Example 1 - No clear original source

• Copied content - suspiciousThere is a paragraph at the top, followed by a line. Then there is an article below.

Notice something a bit funny? Instead of the word "flower" or "flowers," this article uses "f" or "fs" in the text. This page looks suspicious. Let's try to figure out if the content is copied from elsewhere. Let's use the sentence: "Flowers which last only one day, like day lilies, do not dry well." It does not have the odd "fs" abbreviation.

• Do a search on Google with that sentence in quotes: ["Flowers which last only one day, like day lilies, do not dry well."].

You will see that there are many webpages with this sentence, though most use the word "flowers" rather than "fs" in the text. In fact, if you go to the last page of Google results, you'll find this:

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 25 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included."
Clicking on the blue link will give you over a hundred results for this sentence, many of which contain this article text or links to pages containing this article text. But none of these results seems to be very authoritative, and no single web result looks like it is the original source of the article.
In some cases, even though the original source of content may be difficult or impossible to identify, you can still be fairly certain you have a copy. In the example above, it's highly unlikely that this is the original source of the content. It has the odd "fs" and "f" abbreviations (probably done so that search engines will not detect that this is copied content). There are also copying errors and other alterations on this page. Look at the bottom and you'll see "For Ber Colors: Rapid drying in a very warm, dry and bly-lit place will produce b blossoms; s drying in a more humid spot will produce more muted colors."
While we cannot be sure of the original source, this is clearly a copy. It's actually less helpful than an unaltered copy. The abbreviations make it difficult to understand the text in places. If you see similar issues when rating, please make a note in your comments.
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