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The Motley Fool also uses automatically-generated articles. For instance if you google the phrase "Being able to retire rich, or at least comfortable, is the go

by hugh3 15y ago

The Motley Fool also uses automatically-generated articles. For instance if you google the phrase "Being able to retire rich, or at least comfortable, is the goal of almost any investor" you'll find hundreds of articles from fool.com, each posing as an analysis of a particular company, and all generated with an algorithm which is fairly obvious after reading a couple of 'em. They're not completely worthless, though. Real data + automated analysis is far better than no data or no analysis.

orborde 15y ago
That is disturbingly brilliant.
wging 15y ago
OUCH. No mention of the contraction of the newspaper industry when discussing Gannett? >Next, we want to ensure that Gannett's stock has the ability to rise over the next five, 10, or 20 years. A company that's growing its net income has the best possible chance to see its share price rise over time. Of course, we can't predict the future, but we can look back to get an idea of how the company has performed in the past in order to try to ensure future earnings growth. Over the past five years, Gannett has shrunk its net income at an annual rate of 13.9%. Unfortunately, Gannett has run into its own share of problems, and the financial collapse of 2008 certainly couldn't have helped either. So the company has been unable to grow earnings, which doesn't exactly mean that it won't in the future, but it's certainly not the greatest of signs. from http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2011/04/26/should-you-retire-with-gannett.aspxhttp://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2011/04/26/should-you-retire-with-gannett.aspx http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2011/04/26/should-you... It's kind of clear that it's auto-generated after just one. The only other possibility would be that "Jordan DiPetro" had a real point to make about what stock stats can tell you without any real knowledge...
knowtheory 15y ago
My first reaction was disbelief, "what? the Motley Fool doing something that is clearly unethical?" Then i googled as you mentioned, and indeed found all of these identically phrased articles. But upon reading them i'm impressed at exactly how generic this template is. I'm not sure they're actually doing harm, because frankly, these articles aren't analysis. They don't actually offer any judgement about the stocks in question. They're basically a textual presentation of some stock data that is designed to serve as a feeder into fool.com. I can't say that i'm okay with it, but it's not as catastrophic as i had initially imagined. Still definitely SEO spam though :\ I am disappoint.

by hugh3 15y ago

orborde 15y ago

That is disturbingly brilliant.

wging 15y ago

OUCH. No mention of the contraction of the newspaper industry when discussing Gannett? >Next, we want to ensure that Gannett's stock has the ability to rise over the next five, 10, or 20 years. A company that's growing its net income has the best possible chance to see its share price rise over time. Of course, we can't predict the future, but we can look back to get an idea of how the company has performed in the past in order to try to ensure future earnings growth. Over the past five years, Gannett has shrunk its net income at an annual rate of 13.9%. Unfortunately, Gannett has run into its own share of problems, and the financial collapse of 2008 certainly couldn't have helped either. So the company has been unable to grow earnings, which doesn't exactly mean that it won't in the future, but it's certainly not the greatest of signs. from http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2011/04/26/should-you-retire-with-gannett.aspxhttp://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2011/04/26/should-you-retire-with-gannett.aspx http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2011/04/26/should-you... It's kind of clear that it's auto-generated after just one. The only other possibility would be that "Jordan DiPetro" had a real point to make about what stock stats can tell you without any real knowledge...

knowtheory 15y ago

My first reaction was disbelief, "what? the Motley Fool doing something that is clearly unethical?" Then i googled as you mentioned, and indeed found all of these identically phrased articles. But upon reading them i'm impressed at exactly how generic this template is. I'm not sure they're actually doing harm, because frankly, these articles aren't analysis. They don't actually offer any judgement about the stocks in question. They're basically a textual presentation of some stock data that is designed to serve as a feeder into fool.com. I can't say that i'm okay with it, but it's not as catastrophic as i had initially imagined. Still definitely SEO spam though :\ I am disappoint.