Rehashing Information Is Good For The Web
There are time when blogging is accused of simply repeating or rewriting content that appears on other blogs or other web sites. I am not sure why this is seen as a negative when the practice is the life blood of the internet.
Take announcements by the search engines as an example. They don’t run big publicity campaigns when releasing new features, they simply publish a blog post about it. Why? They know that a thousand (or more) bloggers will pick up the post, rewrite it (often with their own views) and publish the information on their blogs.
This is in a way viral marketing at its best. It is certainly now one of the fastest ways to spread the word. Why is it good for the web? Only a small proportion of users actually visit and read search engine blogs. So how is the message spread – through other bloggers. My readers are not necessarily your readers so if we both ‘rehash’ information, we are helping to spread the word.
In fact, chances are, one my readers, or one of your readers will also pick up on the story and publish their version, so spreading the word even further.
Yes, blogs do repeat information that appears on other blogs. However, that process is the life blood of the web – if we didn’t publish this type of content, news would never spread. It should also be pointed out that blogs are not the only publishers of rehashed information. Websites and social media (particulalry Twitter) are also part of the process. It’s just an online form of the ancient art of story telling – an art we all rely on to find out what is going on in the world around us.
6 Responses to “Rehashing Information Is Good For The Web”
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Good point. Never thought of that but it IS important: you might not read something in just one place or see a video just on Youtube – most times the services themselves will allow you to share it with other people or embed it on your website.
Viral marketing indeed!
Hi Ricardo – Very true it is viral marketing for sure! Thanks for reading!
Hi Nick.
When does “rehashing” become duplicate content? If I re-write your article in my own words that’s one thing but what if I just copy paste your article on my blog? What if I link to it with a brief synopsis? Doesn’t google reward the original content creator? Viral is great of course but does it slam into duplicate content issues?
The news media as a whole is very copy-cat this way, it is not just the internet. People in news rooms sometimes sit around and watch the competition and just go cover whatever the see others covering. Personally, I do not like this practice but no one asked me.
Thanks,
Lorraine
Hi Lorraine,
Rehashing information or content becomes duplicate content I think when you don’t give credit to the original source. Often many times, I will re-write my own article for multiple places, the message may be similar but I take a totally different writing approach based on the audience of the placement…
Unfortunately, the news media does operate this way…
With a little bit of creative writing and looking at things from your own perspective the whole things will be different.
I believe that search engines are going toward imitating what’s natural. Now, look at the news. Something happens and everyone is writing about it. Headlines (Titles) can be different. Body content could be different too. As long as you place a link to the news source and write your own take of the news, things should be fine. Actually, this is a very common way of how some people write news posts.
Hi Website Promotion Blog,
This is VERY true not only on news websites but in the blog world as well…