is simple: words are often repeated in the same pattern by different authors in different articles. There’s only so many words in any language, so this is bound to happen on a regular basis.
Any algorithm that was capable of identifying two articles as being “the same” if the articles are reworded properly would have to actually be able to understand the underlying meaning and shades of meaning of words and phrases. And the technology for that is way, way off.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:14
I agree with you – if you put enough effort into spinning your articles, you can create spun versions that are very hard to identify as being similar to one another.
But I don’t think the “haters” as you put it in the original post are doing that anyway. I think a lot of people tend to think of spinning as replacing words and maybe sentences. They look at it from the lowest common denominator point of view, rather than putting time and effort into creating something of value.
If you spin your content well, I think you’re absolutely right that it’s not going to get you “banned” by Google. But doing it properly will usually take longer than writing a whole new article and too many people don’t want to put in that extra effort.
April 19th, 2011 - 23:17
It may take longer but you’ll be able to generate dozens or hundreds of unique articles from that one well spun document, and that will save you all kinds of time.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:46
With so many badly written paste-in PLR articles being used by autobloggers, it seems unlikely that Google would be able to target the spinners. Their apparent efforts to penalize spinners simply reminds us to make an effort to personally spin articles, and not rely on auto syntax functions, which I’ve always found to be a nonsense-generating nightmare.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:43
People always overthink everything Google does. Same applies in respect to PR. People think High PR = perfect rankings in the SERPs, when there are PR 1/2 sites outranking PR 5/6 easily.
The Panda update has cleared alot of crap from Google’s SE, but it’s nowhere near as bad as they’re making it out to be. I personally write everything on my websites by hand, so I don’t know firsthand what the update did, but I know people who have spun content and have suffered little to no loss, and the ones that did had to change from spun content to manually written.
Overall, people whine about anything that makes it harder to bank online. Even if it’s something good.
Regards,
~asch.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:38
I think it is very dangerous to assume Google has not figured out how to detect spun material. They can delegate a tremendous amount of resources to any project they choose. I feel it is ultimately the people who spew out poorly spun material that’ll pay the ultimate price. As always, spun material with lots of human intervention will probably always pass the Google radar.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:37
Lol i hate people that sees google updates like its the end of the world or something
April 19th, 2011 - 22:34
Google can pick up on bad grammer and puctuation. Sentance structure is something that has worried me particulary. I get around it by spinning the sentence first then spinning words. Most people just spin the article.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:32
Excellent article. As some people pointed out earlier, I think it is the poorly spun articles that will get a site in trouble. Also, the same articles, poorly spun multiple times and all added to the same site, may be penalized. That would be a risky policy for any website!
April 19th, 2011 - 22:32
Jonathan my only concern is if you are spinning article TITLES and the article BODIES. There are naturally less total number of words in a TITLE vs an article BODY. So when I spin a master article I notice that my Title is repeated more frequently with the exact words in the same order with of course a uniquely spun article body ( I target 90% + uniqueness in article body) In other words I have the same title for uniquely spun article bodies. So, I also understand that the Google Algorithm first targets the TITLE for uniqueness then onto that article body. So with that being said should I always make sure every article spun body has its’ completely unique article TITLE?
April 19th, 2011 - 22:41
I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Sounds like you’re doing things right already. Run a few queries through Google (especially long-tail queries) and see how similar most of the top ranking sites’ titles are. That should make you feel better.
April 20th, 2011 - 00:43
When I was first learning SEO, I would analyze the top 20 entries by titles and headers, etc. It was my experience that the difference in the scope of the words within the top ten results varied by less than half of the variation of the second page results.
The leaders were far more alike than the followers.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:31
Thank you Jon. Especially agree with you regarding Google News. Also, I think that more we try to figure Google out more we will be shifted in other direction than our true aim – just to write good stuff!
Alex
April 19th, 2011 - 22:30
Not sure if I agree Jon.
In your above example, you compared 1 sentence. When you spin an entire article on the synonym level and the sentence level, when you read 2 spun versions you will still be able to tell it’s spun. Some of the sentences will be mostly identical from article to article. If you compared 5 of these spun articles there will be some identical sentences in the same paragraph as the last.
So isn’t it possible for Google bot to simply crawl a page and if the page content is somewhat similar to other pages they’ve already indexed – they’d know it’s spun. And therefore not count the link? Seems like it would be really easy to program, doesn’t it.
Then again all the guru’s are saying if your backlink isn’t indexed in google it doesn’t count. Not sure if I agree with that, but let’s assume that’s true. If your content isn’t spun “enough”, it won’t be unique enough and therefore won’t get indexed.
Your comments?
April 19th, 2011 - 22:39
If Google ever started discounting texts based on the fact that they are similar in structure, than all syndicated content will tank.
When thinking about these kinds of issues, you have to consider what collateral damage would be done if Google ever decided to take certain factors into consideration.
Besides, in order to prevent the scenario you describe, just spin deeper — spin all of the sentences in the document in addition to just the words. Many TBS users go even further than that, spinning each full paragraph, then each sentence in the paragraph, then as many words within the sentences as they can while still keeping the quality high. Doing that gives you a document capable of generating hundreds of unique versions that would beat any filter such as the one you describe.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:29
I think one of the arguments against any spinner is that to get the 3 sentence versions you quoted in the post requires manual input – no spinner will give you those sentences, as written, straight off the bat.
Multiply that manual input by the number of sentences in your average article and it gets to the point that you may as well have rewritten the article from scratch yourself anyway.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:34
The creation of the spun document will take longer than a manual rewrite, sure, but if the spun document is capable of generating 25 unique articles but only takes 5 times as long to create as the rewrite, you just cut the amount of work involved down to 20%.
April 20th, 2011 - 00:21
We build spinned content websites on large scale. Try getting 1.5 million unique articles spinned
with minimum 800 – 1200 words per article 
EASY – and we rank about 60 – 80 times in the top hundred for the targeted keywords. If you copyscape these articles they all pass easily. The only downside is, that it takes about 2 weeks to write the article. If we had to pay someone to write it it would cost $10.00 x 1.5million = 15 000 000.00 and I wonder how long they would take to write it 
April 19th, 2011 - 22:28
Every time there is a panic about the latest change at google – my first thought now is not “OMG what a disaster” but “How can I USE this change to make my business better”
As a result, I’ve created new services for clients that didn’t exist – the mindset is goldmine.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:27
I can’t remember on what blog I read about this Panda thing for the first time a few days ago and I didn’t actually laughed but I did smirked. I am no expert and I have owned TBS for several months and all I can say is one of the best purchases I’ve ever made. Just learn how to use it properly and you shouldn’t have any problems. Don’t panic K!
Jon as usual, great post!!
April 19th, 2011 - 22:26
Hi Jon
I agree with you and as you said if you use the spinner with a poor text your spun will be poor too.
Thanks to let us know what can hurt the business
April 19th, 2011 - 22:24
Jon, I totally agree with you. A friend (yes a friend, not me thinking this!) was talking to me about this topic yesterday as I was spinning an article. He had his doubts about spinning and Google in the future:
If we spun 100 sentences, using logic and your software, would google not be able to ‘pick up’ that “sentence 2, article 1″ is similar to “sentence 2, article 2″ and similar to “sentence 2, article 45″ and that “sentence 99, article 1″ is similar to “sentence 99, article 2″ and so on….
While google may not read english, it may be taught to see parallels between articles based on sentence structure and positioning. Perhaps in time we need to spin sentences and paragraphs around?
Michael
April 19th, 2011 - 22:29
Take that argument to its logical conclusion. Two people may write two sentences on a similar topic that mean the same thing (though they are syntactically different). If Google started devaluing similar statements that are worded differently it would hit billions of unique pages written by different authors.
The day they choose to do that is the day Bing becomes the number one search engine in the world.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:36
You are not comparing apples with apples.
The first comment referred to comparing similar sentences in the same position in different articles.
Your reply refers to something completely different.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:44
And what’s to keep similar statements from appearing in approximately the same position in different articles by different authors? After all, with hundreds of billions of documents, that is going to happen quite a lot.
You have to consider the enormous number of false positives that would be generated by any filter such as the one described by the original commenter.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:24
If Google was able to discriminate against bad grammar and/or punctuation there would be a lot of content coming from developing nations and written by people for $1 to $2 per article that would be excluded – though I do think Google does have the ability to detect pages with absolutely horrible punctuation and grammar in much the same way that it can detect content that is keyword stuffed.
You build a great tool Jonathan, but when I reviewed it my conclusion was that even using the best synonyms a little manual editing of spun content was all that was needed to produce perfect spun content.
People who don’t go over their spun content and clean them up are just being lazy anyway.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:24
Jon, I totally agree with you. Want can make spinners annoying, is if they are used without human intervention. If you just blindly post the results of any spinner, you run a serious risk of publishing junk. That is what makes spinners unpopular. But if used as a helpful tool to speed up the process, they are awesome, as TBS has proven. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It is refreshing to read. Did you spin it…lol. I couldn’t tell.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:23
I have read a lot of the bad reports on spinning articles. And I think there is some truth to what they say. Here is the reason why. I have about 60 sites that a lot of articles are posted to and many are rejected because I can tell they are spun. And I think what happens is people will spin and article and submit it without proof reading it. There are more articles that are spun that are poor than than good.
Spinning is an art and does take a lot of extra effort to make a quality article to publish. But having a spun article done correctly is worth a lot because it can be posted many different places and no one not even google thinks it is a duplicate of another article.
People just need to take the extra time to do their spinning. It does not matter who’s tool you use it your are not taking the time to check all the possible spins you are making a mistake. Believe me the value of a high quality spin is indeed worth your time.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:23
Great post, I agree indeed. Even if they would integrate into their algorithm the very best spellchecker and grammar tool, still the program will not be able to differentiate a spun content or not.
Many are just too lazy to spin an article or content while maintaining its quality. Well, am still writing, re-writing, SPINNING, ranking and earning and that is all I have to say.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:22
This article was {very|very well|extremely|positively well} written. {Thanks|Thank you|Thank you very much} for taking {your time|the time} to fill us in.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:20
yes, I agree that well written articles can never be penalised, thumbs up Jon ^_^
April 19th, 2011 - 22:20
Yes, there are a lot of doom and gloomers that come out of the woodwork on just about every google update. It’s great to have a clear head present the facts every now and then as you have in this article Jonathan.
Your three spun sentences were a marvelous example of quality spinning that would fool most human readers, let alone an algorithm…but I wasn’t fooled. lol I guessed that none of the three were the original.
Excellent article!
I always look forward to your posts…and I love The Best Article spinner, it’s a fantastic tool to help marketers make money if they just do as you say…use their brains and edit out what doesn’t sound right.
Regards,
Art
April 19th, 2011 - 22:20
So true, Jonathan! People give Google waaaayyyyyyyy to much credit!
April 19th, 2011 - 22:19
Interesting take on a very controversial subject however, the fact remains clear that google is in the drivers seat, they set the pace, they make the money were just along for the ride, it would be stupid to think that we can stay ahead of the game just by having shear, brain power, I always liked the part of how can a man increase his height by thinking alone. It takes effort, it takes planning and it takes resources.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:19
Hi Jon,
Spun content gets a bad name because of lazy people just trying to generate filler content. As you say, quality content spun or not is still quality.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:18
Well said Jon. We’re probably some of the few out there that fall into your “middle” category of neither loving nor hating spinning – we just approach it pragmatically. When you do that you come to the conclusion that properly spun content gets you more links and allows you to spin anchor text for a much more natural looking variation of keywords with your links as well as your titles.
Honestly, if you could achieve all of that without spinning, we probably wouldn’t spin. But the fact remains that if you want the most bang for your content and linkbuilding buck, spinning (when done properly) is the way to go.
And, as you pointed out above, when performing sentence level manual spinning and then maybe supplementing it with non-aggressive nested synonym spinning, you can produce high quality content. Like everything, you can do it well, or make a mess of it…
Thanks again for TBS and your support and continual enhancement of it.
Troy
April 19th, 2011 - 22:18
built a site using spinner, main one to ezine for backlinks, and less than a week earning from adsense cause of the 1st page position
I recommended over 10 purchases for you because in IM, this is amust have tool!
April 19th, 2011 - 22:19
Thanks for your experience Charles. You’re not alone. Far from it, in fact.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:17
Thanks for clearing this up, Jonathan. I am sure Panda has impacted many who have never used Spinner and thought their articles were as original as could be. I appreciate your obvious concern to help us serve our readers with the best content we can write and to be fair to the advertisers who want us to provide them with legitimate potential customers.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:16
Solid point and unlike the haters, backed up with evidence. Yes, the people at Google are smart, probably smarter than most of us, but they aren’t infallible.
Look no further than the JC Penny and Overstock.com link buying “scandals” for evidence of that.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:16
The proof is always in the testing. I suspect Google leaks a lot of false information because it’s easier than tuning the search algorithms
If they were serious about reducing spam, they would just get rid of visible PageRank.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:16
Couldn’t agree more. Panda is not about individual pieces of content…it is about the overall quality and nature of content across large scale websites and therefore the propensity for those sites to rank for keywords.
In any case, the strategy for spinning content is not really about ranking it is more about getting the content indexed so that yo get credit for the backlinks.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:14
A great point Jonathan. This isn’t minority report quite yet. Cheers.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:13
Jonathan,
As always, the voice of common sense!
A spinner is just like any other tool – you can use it wisely and with skill, or you can use it foolishly and with ineptitude.
Doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about an article spinner or an electric drill – use the tool wrongly and you’ll not get the results you want.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:13
Great point, I agree with you, I think it is just a ploy to make people their next new beat google product. I really like the fact that you keep it real whether it ruffles feathers or not. Keep bringing the heat!
April 19th, 2011 - 22:12
I agree that Google cannot detect spun content yet. However, I think your example is not very typical. Usually, spinners create much more horrible and grammatically incorrect sentences. But until the day G-bot speaks English, spin away!
April 19th, 2011 - 22:14
That’s my point. If used properly Google will never be able to differentiate spun content from unspun content. Google may penalize content for bad grammar, but it doesn’t require a content spinner to create that.
April 20th, 2011 - 00:51
If I may, it would seem reasonable that Google would only penalize when the grammar is inconsistent with the level of the discussion.
When on the hottest hip-hop site, bad grammar might be totally phat dawg!
Consider that language is larger in scope than English and that it is particular to a population that uses it. So, if you are on an ESL (English as a Second Language) website, grammar would vary from a site about English Literature in the Renaissance.
This was confirmed by discussions that I had with a PhD candidate in Linquistics at MIT. (I think that he would be a quality resource.)
April 19th, 2011 - 22:11
Jonathan:
Thanks for putting this issue to rest. It gets so annoying getting emails from all these “gurus” that the sky is falling because of yet another Google algorithm change.
People have to realize there is a huge difference between high-quality spun articles and the old-school spinners where a piece of software just spits out garbage.
Travis
BestOnlineStorage.com
April 19th, 2011 - 22:13
Agreed.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:16
Not really sure, this is like a written in stone event, the fact remains that Google has more computers working on methods of making money from advertisers and clients than most Gurus have of putting an issue to rest, lets get real here.
The fact is simple, Google is a business that uses more computer power than many of the larger countries in the world today, it would be silly to assume that you could figure it all out, without the resources they have.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:17
It doesn’t matter how much computer power Google has. Its software is created by human beings. If a human can’t tell the difference between a spun article and an unspun one, neither can Google.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:27
Well, I think I have to disagree, but not because of the usual reasons, I see a lot of this yes man mentality, for example, what if someone at google setups a trigger that every time a robot finds a reference to spun content that a flag is generated along with an array that array is reported to a database, on a blade unit that processes all such requests. From there you can use an AI logic board to process these websites and decide if you want to take some action, like say sandbox that website, or push them down into the dirt as far as a search is concerned.
Now this can be done without one human hand behind the gun.
My point is this, automation is something that you cannot bypass, if you stumble up on a trip wire and blow your website up, its not fun, to be human is to make mistakes, to be a spun article means that you create patterns that machines can pick up on, even if you think that your spinning is the best spun article in the world, you leave behind a patter than can be matched given time.
Just wanted to offer a counter point to all the yes agree, agree, stuff.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:31
Again: you’re assuming from the start that Google can discern the spun content. In order to be able to discern that content is spun, the human who writes the algorithm to detect the content would have to be able to make the same discernment.
If a human can’t tell the difference, then the software written by the human can’t tell the difference either.
It doesn’t matter how much hardware you have or how many “triggers” you have in place.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:10
Makes sense to me John. At the end of the day, it all comes down to the due care and attention people pay to the articles they are creating. A well spun article can read just as well as any manually written article. The flaw is with humans who are often too lazy to do what it takes to make sure that spun article actually reads well. Anyone who is willing to put in a bit of sweat equity or outsource that work to a competent individual, will reap the rewards of their efforts. This comment was not spun
April 19th, 2011 - 22:10
Amen, Jon. LMAO. I swear, sometimes I think (in fact I know) that there is a “the sky is falling” crowd, who must spend more time worrying about the “almighty” Google’s do’s and dont’s, and likes and dislikes, it makes me wonder if they ever get anything productive done.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:11
It’s certainly clear that the people who make these claims are not testing their theories in actual practice. They don’t understand / use / like content spinners, and so they assume all kinds of ridiculous things about them.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:09
Absolutely! If you do it right, no one can tell the difference, least of all Google. Google has to shake things up now and then to make people think they have to do things their way, but the things that worked before still seem to be working.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:08
I totally agree. Spinning is just like getting together with your friends and play pictionary or games like that, every one is trying to say the same thing but each one is going to express it differently. It’s just a words game
April 19th, 2011 - 22:08
nicely put. i have numerous websites that use the original for content and spun versions (using your Best Spinner) for link building. Rankings went up across the board after Panda. As with any tool, it’s the person using it that makes the difference.
April 19th, 2011 - 22:07
I agree with you Jon.
Great sharing here Jon ..thanks