Can You Rank if you DO NOT Pass CopyScape? - YES AND HERE ARE THE PROOFS

[Vita_Vee]

Hi

At the support desk many people ask us how come the Ultra Spinnable Articles do not pass copyscape after a few days of use.

They think, like almost all the people out there, that if your article does not pass copyscape Google will see it as duplicate content...

Let's see if this is true...

Copyscape has never been the reference when it comes to search engine rankings and never will. Let me prove it to you right now:

Go to Google and search for "business" without quotes. You will agree that this keyword is ULTRA competitive.

Check the 1st site, which is wikipedia. Take that page URL and run it through copyscape. You will find tens of thousands of duplicates according to copyscape.

Repeat the same process for the "marketing" keyword... once again super competitive...

Same thing! 1st result has tens of thousands of duplicates according to copyscape.

I hope I have your attention now, so let me explain you what is happening.

Copyscape is NOT Google and Google doesn't check duplicates like Copyscape. That is a very common misconception - copyscape is used to check plagiarized articles. Google will never check duplicate content like copyscape does, if it did it would remove millions, or even billions of legit articles from its index.

Now let me give you a proof that the Ultra Spinnable Articles (USAs) are seen as unique content by Google.

You probably know that I am giving a free USA on this page:

http://www.theleadingarticles.com/free-u...le-article

I am giving it for free since I started the service, about 1 year and a half ago.

That free USA has been downloaded by multiple thousands of people and posted on the internet multiple tens of thousands of times. It has been used much more than the paid articles that are limited to 300 customers each... much much more.

So, I took that free article and posted 3 variations on theleadingarticles.com

Then I posted another variation on wordpress.com

1 day later all these 4 variations were indexed by Google - proving that Google sees all of them as unique content, even though this USA has been abused and posted all over the internet for about 1 year and a half now... and obviously does not pass copyscape anymore.

You can check it by yourself, nothing better than a live proof:

Go to Google.com and search for "Proof that USAs get indexed no matter how many people use them" - within the quotes.

You will see that Google has indexed all of them, even the 3 variations that are posted on theleadingarticles.com (and Google HATES duplicate content when it finds it on the same site).

Conclusion: Google sees ALL our USAs as unique content - Copyscape is only good for checking plagiarized articles.

Vita Vee

UPDATE

After reading some very interesting replies and a few objections below I would like to add a few words to my initial post:

1/ Do not forget the title of this thread: "Can You Rank if you DO NOT Pass CopyScape?" - Vij replied that I gave a flawed argument re wikipedia but @Vij I think you were out of context - my examples with wikipedia were to prove that you can definitely rank if you do not pass copyscape - so first thing I did in my post was to reply to the question I asked in the title of the thread.

2/ As Cybermystic rightly mentioned we do not talk about duplicate content when the exact same content is posted on different domains. In that case we talk about syndicated content, which is completely legitimate and is part of the internet landscape (think of News for example or Press Releases). What is a problem is when you post several times the same content on the same domain. It is in that case that we talk about duplicate content and this is what Google doesn't like. In my post I showed that I posted 3 variations of that free USA on the same domain at theleadingarticles.com - Google indexed all of them and is showing all of them in the serps. If Google was considering them as duplicate content it would show only 1 variation from that site, not the three ones at the same time. On-site duplicate content doesn't have its place in Google's serps - for obvious reasons.

[Jack]

Thanks for that Vita. I've told many people this same thing.

The only thing is I wish you would not have posted this so openly, I wanted to keep this secret low profile for a bit longer as I will have an advantage over them!

Just kidding of course (or am I) lol

---

But, ok, Vita, I can predict the question now.

If duplicate content can be so readily indexed, such as your wikipedia example, what is the need for the Ultra Spinnable articles? Why don't we just post the same article over and over again?

[Vita_Vee]

Jack at least we now have a definitive proof to show when CopyScape related tickets are posted at the support desk

[dean1986]

yes, true, the content will be indexed but, what i would love to know is how would google value the links withing the article. Personally, I would prefer if the artcle did pass copyscape, would you not agree that 100 links pointing to your website from 100% unique articles would be better than 100 links from within articles that are copied or failed copyscape. hmmm, thats like an interestng test.

[Rusty]

The other day, I was working with a poorly written PLR document in the Forex niche.

I put it in the Best Spinner and ran copyscape on it. It found 21 duplicates. Then I searched for the title on Google. The result was a page one ranking on Google, not only page one but number 1. It had Google PR of 3. I was amazed.

That article was word for word, right down the the title of the PLR article I had.

I completely rewrote it, making the parts that were just wrong or made no sense and posted it on my site. New site, hard niche. Worth a try.

[vij]

You are using the first ranked website(wikipedia) and pointing out that there are other websites with parts of their content but still wiki ranks. Thats a flawed argument IMO. Your argument will be more telling if the websites that copied content from wikipedia rank.


Having said that, I agree with you, a webpage need not be 100% unique for it to get ranked.

Again, even 100% copied content can get indexed, but 100s of 100% duplicate articles on 1 website cant be good and the website becomes susceptible to penalties or whatever.

USAs are fine for the most part.

[Ding0]

Well Vita. So what i understand is that as per your definition if google indexes a page it is a guarantee that google considers that page as unique?
But i had a site few months back and all pages on that site were 100% duplicate content, and i am pretty sure that content was posted on more than 100s of websites, but google still indexed many posts of my website.
Also, one more thing, google indexes all pages of USAs but i guess an equal quality page, with same backlinks etc etc with 100% unique content as compared to USA will outrank that USA? What do you say?
However one day i think, the way google is getting strict, google would stop ranking duplicate content, to higher pages.
Google is still a mystery as always

[wilbert305]

Very interesting premise to say the least...
I actually never heard any claim that Google utilizes Copyscape in their duplicate content algo, and obviously your experiment is persuasive to that effect. I guess that I personally always presumed that Google implemented the likes of Copyscape...[/font]

[Jack]

(09-26-2011 08:01 PM)wilbert305 Wrote:  Very interesting premise to say the least...
I actually never heard any claim that Google utilizes Copyscape in their duplicate content algo, and obviously your experiment is persuasive to that effect. I guess that I personally always presumed that Google implemented the likes of Copyscape...[/font]

Google can and very well may find content just like copyscape. But the point here is that it doesn't use that information in the same way that humans do. We can very easily use copyscape to check for plagiarism, but google in no way afford to use that information for determining whether or not to index a page and give it value.

[pankaj]

hey vita how to contact you personally??need to ask some Q's..tried finding a way to contact but didnt find anything...wud really really appreciate...my skype is pankaj-kale

[Jack]

(09-26-2011 08:10 PM)pankaj Wrote:  hey vita how to contact you personally??need to ask some Q's..tried finding a way to contact but didnt find anything...wud really really appreciate...my skype is pankaj-kale

Hi, just use this page http://vitavee.com/support and submit a ticket a the support desk.

[Grand]

I wrote this post 4 years ago - Are You Afraid Of Duplicate Content Looks like the debates are still going, I hope you'll find my observation an interesting read guyes

[Jack]

(09-26-2011 08:20 PM)Grand Wrote:  I wrote this post 4 years ago - Are You Afraid Of Duplicate Content Looks like the debates are still going, I hope you'll find my observation an interesting read guyes

Great article!

[Cybermystic]

Vita,

What I have found is that certain high PR web 2.0 blogging sites will delete USA's for duplicate content. I always teach my team and followers the same principle.... google sees 100% duplicate articles as "syndication". But as you know, they dont have a "duplicate content penalty" for different domains having the same content. I see both rank all the time. WHO WE HAVE TO GET PAST IS THE SITE REVIEWERS - THE "GATEKEEPERS" SO TO SPEAK. They oftentimes check copyscape because they dont want the same article showing up on their domain which is where the duplicate content issue comes into play when its on the same domain. Plus article directories and blog sites like blogger and wordpress dont want the same article posted 80 times on their domain... a little redundant for the service they are offering for people to find quality unique content. (Which is why those domains are high pagerank in the first place because they do watch their content like a hawk WITH COPYSCAPE) I have had many USA's deleted from wordpress.com and places like bravejournal,myopera,onsugar and host of other web 2.0 blogging sites citing the reason for deletion and account suspension due to duplicate content.

Moral of the story - we need to get past the "Gatekeepers" of the high pr sites NOT google.

Its totally fine to post the USA on many blog networks and wordpress sites that dont check copyscape. The same exact article even 100% the same.

Hope that helps Vita... if you have experienced different then let me know. Just my experience and I run a SEO company as well as some campaigns for big names in the internet marketing niche.

Chris

[Andrew Wilson]

It is a bit of a pity that this issue still needs to be discussed. All that is needed is to look at Google's webmaster guidelines but all the time there are new people arriving needing guidance and all the time people needing to sell them something.

On my content site we do not check for duplication, after all the purpose is to provide info to our readers. We DO routinely remove articles that are badly spun. I'd bet that having an article well written and submitted well is going to be more cost effective than scads of articles that are badly spun and thus rejected on quality grounds.

I do use Copyscape to see if material has been plagiarized, that is, as you correctly noted, its purpose.

I think there are several issues here:
1) People need to be educated that there is no duplicate content penalty across domains unless Google understands that there is egregious 'misconduct' going on.

2) People need to be educated to understand that Copyscape is not a tool to check indexing - search engines do a better job of that for much less money.

3) Folks need to understand why we spin content. Everything I have seen tells me that if I have two identical articles but one is well linked, in a context that suits the theme and maybe already gets traffic then it will outrank a less well favored article.
BUT, if I have an article that is not so well marketed that is 'unique' then it may well come above articles that are seen in many places no matter how well marketed they might be.

The last point is where spinning comes in. I have examples where I own several pages of Google results for certain search terms and almost all those returned pages are made with spun content.

I use your 'Minis' and find them great but anyone who is using Copyscape to do anything other than check if you are ripping them off is making a mistake and wasting their time.

[justnet]

So my question is how unique does an article need to be to be safe, in %?

[weedogroup]

I do not think you should of used copyscape as I found with it the header tags contribute
to a certain percentage of duplicate content if you check a url and upon this said it picks up on words and sentences,

but with articles a better example would of been one of the titles of the articles as if you check the title of a articles in the search terms and I mean a ultra spinnable one there are a possible 2 pages of it on google so around 20-30 articles still rankings

to rank those articles would just mean syndicate it and back link it and it will rise above the other duplicates, but I only use articles as a tool for backlinks and traffic to my sites and not to the articles

[Vita_Vee]

(09-26-2011 07:34 PM)dean1986 Wrote:  yes, true, the content will be indexed but, what i would love to know is how would google value the links withing the article. Personally, I would prefer if the artcle did pass copyscape, would you not agree that 100 links pointing to your website from 100% unique articles would be better than 100 links from within articles that are copied or failed copyscape. hmmm, thats like an interestng test.

I agree with the most part of your comment except with what I bolded and underlined in that sentence: "would you not agree that 100 links pointing to your website from 100% unique articles would be better than 100 links from within articles that are copied or failed copyscape"

Copyscape has nothing to do in the way Google evaluates the uniqueness of the pages it ranks. Copyscape must not be used for SEO purposes - this is not what it has been created for.

I agree with the rest of your comment - 100 links from unique pages (according to Google not Copyscape) are better than 100 links from copied (syndicated) content.

Please read my different replies below as they will give you more detailed explanations.

(09-26-2011 07:40 PM)Rusty Wrote:  The other day, I was working with a poorly written PLR document in the Forex niche.

I put it in the Best Spinner and ran copyscape on it. It found 21 duplicates. Then I searched for the title on Google. The result was a page one ranking on Google, not only page one but number 1. It had Google PR of 3. I was amazed.

That article was word for word, right down the the title of the PLR article I had.

I completely rewrote it, making the parts that were just wrong or made no sense and posted it on my site. New site, hard niche. Worth a try.

Thanks proofs that Copyscape has nothing to do with Google rankings can be found by millions.

(09-26-2011 07:48 PM)vij Wrote:  You are using the first ranked website(wikipedia) and pointing out that there are other websites with parts of their content but still wiki ranks. Thats a flawed argument IMO. Your argument will be more telling if the websites that copied content from wikipedia rank.

Do not forget the title of this thread: "Can You Rank if you DO NOT Pass CopyScape?" - I think you are out of context when you say that my argument is flawed - my examples with wikipedia were to prove that you can definitely rank if you do not pass copyscape - so first thing I did in my post was to reply to the question I asked in the title of the thread.

(09-26-2011 07:48 PM)vij Wrote:  Having said that, I agree with you, a webpage need not be 100% unique for it to get ranked.

Again, even 100% copied content can get indexed, but 100s of 100% duplicate articles on 1 website cant be good and the website becomes susceptible to penalties or whatever.

Basically if you have just 2 pages that are exactly the same content posted on your site Google will only show one of them for your targeted keyword. It will not show both of them. This is why categories and tags in wordpress blogs are sometimes problematic - and this is why there are some plugins to turn these category and tag pages into "noindex".

We have seen that duplicate content filter in action several times here on this forum - Rob?

As I demonstrated in my post I have posted 3 variations of the free USA on the same site. Google didn't filter any of them. None of these variations pass copyscape BUT Google considers them all as unique content and doesn't have any problem with them being on the same site.

(09-26-2011 07:59 PM)Ding0 Wrote:  Well Vita. So what i understand is that as per your definition if google indexes a page it is a guarantee that google considers that page as unique?

No - absolutely not. There is a difference between being indexed and being considered unique. As Cybermystic rightly mentioned a few posts above, copied content posted on different sites is called syndicated content - and Google has no problem in indexing/showing syndicated content.

(09-26-2011 07:59 PM)Ding0 Wrote:  But i had a site few months back and all pages on that site were 100% duplicate content, and i am pretty sure that content was posted on more than 100s of websites, but google still indexed many posts of my website.

This happens all the time with article directories - I also showed how to use this to your advantage in the private forum dedicated to the Ultra Spinnable Article customers.

What would have been a problem is if you had posted several times the exact same articles on your site.

(09-26-2011 07:59 PM)Ding0 Wrote:  Also, one more thing, google indexes all pages of USAs but i guess an equal quality page, with same backlinks etc etc with 100% unique content as compared to USA will outrank that USA?
What do you say?

Maybe, maybe not - there is no definitive answer to this question as it depends on several factors - for example but not limited to:

* Which article is best optimized for your targeted keyword?
* What other articles are posted on your site, do they support that article/keyword you want to rank for?
* How did you structure your site

etc...

For example I have created a blog with nothing more than the electronic minis - as you know the Ultra Spinnable Minis are much less spun than the Premium USAs, much much less!

However I am ranking on the 1st page of Google for the product names of ALL the articles I have posted. I mean the exact product names without any prefix or suffix like "review" - the product names themselves without quotes. I'm also on the 1st page for the review related keywords.

And I'm ranking above pages that are 100% unique content according to Copyscape.

(09-26-2011 08:27 PM)Cybermystic Wrote:  Vita,

What I have found is that certain high PR web 2.0 blogging sites will delete USA's for duplicate content. I always teach my team and followers the same principle.... google sees 100% duplicate articles as "syndication". But as you know, they dont have a "duplicate content penalty" for different domains having the same content. I see both rank all the time. WHO WE HAVE TO GET PAST IS THE SITE REVIEWERS - THE "GATEKEEPERS" SO TO SPEAK.

Hi Chris,

Yes I understand and agree with this. Hopefully the next generation of USAs will allow to do this (spun at paragraph + sentence + phrase levels). For the moment we "limit" ourselves to the networks/tools that do not have any problem with spinnable content.

That being said if you absolutely want to post a variation of a USA on such a site you can with just a few edits.

For example take that sentence from the free USA I am giving at theleadingarticles.com

"Contrary to popular belief, learning how to speak a new language does not have to take a long time"

This sentence is one of the variations included in one of the paragraph variations of that free USA. If you search for it on Google you will find it like 10,000 times or something like that (that free article has really been abused - multiply this by at least 100 to know how many variations were posted online - and it still gets considered as unique content by Google when posted on the same domain ).

If you take that sentence and just edit a few words here and there, something like:

"Contrary to popular thinking, learning a new language doesn't have to take too much time"

And search for this sentence in Google you will find ZERO result.

Doing this takes only a few seconds. You can transform an entire article (I mean a readable variation, not the USA itself) in maybe 2 minutes flat and make it 100% yours and publishable everywhere you can think of. If you need another article about the same topic just create a new variation from the same USA, make the edits on the new variation and here you go.

(09-26-2011 08:43 PM)Andrew Wilson Wrote:  It is a bit of a pity that this issue still needs to be discussed. All that is needed is to look at Google's webmaster guidelines but all the time there are new people arriving needing guidance and all the time people needing to sell them something.

On my content site we do not check for duplication, after all the purpose is to provide info to our readers. We DO routinely remove articles that are badly spun. I'd bet that having an article well written and submitted well is going to be more cost effective than scads of articles that are badly spun and thus rejected on quality grounds.

I do use Copyscape to see if material has been plagiarized, that is, as you correctly noted, its purpose.

I think there are several issues here:
1) People need to be educated that there is no duplicate content penalty across domains unless Google understands that there is egregious 'misconduct' going on.

2) People need to be educated to understand that Copyscape is not a tool to check indexing - search engines do a better job of that for much less money.

3) Folks need to understand why we spin content. Everything I have seen tells me that if I have two identical articles but one is well linked, in a context that suits the theme and maybe already gets traffic then it will outrank a less well favored article.
BUT, if I have an article that is not so well marketed that is 'unique' then it may well come above articles that are seen in many places no matter how well marketed they might be.

The last point is where spinning comes in. I have examples where I own several pages of Google results for certain search terms and almost all those returned pages are made with spun content.

I use your 'Minis' and find them great but anyone who is using Copyscape to do anything other than check if you are ripping them off is making a mistake and wasting their time.

Thanks a lot Andrew for your detailed reply. Nothing to add!

(09-26-2011 09:11 PM)justnet Wrote:  So my question is how unique does an article need to be to be safe, in %?

Hard to say - the more the better.

[youproblog]

interesting reading here!

[dbbaker29]

(09-26-2011 07:34 PM)dean1986 Wrote:  yes, true, the content will be indexed but, what i would love to know is how would google value the links withing the article. Personally, I would prefer if the artcle did pass copyscape, would you not agree that 100 links pointing to your website from 100% unique articles would be better than 100 links from within articles that are copied or failed copyscape. hmmm, thats like an interestng test.

You should also consider what it would take for you (money and time) to get 100 unique articles and how many articles and links I (or anyone else) will be able to generate at a fraction of the cost and time using the USAs...

The USA's work and work great and I am living proof of that. They have been in the core of my SEO over the past year and I have got some pretty nice rankings for some nice keywords.