Unique article trick (beware of low cost article services)
- Thread starter USA282
- Start date
- Apr 23, 2012
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Actually, it doesn't pass Google as well. But it works both ways really. The content doesn't rank in Google either for the intended keyword, since Google peruses it to be a completely different input.
Being in the content business, I've come across this sham more than once.
About six months ago, I was contacted by a fellow BHW member who wanted me to develop a content strategy for 3 websites he planned. I did the same, and sent him a detailed spreadsheet complete with SILO details and everything else. He paid me for the content strategy, but found a better deal for the content somewhere else (outside BHW) and politely parted ways.
A month later, he approached me stating that his content was done and he'd like to seek my help in getting the sites setup. On further discussion, he said that he had ordered about $3000 worth of content for 3 of his websites. And then proceeded to send me 3 zip files each containing individual word files for each of the topics that were included in my spreadsheet.
It was only when one of my staff members was uploading the articles, did she realize that some of the content seemed very familiar. She had actually written that article herself about a month ago for a different client. When she compared, it to her archives, the article was indeed her own. The original article was indexed, but yet showed up as unique in Copyscape, even Google was of no help.
Further investigation led me to this. I had heard of this trick before, but never really seen it in action. And then, as expected, every single article was using this exact same trick.
When the client was informed, at first he couldn't believe it, by the time he realized this, he almost had a heart attack. He had paid only $500 via Paypal, which he could chargeback. While the remaining $2500 was paid via WU, since the other person (in Philippines) had claimed Paypal was having issues.
It took us a LOT of time, patience and hard work to help the client get through this. This could've broken the man, but fortunately, he survived. Still, no idea why people do this. This is the same as robbery. Plain simple robbery. Might as well break into his house and take all his belongings.
Pro Tip - If you're on a Mac, open the article in TextEdit - Mac's built-in text editor. If the article is using the above trick, you should see a whole lot of red underlines. That should tell you that the article uses this trick.
Reaver
Elite Member
- Aug 6, 2015
- 1,898
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What a small world. I'm surprised that your writer ran into her content again.
That's shitty that he paid all that money for copied content. Even $1 is too much for something that's been stolen.
No one should pay for anything online through WU, bc it can't be recovered. It's good that he could recover part of it through PP.
That's shitty that he paid all that money for copied content. Even $1 is too much for something that's been stolen.
No one should pay for anything online through WU, bc it can't be recovered. It's good that he could recover part of it through PP.
LuckyCharm007
Elite Member
- Jul 8, 2015
- 2,211
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I don't understand.. how does Google read the content if it's un-readable? That is some very sick shit. Can you check using GWT's "fetch as google" tool? I mean, it's showing up your page source code, so you see what Google sees. Can anyone try this and report back?
USA282
Senior Member
- Dec 18, 2016
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Google reads the content but not the way its supposed to read. To us it seems like perfect english but google sees it as meaningless characters
LuckyCharm007
Elite Member
- Jul 8, 2015
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How can we know, or check?
USA282
Senior Member
- Dec 18, 2016
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type in some sentences manually from the article (around 150 words). Pass those manual written sentences through plagiarism checker and if they turn out to be fine then I would say that the article is good to use
seriousguy
Newbie
- Dec 19, 2016
- 5
- 1
Yes this has been there but usually distorts articles.
USA282
Senior Member
- Dec 18, 2016
- 917
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nop, there are some softwares I know of that doesn't distort. They remain exactly the same as the original content.
- Apr 23, 2012
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He'd have found out eventually. The content was great quality, only it would never rank, since for a Machine like Google, it wasn't even English in the first place.
Also, I am sure he learned his lesson on the WU thing. He paid $250 via Paypal and received a bunch of articles and was really impressed. He then paid $250 via Paypal again, and received another set. He wanted to place another order and the writer told him about Paypal having issues. So he made 5 payments in multiples of $500 via WU and received his articles each time, in record time.
He then had some family emergency, which kept him disengaged for a month or so. And then he returned and contacted me and that's when he realized that shit had already hit the fan months ago and he had been too oblivious to notice.
D
Deleted member 657006
Guest
There no way in hell google dont no about this , i think the new update must of damaged this problam or conflicted it....
Maybe even code left out via mistake ....
Maybe even code left out via mistake ....
Security Tester
Regular Member
- Aug 2, 2016
- 267
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Thanks for sharing, definitely important to know even though it may be an old trick for some of us!
Noah Hawryshko
Senior Member
- Apr 28, 2016
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I know of another method of duping people with articles that will pass plagiarism checkers in the same manner. I'll contact IKSEO and see if I should post it too.
Hubba
Elite Member
- Feb 6, 2010
- 2,001
- 1,092
Copied your second example and pasted into Notepad++ - shows as "th?? ?? ?u?t ? small test"
This seems to catch this nonsense http://www.cynosurex.com/Software/Text Encoding Detector/
This seems to catch this nonsense http://www.cynosurex.com/Software/Text Encoding Detector/
Last edited:
- Mar 21, 2013
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I just noticed you joined yesterday. Thanks for your contribution and welcome to BHW.
What I did after this afternoon's chat was download a hex editor and I opened page 1 of this thread on it.
In the hex editor you can see the trick : a bunch of invisible UTF8 characters.
So in essence my first comment was right: Google does not miss ASCII for UTF8. This isn't about charsets, this is a deliberate injection of invisible characters into the text. That should clear the confusion, cuz I've been checking content for a long time and Google does catch them all.
Except of course if the content is not the content you see.
Hackers have used this for something far more damaging: including commands into stuff you copy and paste from a web page.
You copy a command like
ls /
But hidden in there is ls; rm -rf / which deletes your whole server drive.
People have been victims of this. but this is NOT charset UTF/ASCII conversion, this is deliberate hiding of text using UTF8.
- Nov 30, 2016
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thetrustedzone
Elite Member
- Jun 15, 2010
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Actually it's too old news ....