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Article Bot - Theft or just great content generation?

Discussion in 'Products & Tools' started by Bazkaz, May 4, 2005.

  1. #1
    Hello All,
    (I did search on this and couldn't find it anywhere... so no neg rep for "not searching" this time please.)

    I got linked over to articlebot dot com today. After reading about it and checking out a number of reviews it seems like it could be a powerful tool used to help generate content for your sites, or it could be used as a bad tool for stealing content and re-writing sites...

    Good:
    It can acutually be used as a language manipulation tool in that it creates articles in any language and that it creates articles for your web page from zero.

    Not so good?
    It will also re-write articles. Adding new content to your site is very important from what I've seen, but it's also a time-consuming job. Often, when you find a good article, it's copy-protected. Yes, you can re-write it yourself so that it would look like you wrote it, but it's a time-consuming job. Article bot re-writes the article in many different ways for you to pick from. Often you can't tell or it is difficult to tell which article was written by a human and which one was done by article bot.

    So, if you found a good article and if it's copy-protected, you can ask article bot to re-write it and you pick the one you like. None of the re-written article looks like the original, so you don't have to worry about copyright issues.

    Granted just about everything is an amassing of information that other people thought of before us. There are truly very few unique ideas now a days. Writing from memory is most people's filtration of their own experiences and what they've read or learned from other people. When people take information and re-write it they add their own touches from their own experiences and what they know. This is generally accepted as ok, but when a computer program does it, does it make it wrong?

    Here are some features from the Article Bot site:
    Conclusion:
    So has anyone used this tool? The price runs $40-50/month... but with the feature list provided it could definitely be a useful tool. As far as SEO it does have some possibilities also... being able to generate multiple pages for a specific keyword, and even pages based off of other people. Ex: You want to make a site on blue widgets... Article bot can pull your competitions sites and re-write them for you. Granted you have to supply the HTML and desgin.... but then again that's usually the easy part.

    So what do you all think?
     
    Bazkaz, May 4, 2005 IP
  2. Smyrl

    Smyrl Tomato Republic Staff

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    #2
    Need you really ask about the ethics of this? I have seen a jibberish page with my name on it made in this way. It is maddeninig to have your name connected with such.

    Shannon
     
    Smyrl, May 4, 2005 IP
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  3. letsmakeamillion

    letsmakeamillion Well-Known Member

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    #3
    I dont understand how this cannot be counted as copyright infringement.

    Imagine you spend 5 year busting your ass creating a 1000 page high content website with articles.

    Then some person uses article bot on your site and essentially puts all of it in a blender and then uses all of your content on his/her site...

    Even if they only uses pieces and re arrange them, it sure does seem like stealing to me.

    I hope they shut article bot down for the sake of the internet and for the sake of google adsense long term survivability.
     
    letsmakeamillion, May 4, 2005 IP
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  4. tradefor

    tradefor Peon

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    #4
    I wonder how how sophisticated such a bot could possibly be in its re-write?

    The parallel I am thinking of is the "machine" translator -type bots for translating English to and from another language, which I use sometimes to get a wider distribution of my own content on foreign SEs. One has to simplify the original text to a very basic level before a machine-translator / bot can do an acceptable job translate-in, then translate-out without producing garbage; or something that would seem ridiculous, disconnected, or just plain wrong to a native speaker. I just basically translate a short simple paragraph explaining what the site is about, and then hope my viewers' second laguage is English.

    IMO, the mass plagiarism of a high-quality, authority-type website's content is not likely to be successful with a bot because too many nuances would be lost. Sort of like listening to a cover band's version as opposed to the original song - OK, but only if you've had a few beers and you know something is not quite "right" even then, so you accord it a low value.

    Of course, naunces are lost on robots, but a Search Engine frequently producing low quality search results will cease to be used if there alternatives producing higher quality outcomes.
     
    tradefor, May 4, 2005 IP
  5. rurbaniak

    rurbaniak Peon

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    #5
    Hmm.. Very interesting. I'll check it out.
     
    rurbaniak, May 5, 2005 IP
  6. nlgordaz

    nlgordaz Peon

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    #6
    Google, Yahoo, MSN, and all of the rest also use computer-generated content as the most important part of their business models. Not to mention some of the most popular and highest "quality" websites on the web. And they store illegal pornography on their servers and sever it up to children. Maybe you should direct your ethics questions to them. You call it "jibberish" I call it the future on content on the Internet. You certainly don't need to purchase a very expensive program like Articlebot to create a "jibberish", scraped content website. Anybody can do with just notpad. Articelbot simply allows you to automate the manipulation of your own content so you can have many different unique versions to give (for free mind you) to the search engines because that is what they directly ask for. The SE's then put this content on their own website (SERPS) and arbitrarily rank it for search inquiries. Then they stuff a bunch of advertisements around b/c that’s their only way of making money. Please explain to me what is wrong with copying Googles business model? Why can they do it and we can't?You can’t blame Articlebot users for all of the BS, scraped websites out there because you don’t even need Articlebot to do that. And if someone is using Articlebot to make these sites, they are stupid for a variety of reasons: first, they are wasting $200 per month for something that they could achieve for free. Also, those sites are easily filtered by the SE’s, and finally, Articelbot does so much more than scrape SERPS, I personally don’t even understand why anyone would use that feature. The bottom line is that you should get used to computer-generated content because you read it everyday on the Internet i.e. Yahoo Finance just to name one popular computer-generated site – a human didn’t write that.
     
    nlgordaz, Jul 13, 2005 IP
  7. kalius

    kalius Peon

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    #7
    Actially its mainly used to manipulate others people content to create "black hat" sites with content scrapped from other sites. Nobody with any decent site will probabliy use this tool.
     
    kalius, Jul 13, 2005 IP
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  8. nlgordaz

    nlgordaz Peon

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    #8
    Shut it down??? Jump on the band-wagon cause its the future. And by the way, regulating the Internet for plagiarism by definition would be impossible. If your talking about plagiarism as defined by a University, nearly every popular website does that – Nytimes.com, Amazon.com, Yahoo.com, WashingtonPost.com, DrudgeReport.com you name it. Plagiarism, as defined by my school, (University of Arizona) can be simply taking someone else’s idea and completely re-writing using different words, but still getting the same message across. I would challenge you to name me a very popular information-based website that doesn’t do at least that. Most of the just straight-up take the content without rewriting it.
     
    nlgordaz, Jul 13, 2005 IP
  9. nlgordaz

    nlgordaz Peon

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    #9
    I know tons of people with "quality" PR 7's and higher that use Articlebot. And you don't have to manipulte other peoples content, I wouldn't. But if I did, I would be doing the exact same thing as Google, except I wouldn't be severing up porn to children. Articlebot is a tool, and like any tool, such as a gun for example, someone can use it in both negative and positive ways. For Articlebot specifically, your a fool if you use it in the negative ways because the positive ways produce much better websites. Maybe you should check it out, before you pass Judgment. Would any decent website use RSS? You seem to promote it. How is that not plagiarism, becasue you link back to the original site. Scraped result do that also, but that's black Hat? This is insane.
     
    nlgordaz, Jul 13, 2005 IP
  10. mopacfan

    mopacfan Peon

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    #10
    I actually tried it out for one month just because I was curious. I did not do any content scraping because that's just crap that clutters the SE's. What I did was take a public domain article and spent several hours setting up the word transformations in AB. It's not very simple and it's not very quick if you want to do it well so the spun articles are readable and not just a bunch of jibberish. You can choose words or entire senteneces and set up random or semi-random replacements so one article can be spun into hundreds if you really want to put the work into it. I took the one article, spent seven hours or more learning the program and setting up the article to spin. I ended up with about eleven seperate versions that were very readable, unique and useable. I can see how the B/H crowd would use this to scrape content and put up crap sites on expendable domains for getting traffic to affiliate pages or serving up adsense. For what I wanted, to create well written, readable articles that were all unique enough to be indexed by G, it was just not worth the effort. The only way to find out was to try it out. I think it was worth the try just to know how it works. But I don't recommend it unless you just want to spew out crap pages.
     
    mopacfan, Jul 13, 2005 IP
  11. nlgordaz

    nlgordaz Peon

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    #11
    It does take time and there is a learning curve. But that’s what separates it from Traffic Equalizer and all the rest. Anything that is going to produce quality results, will take time. But the great thing about AB is that once you've put in that time on one article, you having literally 100,000's if not millions of quality, unique results, so the time is well worth it. If you only spun out 11, than you did something wrong, unless you only wanted that amount. Good post though, well thought out, and I'm glad you didn't make the hypocritical mistake of bringing ethics into it. That’s the BS that just drives me crazy. Do people actually think G cares about ethics? This amazes me! G cares about their stock price, and thus how many little ads they can stuff in their SERPS and all over everybodys website. Is it ethical to penetrate and hack people’s computers for personal information? Or to store the most obscene and illegal porn imaginable on your server and make it easily accessible to children? Not by my ethics.
     
    nlgordaz, Jul 13, 2005 IP
  12. mopacfan

    mopacfan Peon

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    #12
    Well, I started with spinning about 80 articles, but they did not look unique enough. Even after editing every word and every sentence I could and still have it be about the original subject. Maybe I could have done more, but I felt I could achieve the same results just writing the articles myself.
     
    mopacfan, Jul 13, 2005 IP
  13. nlgordaz

    nlgordaz Peon

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    #13
    I mean seriously, what is G's business model: create a website with vast search capabilities. Secretly scrape other websites to fill up or stock their pages. Manipulate and change the scraped websites descriptions. Arbitrarily rank these websites and make it seem like you have a system with their PR and links and sandbox and all of the other BS they talk about to fool the public into jumping through their hoops. Then load their SERPS up with as many advertisements as possible. And thats it. What else do they do?
     
    nlgordaz, Jul 13, 2005 IP
  14. nlgordaz

    nlgordaz Peon

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    #14
     
    nlgordaz, Jul 19, 2005 IP
  15. yo-yo

    yo-yo Well-Known Member

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    #15
    nlgordaz are you affiliated with articlebot?
     
    yo-yo, Jul 19, 2005 IP
  16. ferret77

    ferret77 Heretic

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    #16
    aticlebot is buggy as hell

    my girlfriend has been using it to create more pages for some of our affilate sites, seems to work ok, but it is sort of time consuming.

    For $50 a month I think it shouldn't be so buggy , like it ocassionally throws un handled exceptions etc, not just , you did it wrong here is an alert type errors

    If you take enough time you can create readable content, it does have scraping stuff in it, but I don't need it because I can scrape pages if I want with one of apis or the snoopy class.

    It has some funny stuff you can do to the scraped stuff like randomize it something.

    muhahahahaha
     
    ferret77, Jul 19, 2005 IP
  17. nlgordaz

    nlgordaz Peon

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    #17
    no, I don't even own it, but I've used it. Its pretty expensive and I don't have time to make websites.
     
    nlgordaz, Jul 21, 2005 IP
  18. RickHendershot

    RickHendershot Peon

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    #18
    Great discussion, and great information. Thanks to those of you who have tried AB for the detailed descriptions of its pros and cons.
     
    RickHendershot, Sep 6, 2005 IP
  19. abuser29

    abuser29 Guest

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    #19

    I actually tried it out for about a week only because I wanted to find out for myself.
    I was recommended to check this out, for just a little short of a month I perserved. Why did I? Simply because it was recommended.
    Curiousity forced me to try this for the best few hours I ever invested simply because I had to try it out.
    Actually I have tried this for a calender mth merely because curiousity got the better of me.

    Took less than 5mins But I could have given you 256 examples of that one sentence. Just to give you a point of reference I did not change the words "for" & "because".

    Okay in this case I ripped off your sentence - but I had no need to do, you simply provided 'inspiration'. Of course this tool can be used for B/H purposes but then so can most tools including DP adnetwork.

    I recognise "nlgordaz" - merely from his style ( and often disagree with him) - but if you stop to think for a few moments there is a lot of sense in what he says.

    AB is merely a tool as is an Axe! The decision to use it or not, & for what purpose is obviously yours. Either way I sincerely wish you fair return for your efforts.
     
    abuser29, Sep 20, 2005 IP
  20. vlasta

    vlasta Peon

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    #20
    I do not see any real benefit in tools like this.

    Sure, you can TRY to use it to workaround copyrights or fool search engine into thinking the content is unique...

    ...but there is no value for internet users. So what's the point? Making money from adsense while misusing others' content. Not good at all.

    I believe google will ban sites using content "stolen" in this way. And I would be happy if they do it.

    About the ethics: Google uses others' content, but they also add their own value (SERPs) and they do not pretend the content is theirs.

    V.
     
    vlasta, Sep 21, 2005 IP