Subscribe (RSS)Plagiarism, also known as copyright infringement is the unlawful use of information without the owner’s consent. It’s a rather widespread problem online due to the anonymity of the Internet, but if you’re thinking about using someone else’s content when building a site, forget it! We suggest you use your own creativeness when creating content. After all, originality is key! Original content makes your site unique and more valuable. In addition, buyers can catch copyright infringement easily. By finding and using a few free tools online, you can compare your site uniqueness in just a few short clicks.
So what’s the worst that could happen? Well, for one, don’t expect yourself to be favoured in any search ranking results, especially from Google. Google as well as number of search engines like Yahoo and Bing index hundreds or millions of pages daily and can easily identify duplicate content. These search providers severely frown upon copyright infringement practice and you could get your site banned. Seeing the return on this strategy is, well, rather obvious. Who wants to put the time and energy into building a fantastic site when no one can find it? This isn’t a great selling technique if you’re looking to sell your site and if found guilty you could also be liable for civil damages and face legal expenses to fight your case.
Fortunately, there are a number of ways you can verify the originality or authenticity of your content by using a few free tools:
Google does not have a specific document checker, but confirming content is easy. Simply copy a line of text using parentheses at the beginning and end of your sentence or paragraph and paste it into the search bar. If you find a match for similar content, then consider making a revision.
You can definitely do the same with other search engines such as Yahoo or Bing, however Google indexes the most pages and you can assured if Google can’t find it Yahoo or Bing shouldn’t be able to either.
Copyscape
Copyscape is one of the most trusted sites when it comes to content checking. The site is easy to use and for easy traceability, Copyscape will display duplicate lines with respective color tags.
Copyscape is free, however they do have a premium version which only cost 5 cents per search. Copyscape premium provides more powerful plagiarism detection than their free service and hosts a number of other features including copy-paste originality checks, batch search, private index, case tracking and an API. To watch a short video to see exactly how Copyscape works, click here.
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11 Comments on “How to Make Sure Site Content Is Original”
Nile on Nov-15-2010
I will advise that some people are really skill with article rewrites, and sometimes copyscape will not pick it up. The free version of Copyscape is not as great, so actually investing in the service is probably the best idea, especially if you may be concerned about anyone trying to pilfer your articles.
Sam on Nov-17-2010
So glad to hear someone writing about this. With so many bogus auto blogs going up everyday it can make finding good websites a daunting task.
Melody on Nov-18-2010
Awesome post. I love using copyscape. This is a very effective tool to protect yourself against plagiarism.
Andy Beveridge on Nov-19-2010
Again I wonder why people want to cheat the system. It’s easier to write your own content.
Andy@PowerBlog on Nov-19-2010
Copyscape is brilliant for checking articles that you have outsourced. Don’t get conned by people pretending to write orginal material.
Elena on Nov-20-2010
This is a magnificent idea. I write for Ezine, and I have had my writing lifted often. This is a great tool to use.
Cihass on Nov-22-2010
I really like using Google to check for this. Thanks for writing this.
LoveDove on Dec-03-2010
Thankfully, I am busy creating creating creating my own original content so I don’t have to worry about plagiarism work or copy infringement!!
Wow, you really always offer something I had not heard of before and that I will need to look into- COPYSCAPE! I do tend to think that GOOGLE does an awesome job in catching lifted lines of text and content, but I am interested to see just how effective COPYSCAPE is! I see that people have posted that it is best to go for premium off the bat! I might do that!
Great job always, Second Wind Market Place! Kudos for the info!
Harriot on Dec-06-2010
Thank for telling my about that copyscape. Just checked it out and it looks very useful!
Bob on Dec-06-2010
Yeah I tried that technique with pasting a snippet in Google and it does work. These days i use Copyscape to check overall articles with ease.
Lenny on Dec-06-2010
Hi thanks for this useful post! What can I do if my content has been stolen from my site?