I downloaded around 20k articles onto my computer and am wondering what the fastest way to check which ones are unique is. They are all in .txt format.

None of them will be. But go over to copyscape and see for yourself.

Originally Posted by ChampGuy

I downloaded around 20k articles onto my computer and am wondering what the fastest way to check which ones are unique is. They are all in .txt format.

definately none of them are unique.they are already used and then made public . now everyone have access to them and there is no chance that they are unique. however you can rewrite them n make them unique..but still chances are they wont b unique bcoz so many have done the same thing..
try your luck with copy scape or search for scripts available here in dl section.
n ya there is 90k+ articles plr pack available for download here ..just search in dl section

I stepped into the same trap. PLR articles do not make too much sense, you never know if it is not stolen anyhow from ezinearticles or so (in my case, I just wanted to be on the safe side - copyright and so). But in every case, the articles are already used, you certainly won't get fresh articles. And even if an article passes for some reason e.g. copyscape, does it really help you, as you don't know how G checks for uniqueness? [Well, btw my personal opinion is: unique articles are not worth the effort]

I have over 4GB of PLRs on my harddisk. Worthless. Just copy a characteristic part of an arbitrary plr into G search box and see yourself.

So, if you want so, you could just follow that procedure and check with G if the plr is already indexed on top position. It is possible to automate that. Having the SERPs you could then check a larger part of the plr against all the urls listed by G. But still, not worth the effort IMHO.

maybe 1-2 of them are unique,,,maybe

So why not do a quick rewrite.

Originally Posted by ChampGuy

I downloaded around 20k articles onto my computer and am wondering what the fastest way to check which ones are unique is. They are all in .txt format.

If you use linux, just use the diff utility. If on windows, there are ports you can download for that...just google 'diff for windows'