Combating Website Plagiarism

Another reason you need a tool to monitor content is if you regularly outsource articles. If you pay for article content to post on your site, you should have a way to ensure this content is in fact original. Duplicate content is not something the search engines like to see.

So the question becomes, how can one detect website plagiarism? And, once detected, what can you do about it? This article will answer both these questions.

The first free tool I'd like to introduce you to is called Copyscape. You can place a Copyscape banner within the footer of any page of your website. This can help deter people that feel there is nothing wrong with "borrowing" your material.

When you go to the Copyscape homepage, you are presented with a web address box where you can enter the URL of the page you wish to check. Simply paste in the URL and Copyscape will search out sites that have the exact or similar copy. Below are the results for one of my most popular web articles Marketing To Your Customer Types. This article is syndicated throughout the web and, as you can see, Copyscape has located all the sites. This allows me to check each site to ensure I have been properly credited for the material.

On more than one occasion, Copyscape has allowed to me identify sites that were blatantly stealing portions of my web content. A quick email to the offending site remedied the situation within 24 hours.

Great service, right? Well, there is a tiny little catch. The free Copyscape service limits you to checking 5 pages a month. In addition, the results of any particular search is limited to 10. So what do you do if you need to check more than 5 pages a month? You purchase search credits at a cost of only 5 cents per search. When you purchase search credits, the search results are no longer limited to 10 and they are more comprehensive. The minimum number of credits you can purchase at any one time is 100, for a cost of $5.

Whether you use the free service or decide to purchase extra credits, Copyscape recommends you place one of their banners on your web pages to let potential plagiarists know that you check your site content on a regular basis. There is no cost to use these banners on your site. Click here to see the various Copyscape banners.

Copyscape offers a professional service, called Copysentry, that will automatically scan your website on a weekly basis and email you URL's of sites that have the same or similar copy. It runs $4.95 per month for a weekly scan of up to 10 pages and an additional $0.25 per month for each additional page (up to 100 pages.) If you're looking for a completely automated way of detecting website plagiarism, Copysentry is a great tool.

Another tool that can be useful in detecting website plagiarism is Google Alerts. While not as comprehensive as Copyscape, Google Alerts will allow you to monitor terms like article titles or specific phrases. When Google finds a website that contains this same phrase, you will receive an email listing the URL of the site. This is free service that only requires you register for a Google Account.

Please keep in mind that no system is going to be perfect. The web is a big place and these services, while very good, may miss detecting some content. However, by running your own queries using Copyscape, placing a Copyscape Banner on your site, and using Google Alerts, you will be in a great position to detect many forms of website plagiarism.

So once you've detected a site that has copied your content, what exactly do you do?

First off, I recommend you place a footer at the bottom of your web pages that states your copyright. Something like:

If your site contains specialized information and you feel you require extra protection, you can officially copyright your entire site through the United States Copyright office. If you ever had to go to court regarding copied site content, showing that your site is officially registered would certainly help provide proof you are the originator of that content. I don't recommend this route for most people as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides adequate protection. Click here if you require additional information on officially copyrighting your website.

Once you have identified an offending site, your first step is to contact both the site administrator and the company that is hosting the site. This can be done by visiting Whois Source and entering the domain name in order to obtain all pertinent contact details. Below is an example of my Whois registration data.

Once you have the contact information for both the site administrator and the hosting provider, send them an email as well as a registered letter explaining the nature of the copyright infringement and requesting the page be removed immediately. Further, explain that the infringement is in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and provide the specific details of the website plagiarism, including your page URL as well as the offending site's URL.

Be polite and professional in your letter but request a response ASAP. Monitor the site to ensure the content is removed in a timely fashion. The host of the offending site will generally take these requests seriously and work to resolve them.

If you find a site owner that refuses to remove the copied material, you can report the site to one of the major search engines. Typically, you will never have to go this far, but I have specified the links where you can file complaints with both Google and Yahoo.

The search engines are getting better and better at detecting website plagiarism. While it can be very annoying to find a site that has copied your material, it is not likely to affect your rankings in the engines (except possibly in extreme situations.)

Placing a Copyscape banner on your web pages and periodically checking for copied content (via Copyscape and Google Alerts) will not take much of your time and go a long way in discouraging website plagiarism.

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