Copyscape - What percentage uniqueness

[joecool1972]

Hi all,

I was just doing an interesting test. I am trying out contentboss and I got it to wrangle an article I just pulled off the net and then I made a few minor changes and it was about 32% unique.

I then ran it through copyscape who cleared it fine.

I always thought that copscape had stricter guidelines. I know everyone says as long as it is 30% unique you should be fine, but I always took that with a pince of salt.

I am now thinking that all the article writers I pay each month are probably just getting articles off the net, putting them through something like contentboss and making a few minor changes and when I check it with copyscape it is fine.

Is this how this game works?

Is copyscape what ezinearticles use to check articles?

This is like an eye opener for me. For some reason I was under the impression that to pass copyscape articles had to be virtually 100% unique - what a fool I know. This doesn't appear to be the case at all.

Am I living in the dark ages and most people are just pulling info off the net running it through comething like contentboss and making a few changes that take about 5 minutes and then submitting them to ezine articles or putting them on their site.

While I am slaving away doing research and checking and double checking everything.

What's the deal here?

[roukarous]

Am eager to find out about that too...

[Jon Alexander]

the various sites use different ways to determine 'uniqueness'. Copyscape, as I understand it, uses a 3 word (or longer) shingle algo (and the google API). Dupecop uses something that seems more akin to a levenstein/sim text system. If all you want to do is 'pass copyscare', you can do it for free by screwing up every third word. There's even a free tool to do this (but it REALLY isn't recommended, it's just to show how easy it is to 'pass copyscape'). It's here - Pass Copyscape

detecting uniqueness isn't as easy as it seems. For example, you can 'mash up' stuff from multiple sources. Some systems will then say it's unique, some won't. IMHO, it's best to try and use the same kind of detection criteria the search engines use.

for example, the php similar text function thinks this:-

IMHO, it's best to try and use the same kind of detection criteria the search engines use. detecting uniqueness isn't as easy as it seems. Some systems will then say it's unique, some won't. For example, you can 'mash up' stuff from multiple sources.

is only about 34% the same as the paragraph it is based on. If reordering a few sentences that way can fool the standard algos, what do you think the se's use? That's right. Something else.

Anyway, I digress, yes, there are people who use tools and software to increase their productivity while writing. And there are those who claim not to (which begs the question of how they manage to upload their 'hand-written' epic onto the net, and how they spellcheck it, etc - last time I looked, 'notepad' was a software tool that helps you write).

[Steven Wagenheim]

I have had people come down hard on me for this before but I honestly
don't care anymore.

Copyscape is a piece of crap and totally worthless.

Take an article on acne and an article on home business tips and run
them through to compare uniqueness and you'll come up with something
like 70% unique.

How the hell can 2 articles that have absolutely nothing to do with each
other be only 70% unique?

I don't use these tools and I would never depend on them.

Of course this is just my opinion.

[hire_us]

I think this is the correct thread to ask my doubt...and of course my post in this forum..
when i go for using CopyScape...there is a limit of words...2000 words...

so should I test against a 500 word article to get more accurate result..?? or it is fine to combine 4 articles and test them in a single run...??

I know the thread started is quite against CS itself...but for me as a writer..it's still necessary...

[joecool1972]

Originally Posted by hire_us

I think this is the correct thread to ask my doubt...and of course my post in this forum..
when i go for using CopyScape...there is a limit of words...2000 words...

so should I test against a 500 word article to get more accurate result..?? or it is fine to combine 4 articles and test them in a single run...??

I know the thread started is quite against CS itself...but for me as a writer..it's still necessary...

Hi Hire_us

I didn't acutally start the thread to have a go at copyscape. I still use it extensively myself because it is the only way I know of that I can at least check to some degree the uniqueness of the articles from my article writers. It's better than nothing.

Personally I just plug in 4 articles to check uniqueness it is the cheaper option. The 2000 words is just a recommendation by copyscape - I think.


For the articles I am talking about all I am interested in is my articles passing whatever creteria Ezine articles use, which I thought was copyscape. I had know idea that it was so easy to beat copyscape.

Jon, is contentboss your baby? Are you the owner? or an affiliate? I could find the name of anyone on the sales page or anywhere else.

Anyway thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread so far.

[tranquility]

What about ArticleChecker? Does anyone use that? As an aspiring ghostwriter, I always run my own stuff through there and it always comes back very clean. It's a case of "I know I'm not plagiarizing and this article is unique, but I want my clients to know it too."

When I write an article, I do my research but I NEVER just take something else off the net and change a few words here and there. I don't think I could live with myself if I tried to pass someone else's work off as my own. Just don't have it in me.

So the only way I know how to prove it is by using these copyscape-type sites. I wish there was a better way.

Have a great day, all.
Debbie

[costi]

I would like to ask you how much percentage of uniqueness do you consider ok to pass the copyscape?

[warriorkay]

Copyscape is truly not as good as most of us think.
I have had ghostwritten articles rejected by EZA for
duplicate content but they went through Copyscape
premium fine. But that was in the past. Right now
I use a better system than Copyscape and for $0

I will work on writing a very comprehensive thread
about how anyone can also use this $0 combination
of services to get better results than using Copyscape.

Kingsley

[meevamarie]

well - not quite, but almost. No-one comes up with something new by reaching into a cloud. So yes - some people cut and paste from all kinds of different directions. Ezine articles says it uses humans to check, but they also use software. I have The Best Spinner - the most powerful article spinner software., a content spinner and I want more than 80% originality, or I'm not happy. Do your writers snag article pieces dfrom here and there? probably. They get paid 3 bucks for 500 words? You expect originality..? If Copyscape accepts 30% then copyscape is not as good as I thought.

[jonathanleger]

Copyscape tags articles as duplicates only if they have sequences of four or more words that match. That is, Copyscape would see the following two sentences as duplicates:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

The quick brown fox leaped over the lazy dog.

Notice that "The quick brown fox" and "over the lazy dog" are each four word long segments, and are unchanged. Copyscape sees that as a duplicate. However, Copyscape will not see these two sentences as duplicates:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.

The quick brown creature jumped over the languid dog.

Notice that the segments which remain the same in these two sentences ("The quick brown" and "jumped over the" and "dog") are all less than four words long. Copyscape is unable to spot duplicates of less than four words, therefore these two sentences would pass as unique.

Copyscape uses the four word sequence as a measure of duplication because a three or two word sequence is far too likely to appear in articles which are not duplicates. However, a four word sequence is much less statistically likely to occur in two unrelated articles.

What this means it that you need to modify every fourth word in your article in order to pass Copyscape. Technically that's 25% unique, but it's not so much a matter of the percentage as it is the sequence of words.

[BradCarroll]

Any time I hire someone to write content, I expect it to show up as 100% unique in Copyscape. I know that may sound strict to some--but that's always white I shoot for when I rewrite PLR, so I definitely expect it when I hire out for original content.

[IBRevolution]

Indeed when going for 100% uniqueness in Copyscape you will probably stay on the save side. Once you have found an article writer who writes 100% unique according to copyscape you can assume that if after two or three articles the article is 95% unique that the writer still wrote the article him or herselfs.

[Ken_Caudill]

You can't be a little bit unique any more than you can be a little bit pregnant.

You is or you ain't.

[Tashi Mortier]

I just use Copyscape because most customers want me to. Honestly, I don't think to much of it either, because all I got yet were two false positives.

I mean if I write an article about credit cards, the following matches are only natural, aren't they?

[developyourlife]

Personally I write and do my own research all by myself, but I do know some people that change a few phrases around and post it.

[rangevolk]

I do not know much about copyscape.However,i think most writers use article encoder in making the article to be unique.
WarriorKay could you explain further on how one can create unique content with $0.Could love to know more about it.