Friday, April 16, 2010

Royal Enfield blog: Accept no substitutes

There is a guy on the web (or, more likely, a robot) that recycles my Royal Enfield blog postings. You have to expect that — I've lifted a thing or two from other sites myself. But this is different.

The odd thing is, this site pumps what I write into some kind of Klingon Translation Machine that makes me sound wacky.

I actually suspect that what it does is translate my copy into a foreign language, and then back out to English, producing a slightly different version. For instance, here's what Google picked up on a recent post of mine:

Royal Enfield Motorcycles: We want to buy Royal Enfield accessories
By David Blasco
Royal Enfield motorcycles interest me and writing about them is my hobby. The ads scattered about this blog are chosen for you readers by Google. As I understand it, Google's robots scan what I write. Based on what they see, ...

And here is what Google picked up from the other guy:

Royal Enfield Motorcycles: We want to buy Royal Enfield ...
ROYAL ENFIELD MOTORCYCLES: WE WANT TO BUY ROYAL ENFIELD ACCESSORIES. Posted on 10. Feb, 2010 by in Motorcycles. Royal Enfield motorcycles seductiveness me as well as essay about them is my hobby. The ads sparse about this blog have been...


See the difference? Motorcycle seductiveness me! Sure does. But I wouldn't have thought to have said it quite that way.

Obviously, this highway robbery gives the guy free copy. Putting it through the Daffy Duck Garble Machine might even make it seem different enough to be original. He apparently gives me credit for having written the original.

So what is his motive?

5 comments:

  1. blargh.
    I'd rather sit through a Vogon poetry reading than try and decipher that copy!

    yes! Me passionate motorcycle Roayl Enfield hobby monkey!

    On second thought, maybe I would enjoy the translated version, but if done in a dramatic reading by William Shatner.

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  2. What I wonder is whether this is a crude, but effective, way to generate content and draw people to his site? The translation in an back out of a foreign language produces a slightly different version, which Google then recognizes as unique. Incredibly (to me) this very item produced the identical effective I noticed first time: Google blog search noticed my item, but gave equal display to his fishy garble! What game are we playing?

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  3. FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_blog

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you, Anna, that may explain it; basically, the fellow is fooling search engines and perhaps some innocent users. Maybe he just wants to increase his page ranking, or maybe his goals are more sinister. Anyway, the bottom line: this is the real blog. Accept no substitutes!

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  5. Anonymous4/18/2010

    Did you ever consider Yoda it was?JB

    ReplyDelete

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