Chris recently raised the difficult issue of content theft and how to tackle it.
We’ve certainly had our share of rip-off artistes and generally we’ve found it to be a two-tiered problem.
- Becoming aware your content has been ripped in the first place
- Getting something done about it
Finding your ripped content fast is paramount. If Google or Yahoo spiders stumble across the ripped content first, the damage is done. If you’re not identified as the first known occurence of that content it may difficult to recover trust.
Common sense tells you Google is your first port of call to locate your ripped-off content, but one great tool not many people seem to know about is Copyscape — a free, purpose-built, anti-plagiarism search tool. Just give Copyscape the URL of your content and it will do the grunt work and report back to you.
Probably the coolest thing about Copyscape is it doesn’t require you to enter ‘keyword phrases’ (headings, paragraphs, etc) from your content in the hope of matching the rip-off, as Google would. Copyscape analyses entire pages similtaneously and can seemingly easily detect matched pages, passages, paragraphs and even matched sentences. Some of the copies I’ve tracked down have been deeply obscured with hidden CSS, but Copyscape wasn’t fooled.
Ok , so you’ve located rip-offs. What now?
It’s easy to feel a bit forlorn and helpless, but it’s generally not as hopeless as you might think. Copyscape provides whois info as well as practical advice in responding to plagiarism.
It’s useful to remember that IP thieves very often rely on other larger, more reputable organisations (their ISP, Adsense, Commision Junction) to operate, so they usually don’t want to risk their server/revenue in a fight. If you’re courteous but very clear they’ll often quickly backdown.
It’s also worthwhile looking at Copyscape’s commercial service called CopySentry which automatically monitors the web for rogue copies of your content and then reports the results back to you via email. I can’t vouch directly for this paid service yet , but if your content is one of your key assets, this seems like a pretty cost effective way to protect it.
Either way, the free service is very useful for anyone running a content site.
Excellent tip there, thank you very much. I wasn’t aware of this site but will certainly keep it bookmarked from now on.
March 2nd, 2006 at 4:14 am
A very useful service indeed. With the huge amount of content out there, the only way to keep track of it is with automated spidering. I imagine though that a lot of plagiarists are small operators, often in distant countries, making enforcement if they don’t comply very difficult indeed.
One solution if a site doesn’t remove copyrighted content may be simply to report the site to search engines for abusive practices, which may also get them banned so as not to affect your own site being penalized for duplicate content.
March 2nd, 2006 at 4:47 am
Well, I have over 4-major sites that have copied my text word-for-word though I already knew that from my raw logs. My logs report over 100 sites that rip my content-off on a regular basis.
March 2nd, 2006 at 5:23 am
http://www.pirated-sites.com has loads of great advice!
March 2nd, 2006 at 8:19 am
Copyscape’s homepage is a direct ripoff of Google, worse, it’s misleading. It gives the impression that Copyscape is a Google service.
March 2nd, 2006 at 8:49 am
@ asprookie: maybe that’s the irony?
Great to see something to help original content creators get something done about the theft of personal work.
March 2nd, 2006 at 9:27 am
asprookie, how does Copyscape present itself as a service of Google? The layout is admittedly similar to Google’s, but that’s about where the similarities end, imo.
March 2nd, 2006 at 12:05 pm
I think its funny that Copyscape looks like Google.
March 2nd, 2006 at 1:12 pm
I just wanted to say thanks. I found a number of competing web design firms in my home country using the same copy as what I either paid a copywriter for or had written myself.
March 2nd, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Me too. Although the layout is obviously not a direct copy, it is certainly inspired by the big G. The irony made me chuckle.
March 2nd, 2006 at 8:07 pm
You’ll be surprised how many lazy, low-down scum bags there are on the net that think copying your content is fine. MAKE SURE you have harsh copyright statements listed next to each article on your site.
March 2nd, 2006 at 8:20 pm
Has anyone ever heard of Constructive Plagiarism Prevention? Check their website. Detection is only partly effective, in that it may deter plagiarism some. PowerResearcher however guides students through the research and writing process, then protects them from indavertent plagiarism by hightlighting anything copied from the Internet, diplaying the URL and prompting them for proper citation. It also automates citations! You can test their application for free – ASP online, or download a fully functional 30-day trial copy.
sjgault@gmail.com
March 3rd, 2006 at 11:01 am
[...] SitePoint, ons allen bekend als, de beste webdesigner/developer community heeft onlangs Chris Beasley (a.k.a Aspen) aan de deur gezet als blogger en forum moderator. De reden van zijn ‘ontslag’ is tot dusver niet echt bekend. Chris was lid van de SitePoint forums sinds 1999 en was diegene die de SEO forums daar tot een waardevol niveau verheven heeft. Sinds enkele maanden blogde hij ook voor Sitepoint op het website revenue strategies blog en er waren plannen voor een Website Revenue Kit. [...]
March 4th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
As great as copyscape is, I still prefer to use Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) for detecting plagiarism. Yes, you have to input a keyword phrase, but it constnatly searches for your work and emails you the results, to get that kind of service from Copyscape would require paying for Copysentry and, even then, you’re limited on how often the search takes place and how many pages you can look for.
As far as how to respond to plagiarism, there is no one right way. I offer my techniques on my site, but really everyone has their own methods. I just encourage people to look at the fight as one that takes place over the long haul and has to be dealt with over a long period of time.
Still, if anyone needs any help dealing with plagiarism, just drop me a line to let me know, I’ll gladly do what I can.
Thank you for bringing attention to this very serious problem.
Jonathan – http://www.plagiarismtoday.com
March 4th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Copyscape: detecta plagios y copias
A pesar de que en la mayoría de los casos juega en su contra, aún sigue habiendo muchos webmasters que se dedican a copiar contenidos de otras webs, sin ni siquiera poner enlace (al menos denota que no hay mala intención aunque no otorga derechos),…
March 6th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
[...] Check out SitePoint Blogs » Copyscape—Website Plagiarism Search [...]
March 6th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
What’s do best ?
Google Alerts or Copyscape ?
Alerts is more comfortable i think.
Err, www.toys.cba.pl
March 15th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
Copyscape uses the Google API.
March 19th, 2006 at 2:48 am
It seems that CopyScape and Google are related…
http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20040719InterviewwithGideonGreenspanCoFounderofGoogleAlert.html
April 11th, 2006 at 5:09 am
[...] Esto porque la fuente original de lo que estoy escribiendo ahora es un post que vi en este post donde podrás determinar si estas siendo objeto de plagio. Es difícil tener una noticia sin saber de donde proviene o alguna idea para un buen post. [...]
June 21st, 2006 at 10:18 am
This is a great tools. I have caught several copyright violations already.
September 15th, 2006 at 1:19 am
I have used Copyscape before and it’s definitely a great resource to keep track of your site’s original content specially if you have a content rich site that’s been optimized for search engine purposes.
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:56 pm
I think copyscape is crap ,there I said it .
So why do I say this you ask ?
Because I have tried wrting article on some highly
used keyword terms .Now all the content in the article I wrote myself and guess what copyscape say I copied it ?
The fact is with millions of site out there based on the same highly used keyword term there is no content new under the internet sun .So I call copyscape crap,I mean I have friend who create new content site and if copyscape claims it’s copied he deletes and start over ..
One look and I see it say i copied when a few words are the same ???
fire-place.org
December 18th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Quick Question By the way is copyscape.com the only website out there doing this kind of function ?
http://www.fire-place.us
December 18th, 2006 at 10:44 am
It’s works by finding repeated phrases, rather than keywords. Phrasing is much more random than words. It’s like DNA. We all have the four bases making up our DNA (G, A, T & C) but it’s the way they’re put together that makes them special.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/y8zzj4
Looks to me like CopyScape has done a good job. Are you saying you had never seen the ‘woodstove.johnsspot.com/’ site before you wrote your content?
December 18th, 2006 at 11:20 am
Good tool to stay away from others who want to copy your content
February 1st, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Copyscape really does a good job.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
I personally use the http://www.copygator.com website to find duplicated content. To me it has a number of benefits over copyscape:
1. it’s automated and brings me results instead of me searching for duplicated content. All i had to do was submit my feed and it started monitoring my feed showing me who’s republished my articles on the web.
2. i get notified by email so it contacts me when it finds copies of my articles online.
3. i use their image badge feature to alert me directly on my website when my content is being lifted.
4. it’s a free service as opposed the “per page” cost of copyscape/copysentry.
January 20th, 2009 at 8:15 am