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Content Generators

Posted on February 20th, 2008.

I’m very interested in the process of creating website content. This is my second article on creating content, and not my last, as I seem to be making a series out of it. Automated content generation is a dodgy business and for the most part, is a blackhat SEO technique. However, I thought I would write an article on two automated content generation methods. Why? Well firstly, to show you how useless they can be, and secondly, to show how some of the automated methods could be adapted to actually be a benefit to your site.

The first method of automated content generation I looked at was the Markov Engine. The Markov engine uses Markov algorithm to rewrite articles from one or more seed articles. The content is indeed unique, but there are problems with the generated copy.

Content created by the Markov Engine is not made for people. The grammar produced, at times, was not good, and the content doesn’t make any sense. This is what makes the Markov Engine a blackhat technique, its purpose is to create content which bypasses search engine content filters. Content created using the Markov algorithm is of no use to people.

I’m trying to decide if the content created using the Markov algorithm is a breach of copyright because technically, the engine is taking an idea and expressing it in a different way. Of course, it’s expressing that idea in terrible English, and so, it’s not completely ripping the article of. However, it does copy an article word for word and only puts the words in a different order. I’ll let you decide if it’s a breah of copyright or not, because I’m not sure at all (remember I’m not a lawyer).

I don’t recommend this method as it’s blackhat and could do your website a lot more damage than good.

The second and final method I looked at was content scrapping. The specific content scrapper I looked at was YACG. This method can be adapted to provide good content for your website. You don’t want it to copy Wikipedia articles or anything like that, but using it to automatically post a video from YouTube every so often is an interesting prospect. You’re allowed to embed videos from Google into your website, so why not do it automatically?

Original content created by a human is still the best. Next in this unofficial series will be a post on copyright law. Content creation is a time consuming activity but good content is what makes a website successful. I don’t recommend either of the above tools for generating content. However, automatically getting content from legal sources like YouTube is a great idea.

For more information on website content try…

• Rewriting articles, a good or bad thing to do?
• Active Research - it’s incredibly important
• Planning an article
• It’s time to write your first draft

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