Spun content is text created by taking an existing article and automatically rewording it, swapping words for synonyms and shuffling sentences, so it appears to be a new piece. The process is called article spinning, and the result usually says nothing the original did not, often in worse English.
How spun content works
Spinning tools start with a source text and a library of alternatives for words and phrases. “Fast” becomes “quick” or “rapid”; “help your business grow” becomes “assist your company to expand”. Older tools used templates with every option marked in curly brackets, letting one article generate hundreds of variations. Newer AI paraphrasing tools do the same job with more fluent output, but the principle is unchanged: rewording, not writing.
It was used heavily for article directories, private blog networks and mass guest posting, where the aim was many “unique” pages with links back to a money site. It also turns up on business sites as dozens of town pages with the same text and a different place name, or blog posts lifted from competitors and run through a rewriter.
Why it matters
Google’s spam policies have long named automatically generated text and rewritten scraped material. Since March 2024 the broader scaled content abuse policy covers producing many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, however they are made, which includes spinning by software or AI. Sites with large amounts of spun material risk being demoted by spam systems or receiving a manual action.
Even when nothing is penalised, spun pages rarely perform. They offer no new information, they read awkwardly, and Google has little reason to rank a reworded copy above the original. For a UK business, there is a further risk: closely rewording a competitor’s work can still infringe their copyright, and getting caught does nothing for your reputation.
There is a cost to the reader too. Someone comparing accountants in Manchester who lands on a page of awkward, reworded generalities learns nothing about how you work and has no reason to trust you. Original content, even when short, does the opposite: it shows that a real person who understands the problem wrote it, which is often what tips a reader into making an enquiry.
Common mistakes
- Cheap content packages. Some low-cost suppliers deliver spun articles. Check originality before anything is published.
- Templated location pages. Fifty pages for fifty towns with only the name changed are spun content by another route.
- AI paraphrasing of competitor pages. Fluent output is still a copy in substance.
- Keeping old spun posts. Leftover material from past link-building or blog schemes drags down the rest of the site.
How to act on it
If you suspect spun content on your site, run a sample through a plagiarism check and crawl the site for near-duplicate pages. Pages that cover the same topic should be merged into one stronger page or removed. Pages that serve a genuine purpose should be rewritten from your own knowledge: your process, your prices or price factors, photos of real work and the questions customers actually ask you.
For new content, start from what you know that others do not. A short, accurate page written by someone who does the work is worth more than ten reworded ones, because it adds something the reader cannot get elsewhere. Planning and briefing that kind of content is what I do in content SEO, and it also avoids duplicate content problems from the start.