What's the point of an article spinner?

[satrap]

i need some help on the article spinning thing. while i find most of them useless, i see many people (which are mostly old timers and experienced ones which i look up to) talk about how good it is and how much time it saves. one of such spinner is the free jet spinner as well. so again i went to give it a try, because i thought maybe i didn't understand how it really works. i tried it again and red all the how-to's but same result. so here is my understanding of it and please help me and tell me if i am correct or i am missing the whole point.
article spinning is supposed to save you time by not having to write different version of an article over and over again. but when you use article spinner, lets say jet spinner, its not like you past an article and it automatically spins it to 50 different ones. you have to enter each and every word and phrase that you want to be different in between the... i guess its called the bracket or braclet..? ( sorry not a native speaker) and then it will spin the article. so if that's the correct way that an article spinner supposed to work, my question is what's the point? i mean if you are going to spend more time finding and entering different versions of a word or phrase, than having to actually copy and past the original one to notepad and just change the words and phrases you want to change, why use it then and in some cases pay for it as well? in my experience it takes a lot less time doing it manually and it gives a much much better result!
so, am i missing the whole point here and not knowing the correct way i am supposed to use an article spinner? please shed some light on this for me. i would really appreciated. and i am sure many other newbees like my self will find it useful. thank you so much in advance. regards,
satrap

[trippynet]

If you spin articles the correct way it can save a lot of time. By adding the alteratives for various words throughout the article (ie. instead of "I went to buy a truck" it would be something like "I {went to|am going to|will} {buy|purchase|aquire} a {truck|car|van}" then you can produce countless articles that wont be classed as duplicate.

Hope this makes sense, the best way to see the benefits is just by playing around with it yourself.

[McManigal]

Originally Posted by John Waits

Article spinners are crap. 95% of articles you spin will just come out as ill readable garbage.
No to mention, you'll completely waste your time. I would suggest to you to just rewrite them yourself or get someone else to rewrite them.

Auto spinners are bad, spinners that help you do it by hand are good.

[showbizvet]

For the most part, I don't like Article Spinners, however I found one the other day that rocks. It does the [heavy|difficult|time-consuming] part for you (meaning that part). It comes with a very good DB of synonyms, but you can add to it. Best I think is (with just a little practice) you can create tokens, then on the next articles, basically click go (that's probably not the [correct|proper] word for it, but basically it works. I am not the creator of the product and the link below is not an affiliate link, I just like it. At the very least, watch the video.

Article Submitter | Article Spinning | Article Submission Software | Article Submission Software | Article Spinning | Article Submitter

There are a bunch of Warrior testimonial on the page.

[satrap]

Originally Posted by trippynet

If you spin articles the correct way it can save a lot of time. By adding the alteratives for various words throughout the article (ie. instead of "I went to buy a truck" it would be something like "I {went to|am going to|will} {buy|purchase|aquire} a {truck|car|van}" then you can produce countless articles that wont be classed as duplicate.

Hope this makes sense, the best way to see the benefits is just by playing around with it yourself.

thank you all for the responses, but again i find them useless. i mean if you are having to write like this " {went to|am going to|will} {buy|purchase|aquire} a {truck|car|van}", well your spending the same amount of time if not more to do this than simply past an article in notpad or whatever and change the words you want. i mean if you want 50 diff articles, its not like entering 5 words going to do it, you have to come up with 50 diff words to enter not to mention the extra mile you have to go for entering all that symbols and stuff. so if it is really the way it works than i guess i have to agree with those who think its just a waste of time. plus i have seen some so called "rewriters or spinners that spin an article to a non sense garbage that its not readble. any how thanks for taking the time to help out everyone. if any one else has any other point that can effect this please dont hasitate to say so. thank you. regards,
satrap

[milan]

You're missing the point.
By using a spinner you save A LOT of time.
Are you aware that what you've written:
" {went to|am going to|will} {buy|purchase|aquire} a {truck|car|van}"
defines 27 unique ways to read that sentence? (3*3*3) yes, that little piece of text is 27 unique sentences. Now, if you do that for the whole article it's hundreds or thousands of unique ways to read it. A good spinner also allows you to target any uniqueness you want (50%? 60%? 70%?) by having a duplicate content checker.
The key is that article spinners produce a unique version of your article by taking a random variation. The keyword is random, there are no patterns that a machine or human can recognize.

Do All Article Spinners Produce Garbage?!

[FSchmieder]

I don't understand how people think being able to say the same thing in several different ways is crap.

First of all, a spinner is NOT hitting the spin button on something and getting a bunch of junk spat back at you. Spinning is changing an article by paragraph, sentence and word so you can get many, many different forms of the same article.

Second of all, how does "{went to|am going to|will} {buy|purchase|aquire} a {truck|car|van}" not make sense?

I went to buy a van. I will acquire a truck. I am going to acquire a car. I will purchase a car.

Makes perfect sense to me. By spinning an article, you allow more leverage to yourself so you don't have to write completely unique versions of the same article every time you want to submit them somewhere. Yes, spinning does take a very long time, however you literally will have hundreds of articles from one spin.

As long you do it correctly, you can and will have 1 spun article that will produce hundreds of articles that all make sense

[Colin Theriot]

The point of an article spinner is exactly as everyone stated above. It's to remix content, save time, etc.

The REAL issue is whether or not anyone ever needs to spin content at all. You should, but only if you realize this first:

You do NOT need a unique variation of the article for each site you post your content to.

Read that again.

Post THE EXACT SAME ARTICLE everywhere you can. THEN spin it if you feel like it and do the same thing again.

If you're using a spinner to defeat the mythically misunderstood "duplicate content penalty" you aren't actually saving yourself any time at all. There are lots of people making good money off this misconception. (The people selling spinners on that point may not even know they're wrong, actually.)

Syndicate every unique article in every place you can. You DO NOT NEED one unique article per submission, per site.

[lklein]

I don't like them either. The only one I seen that is any good is the one submitmyarticle.com uses.

You replace the headline and select paragrahs with your own words so that it makes sense.

So you are basically re-writing the article.

[milan]

Originally Posted by John Waits

Again, when you actually read the article, it will sound like some spun piece of crap. I can personally tell 95% of spun articles are exactly this.
NOTHING beats the human touch. Us as IM'rs have to stop looking for shortcuts of this nature all the time.

If thats the attitude you have, it will hurt you more than it will help you in the long run. (I did get mass article control btw, my rating? CRAP, and yes
I was all 'hyped' up on it before I got it) Again, WASTE OF MY TIME!

You're wrong that article spinners produce garbage, and you're wrong on the tools I use.

[M Thompson]

Lots of interesting points raised here.

If you get garbage spun articles then it's you to blame, Garbage in = garbage out

The reason behind spinning articles is that you can leverage your content, a well spun article can be used to submit unique articles to thousands of different locations.Not bad for 30 minutes work

Now while i agree with the poster who said that you can submit the same article, you need to look to the future, Goolge could decide to punish duplicate content at any time by devaluing the back links when (not if) that happens all your work will be in vain. By submitting unique well spun content no you are ensuring the long term benefits of the back links

[Colin Theriot]

Originally Posted by M Thompson

Now while i agree with the poster who said that you can submit the same article, you need to look to the future, Goolge could decide to punish duplicate content at any time by devaluing the back links when (not if) that happens all your work will be in vain. By submitting unique well spun content no you are ensuring the long term benefits of the back links

So what you're recommending is that to be "safe" I should base my entire business on what another business that I don't control may or may not do in the future? How is that "safe"? It's "safe" only in the same way that not starting a business at all is "safe". But really what are your risking? Google doesn't own the internet.

I just can't believe how deep the whole "duplicate content" myth DELUSION goes. It goes from "it exists" to "okay it doesn't exist but you should act just like it does just in case it does exist in the future."

I hope my saying that way helps expose it for how silly it really is? Can the people who think this way not follow an idea from beginning to end? No wonder so many people fail at IM! Just think it out. Consider the following:

If you think that putting multiple copies of the same article on different websites can DAMAGE you, then WHY would you EVER put them on article directories in the first place? You DO understand that the WHOLE POINT of article sites is so that people can take the article you put there AND PUT IT ON OTHER WEBSITES!

Therefore if you believe that the "duplicate content penalty" requires you to only place unique variant derivatives of your work on different websites, you MUST logically accept that the entire concept of what we call "article marketing" is untenable. You can't have it both ways. It's either one or the other.

Because how could you control this unique-ness factor when you effectively give permission to the entire internet to take that control from you by simply exercising the reprint rights granted by the article directory?

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!!!!!

...

Sorry, just. Wow. Seriously? There's a marketing lesson to be had here. One of those deep psychological mumbo-jumbo ones. Ready?

Once people have accepted and assimilated an idea into their own internal model of the universe, they will REJECT all evidence to the contrary, even going to great lengths to justify continued compliance when they realize they can no longer argue the evidence. The above is a perfect example.

People have both an intense desire to be right, and a literally painful aversion to being made wrong. How can you use this in marketing?

When you can effectively teach people your ideas and make them accept them as truth, you can then make them addicted to a perpetual stream of things that support that truth. It makes people feel good to be right. They will defend that territory of correctness with everything they can leverage. And guess what?

They will readily compensate and follow those that can help them remain "right".

Less on over. :P Carry on.

[M Thompson]

Originally Posted by Colin Theriot

So what you're recommending is that to be "safe" I should base my entire business on what another business that I don't control may or may not do in the future? How is that safe? It's safe in the same way that not starteing a business at all is "safe".

I just can't believe how deep the whole "duplicate content" myth DELUSION goes. It goes from "it exists" to "okay it doesn't exist but you should act just like it does just in case it does exist in the future."

If you think that putting multiple copies of the same article on different websites can DAMAGE you, then WHY would you EVER put them on article sites in the first place? You DO understand that the WHOLE POINT of article sites is so that people can take the article you put there AND PUT IT ON OTHER WEBSITES!

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!!!!!

...

Sorry, just. Wow. Seriously? There's a marketing lesson to be had here. One of those deep psychological mumbo-jumbo ones. Ready?

Once people have accepted and assimilated an idea into their own internal model of the universe, they will REJECT all evidence to the contray, even going to great lengths to justify continued compliance when they realize they can no longer argue the evidence. The above is a perfect example.

People have both an intense desire to be right, and a literally painful aversion to being made wrong. How can you use this in marketing?

When you can effectively teach people your ideas and make them accept them as truth, you can then make them addicted to a perpetual stream of things that support that truth. It makes people feel good to be right. They will defend that territory of correctness with everything they can leverage. And guess what?

They will readily compensate and follow those that can help them.

Less on over. :P Carry on.

Wow...good job i agreed with you ...hate to think what you would have said if i disagreed with you!!.

Currently google doesn't devalue backlinks based on duplicate content however...

Consider this.

Google will not rank the same article..so if you have the same article on hub pages, squidoo, and ezinearticles google will chose to rank one highly. the others will be ranked much lower

If on the other hand you place different articles on hubpags, squidoo and ezinearticles you might get all 3 ranked highly

recognise this message...

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 73 already displayed."

That is actually from the test I did by submitting a duplicate article with a unique phrase. So maybe you may think me delusional BUT at least i have spent time effort and money testing so i can arrive at my own conclusions and not just quote what i've read elsewhere.

Back to my original point it makes sense to plan for possible future changes, that's what professionals do. why risk your future profitability for the sake of a few minutes extra work.. think long term not short term.

[M Thompson]

You DO understand that the WHOLE POINT of article sites is so that people can take the article you put there AND PUT IT ON OTHER WEBSITES!

Actually I was going to let that comment go but as you came across as a pompous prick I decided to answer that.

I couldn't care less about people placing articles on their sites, I want traffic and backlinks from the directories/networks. I think you'll find that most full time article marketers think this way. I write for my benefit not for the benefit of others.

You probably don't realize that you can actually write your articles in different ways, if you want people to place them on their sites then you can write them so that they get picked up But if you want traffic then you write it another way.

A far better way to get backlinks from other sites is to inject your anchor text links into your rss feeds that way when the content on your blog (which you ensure is the type of content others will want on their sites) is scraped for autoblogs you get loads of backlinks.

Now go and chill out and avoid too much caffine!

[JohnMcCabe]

Originally Posted by FSchmieder

As long you do it correctly, you can and will have 1 spun article that will produce hundreds of articles that all make sense

That's the problem. From what I've seen submitted, not one in fifty "writers" knows how to do it correctly, and of those, very few take time to, or care enough to, do it correctly.

It's easy to take the simple data set offered as an example in this thread. Extend that to anything from a 250 words piece of fluff filler to a 750+ word article, and you often get awkward substitutions.

Couple that with the idea that most article spinners are promoted as an easy button short cut to riches, and you can understand why people who don't use or sell article spinners dislike them so much.

I'm seeing way to much of an attitude that says "who cares if the article is any good or if the information is wrong, as long as I get my link. Screw the site owner and the reader."

[Tom Turner]

Article Spinners Have their place.

I like to use them to create thoughts or ideas.

As for using them to create content. No Way!

Tom

[patJ]

There is an easy way to spin articles AND maintain readability no matter how many times you spin them. Simply rewrite the WHOLE sentence 5-7 times instead of using {word1|word2|word3}.

example:

{My name is John|I have a name and it's John|You can call me John}

Not the best example but you should get the point.

[Colin Theriot]

Originally Posted by M Thompson

Wow...good job i agreed with you ...hate to think what you would have said if i disagreed with you!!.

I know, right? I'm a bit of an alarmist. Sorry if that came off as overly harsh. It wasn't aimed at you directly, but rather at the persistence of a misconception. I'm passionate about the truth, I guess.

Originally Posted by M Thompson

Currently google doesn't devalue backlinks based on duplicate content however...

Consider this.

Google will not rank the same article..so if you have the same article on hub pages, squidoo, and ezinearticles google will chose to rank one highly. the others will be ranked much lower

This is correct. But it DOES count all the backlinks from all those copies of the article. Yahoo does too. Bing does too. All of those pages ARE in the index, even if they don't rank simultaneously for the phrase you actually targeted.

But consider that since you've put this material in a directory which has its own feed, own backlinks being built, and its own army of reprinters, that you have a very HIGH chance of all copies of those articles to develop a unique and complex page profile in any search index.

This means even though all the copies of the article may be "similar" when searched from one direction (i.e. one search term) and thus not all shown to the searcher, you forget the dramatic benefit of organically developing rankings for DIFFERENT terms in the same search engine and even in different search engines.

Originally Posted by M Thompson

If on the other hand you place different articles on hubpags, squidoo and ezinearticles you might get all 3 ranked highly

Right, and I'm not arguing against that. I'm not saying you only ever want to have one article. You want as many as possible. But what I'm saying is that you want to put every article you have on as many different sites as possible. The spinning is not needed. It's an extra layer of complexity that I think distracts marketers from what they should be doing. With the time spent "spinning" an article to make unique enough copies to get multiple copies ranked for the same term across different sites, they could have gotten 2 more wholly unique articles and had all 3 submitted to hundreds of sites.

Originally Posted by M Thompson

recognise this message...

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 73 already displayed."

I understand what you mean when you describe the scenario above, having multiple semantically identical articles to get page coverage. But there's a REASON Google doesn't like to show those similar results because as you yourself quoted, they aren't ALL relevant. The user only needs one. Synonyms and mixed up sentences aside, the material informative content is identical across well-spun articles.

The USER has an inferior experience when they have 10 results of the same article with only syntactic and synonymous differences.

If Google is going to combat something, what do you think they will attempt to punish?

1. An intact and popular piece of content that is republished and syndicated across the web, which they count all the backlinks for (and should, it's a clear indicator of authority and quality), but can rightfully and sensibly ignore when generating results for a specific search term...

or

2. Attempts at going around their relevance algorithm by making computer aided changes to articles, creating a less useful experience for end users...

Again, the position you're talking about is not a logical one, because you're saying you should spin to avoid Google's wrath, but the very reason you're spinning is so you can artificially manipulate their search results.

If there's any "safe" behavior with an eye towards what Google may or may not have to deal with in the future to continue improving search experience, it's NOT spinning, rather than spinning.

Originally Posted by M Thompson

That is actually from the test I did by submitting a duplicate article with a unique phrase. So maybe you may think me delusional BUT at least i have spent time effort and money testing so i can arrive at my own conclusions and not just quote what i've read elsewhere.

And that is an admirable quality, but your thinking is flawed all the way from the beginning because what you're really testing is if you're effectively "gaming" Google.

But then, at the same time, you're saying that the more natural and logical method of content spreading (unaltered copies) is what is going to be penalized. But this is exactly what a smart and value-building webmaster would do to poularize his content and site if Google didn't exist at all. It makes perfect and logical sense.

Instead of following that sensible and logical path, you recommend one that FOR THE SHORT TERM is giving favorable results.

Namely, you assume that posting of spun articles will continue to trick Google's relevance algorithm. So instead of being satisfied with the backlink and audience building benefits of straight content syndication, you want to selfishly dominate a particular SERP listing for a term for your own commercial benefit, without really providing any value to your potential prospect by doing so.

If I'm incorrect in describing the intent of your method, let me know.

But as far as I can tell, if you remove the "multiple listings for one serp" benefit, there is no longer any reason to spin, correct? It certainly adds no value for the human prospect.

What you describe is a method that exists SOLELY to create
an obvious and problematic manipulation of Google's very database.

Yet you claim this method of slight alteration of articles is deemed "safer"? Even though when you look at the motives behind what you're doing, the hypocrisy of the idea and the incongruity seems obvious.

Sounds delusional to me. But again, maybe I've just gone off the deep end.

Originally Posted by M Thompson

Back to my original point it makes sense to plan for possible future changes, that's what professionals do. why risk your future profitability for the sake of a few minutes extra work.. think long term not short term.

We value the exact same thing, but the difference is that my actions actually back up what I mean, while yours seemingly would have the EXACT OPPOSITE outcome of the values you're stating.

Professionals add value to the lives of their prospects in order to earn their loyal custom. At least, that's what I thought we did. Not play little math games with text to trick computers into barraging people with what is ostensibly the same thinly veiled advertisement over and over.

When I "plan for future changes" I do things like "pretend Google doesn't exist, and if it didn't, how then would I promote my content and websites". That's all they really want me to do anyway, and their system continuously TRIES to let the web be democratic in deciding if the content I have is good or not.

If they didn't exist, there would be no reason to spin, and so I behave that way. Because to do otherwise would be planning based on the assumption that Google will always be there, and that it will always behave the way you presume it will, namely that you can keep tricking it by spinning instead of just producing actual content.

But you know, like I said. You can't make someone want to be wrong. But hopefully for anyone that hasn't made up their mind yet, just think it through.

Also, realize that I'm not saying spinning to get this result isn't worth doing right now. But I'm saying that it's NOT a long term plan, and it's certainly no better than not spinning when you exclude the current short term benefit. And it IS short term, because people don't like when they get the same crap 10 times while doing research. It's not "safer" or "better" but it IS more work, for a result that I think you shouldn't really worry much about anyway.

The conceit is that by covering the whole page of results that you'll get more prospects. Do you really think that's how people search?

The "long term" plan is to do what creates value for your prospects and that will draw them to you. The internet is just a tool to do that, and so is Google. Manipulating Google's results isn't the goal of any of this.

[Colin Theriot]

Originally Posted by M Thompson

Actually I was going to let that comment go but as you came across as a pompous prick I decided to answer that.

Yeah that happens.

Originally Posted by M Thompson

I couldn't care less about people placing articles on their sites, I want traffic and backlinks from the directories/networks. I think you'll find that most full time article marketers think this way. I write for my benefit not for the benefit of others.

So you want traffic and backlinks, but you don't want people to republish your articles at all?

Originally Posted by M Thompson

You probably don't realize that you can actually write your articles in different ways, if you want people to place them on their sites then you can write them so that they get picked up But if you want traffic then you write it another way.

I'm aware that there are all kinds of writing. It's kind of my thing, actually.

Originally Posted by M Thompson

A far better way to get backlinks from other sites is to inject your anchor text links into your rss feeds that way when the content on your blog (which you ensure is the type of content others will want on their sites) is scraped for autoblogs you get loads of backlinks.

Yep, that's a good way to get backlinks too. But my point was never that what you were saying was wrong as far as process and the current result.

Blackhat techniques are fine and they have their place. But you framed what you described spinning was for as being the "safe" and "long term" plan, and that Google would somehow penalize people who are just operating according to what you would do if you were building your business to serve actual humans rather than manipulate machines.

Again, nothing wrong with manipulating machines for fun and profit. But you're totally misrepresenting the efficacy and ethics and long term possibilities of spinning based on the persistent misunderstanding of what Google refers to as "the duplicate content penalty".

The method you describe is NOT safe or even professional. It's sneaky and underhanded and is a way to artificially bolster results through little effort while providing no real value.

Let's just call it what it is.

Originally Posted by M Thompson

Now go and chill out and avoid too much caffine!

Actually all this typing is making me tired. I could use a coffee break.

[bizwebman]

Chill pills all round guys.

Wow I can see the garbage posting on this thread by many that do not understand what a tool is supposed to do and what it is used for..

For some people' information, not all spinners as you call them use {word|word|word} junk... Some are actually human controlled and you do not have to deal with all that junk pre-set database words stuff with curly braces and brackets.

Google will not rank the same article..so if you have the same article on hub pages, squidoo, and ezinearticles google will chose to rank one highly. the others will be ranked much lower

This statement is 100% incorrect and has been proven time and time again...

Bottom line if you use a junk tool and put junk in, then you get junk out.. Learn how to properly use tools for what they was meant to be used for and learn how to write proper articles..

To answer the OP... The point of an article spinner is to produce many different versions of an article for the purpose to post to many different article directories, create short reports, create ebooks, create blog post, create hubpages, and etc.. The list is unlimited. The uses of spun content can be used for anything at all...

James

[Craig McPherson]

Originally Posted by M Thompson

Google will not rank the same article..so if you have the same article on hub pages, squidoo, and ezinearticles google will chose to rank one highly. the others will be ranked much lower

For a search term I rank for I hold 6 of the top 10 places for that term.
The six placings are from 6 different websites that have published one of my articles. The exact same article. it was never spun etc.

In the search results Google is using the exact same peice of text from the article in
the description. Exactly, word for word.

Can't argue with facts. Bummer.

[milan]

Craig, since you want us to talk about facts:
I did a search and those 2 are nowhere to be found on the top 10 where I am.
Checked the first page you quote and the date there is September, 09.
What I'm trying to say is: you don't prove anything. Google's duplicate content filter kicks in after some time, you can have 100% duplicate content ranked on Google, but not for a long time. Yes, there are cases where you can rank almost duplicate content for longer time (song lyrics), but that's not for all cases and not in the sense you mention it.

Originally Posted by Craig McPherson

For a search term I rank for I hold 6 of the top 10 places for that term.
The six placings are from 6 different websites that have published one of my articles. The exact same article. it was never spun etc.

In the search results Google is using the exact same peice of text from the article in
the description. Exactly, word for word.

Can't argue with facts. Bummer.