Hi Aaron,

Thanks for the blog entry on the tool.

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Two things that would really improve this tool would be to let people change conceptual word groups and to allow people to move the location of a word or wordset within a sentence
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That's a damn fine idea and I'll see what can be done about that. Thanks for the suggestion :)

I agree that the auto generation of content is not something that you would want to use on a long standing, high ranking quality web site. But the Evolve function may be something to think about in trying to de duplicate content that you use elsewhere. You don't want to be hit for duplicate content when it's yours to start with although you don't want to lose the meaning of that text either.

Using the Evolve functionality you have the ability to make a choice as a person.

If (and it is an if) you wanted to create lots of lower quality content then the 2 options available give that too.

Mr. Andrei Markov was a very very clever man indeed and defined an algorithm based on [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain]chainsets[/url]

The principle behind these it to look for normality in anything, define a ruleset (chainset) and use those rules to produce normality. We use it on bits of text, but it can (and I believe is) used on link patterns etc.

The quality will go down as we, as humans, are cleverer than computers and can pick up subtle nuances but the output can be pretty good.

Check out [url=http://www.strangelogic.co.uk/romeo.out]this text[/url] based on the Romeo and Juliet play. It definately has the feel of William Shakespeare to it but doesn't "quite" make sense.

The alternative is an automated version of the Evolve function. Instead of you, a person, making the choices of what words to change the computer does. Lower quality sure, higher quantity definately!

When all is said and done this is a tool, no more and no less. How you use it and for what intent you use it for is your decision.

Aaron is right though. It does seem to work well with some adverts on it and the spiders seem to like this kind of bait!

Aaron -

Saying that the only reason blog spamming is "unethical" is that Google says so, is a total cop out, imho.

You know, kidnapping babies and holding them hostage for ransom is only unethical because the US and local government says so, right? Why not get into that racket too.

(Just kidding about the above, but hopefully the point will not be lost on some.)

I should note... if you think blog comment spamming is "victimless" - go read all the threads about webhosts shutting down blogs because they are being overwhelmed by comment spam.

I think you're right to point out long-term vs. short-term goals. If you have only short-term goals, and you don't care about the karma of your actions, sure, spam the heck out of whoever.

You know what the real test should be:
Ask yourself - how will this effect my cosmic karma?

If the answer to using any potential SEO technique is "this will lower my cosmic karma in the universal sense of the word," and you care about your long-term success, then don't do it.

Kinda obvious, but maybe someone had to say it.

Shanti -

It's lost on me. Spamming really is "unethical" only because Google says so. Ethics is a code of conduct that differentiates positive behavior from negative behavior based on how it will impact your fellow humans, environment, etc.

Spamming doesn't impact anyone negatively (neccessarily). Like all tactics involving marketing, it simply serves to push a product in front of more eyeballs. Ethics would only come into play when discussing the reasonings for the push, the scruples of the product, manufacturer, distributor, etc.

Spamming, in and of itself, is the same as website construction, or TV ad buying or a sign for a garage sale. It's a marketing tactic. The "ethics" are simply based on the medium's (in this case the search engines') designs - artificial medium created by artificial machines = artificial ethics.

>> Spamming really is "unethical" only because Google says so. Ethics is a code of conduct that differentiates positive behavior from negative behavior based on how it will impact your fellow humans, environment, etc.

I agree totally, like with the blog spam tool, just 'cause you're link dropping it doesn't mean you're spamming, if the link is on topic it can benefit the readers of the blog and heighten communities. Also, if a link is on topic, it highlights Googles core objection - to index the web.

Neilson

Yeah - just because you take a site offline because you're spamming it so hard, doesn't make it unethical. If you aren't aware of this phenomenon, do a few rudimentary Google searches.

It's obvious this blog is read by tons of black-hat SEO experts. Makes me feel kinda icky.

I agree that a tool is a tool no matter how one puts it. It is the person using the tool who gets to decide wether the tool would be for good or for bad.

I have worked with a friend once to write a good article. We did some research and was able to get the thing done after a while. When she posted the article on her blog and did some submissions to popular bookmarking sites, they took her article because it had such good content.

At first, she was able to get a lot of links for her site. After a while though, (when her site gets past the hundreds mark for that article), google started on their dup content filter.

The result was that she did not even rank first for the keywords on her article even if she was the one who wrote it.

Was it any of the blogger's fault? I don't think so.

Ethics on the web is just getting a little to intangible. The line between what passes as acceptable and not thins by the minute. Is this something to worry about? I don't think so in the least.

I don't think web surfers are dumb. Eventually they will know what passes for good content and not. Spam may be here to stay. The best thing to do i guess is to not let G tell us which ones are important and not.

That is quite hard to do given that they monopolize the net at present. Still, I think that once we have quality content even google will follow suit.

Article bot has a lot of potential. Honestly, if those who would be blogging my articles will mix my story up and keep my link when they blog my post. I'd say thanks. What better compliment is there. If they come up with something better, that rocks more.

Is this site still working? I get page can not be displayed every time I got to it.

John