Friday, December 02, 2005

Building Content-Filled Websites - Update

After using ContentDesk for six weeks, I decided it just wasn't for me. The online software was a little clunky, I found it difficult to find enough articles for the niche site I'm building, and the user support was not ideal.

But what I have come across is a lovely bit of free software called "Orwell". It doesn't automate the site building very much, but it enables you legally to trawl article directories.

The trouble with the "scraper" type of software is that article directories are increasingly banning automated interrogation of their websites. And Google is getting wise to websites built of "scraped" content, and is rooting them out.

I came across "Orwell" through a fascinating report about this change in Google's policies, and you can only download "Orwell" from this report. I asked the author of the report is I could make it available for public distribution, and he said "yes".

So, if you want to experiment with "Orwell" for rapidly gathering a lot of tightly focused articles, download the report from here. It's in PDF format.

Inside the report, there's a link to the download website and (important!), the PDF also includes the software's unlock code.

With "Orwell", I managed to find about 80 articles on "cold calling" and "sales prospecting". With ContentDesk, I only managed half a dozen or so.

No comments: