Has Your Content Been Plagiarized

Posted by Barbara Swafford on Wednesday, October 24th 2007

Filed in: Archives, Blogging Lessons Tags: adsense, Blogging, digg, google, technorati

In my previous post, I wrote about adding internal links in your posts, to deter having your content plagiarized.

Today’s Lesson

How would you know if your content is being plagiarized, and if so, what will you do?

Shortly after I started blogging, I wanted to see how many of my articles were indexed, so I did a search for my site. I was indexed about 40 times. That confused me, as I had not written 40 posts.

Well, some of my posts were referenced by Digg, Technorati and Sphere. But than I found an odd entry. When I clicked on it, I saw my entire page, including all graphics, but at the very top, was a full banner of Google AdSense ads, all in a foreign language.

I wasn’t sure what to do, so I researched the URL, and found the IP address for the site. I then went to my webhosting account, and used the “IP Deny Manager” to block the IP address from having access to my site.

Todays Assignment

Go To Copyscape.com, a free service for checking your site for plagiarized content.

On Copyscape, you can check your site, read additional pages for suggestions of how to handle plagiarism, plus download a banner for your site.

Do a search for your site.

Are any of your posts are being plagiarized? If you find an instance of plagiarism, what action will you take?

BTW: I checked my sites with Copyscape. I found a new instance of plagiarism of my other blog. A site extracted a sentence from a product review I had done.

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Tags: adsense, Blogging, digg, google, technorati

18 Comments

said on October 24th, 2007

Tried it - looks useful.

I had only been plagiarised by a site we advertise on.

Which is a shame! I’d kind of hoped I may have been!

Must get to work on that content…

Barbara

said on October 24th, 2007

Ian,

It sounds like you really want to be plagiarized. Then what? A celebration?

said on October 25th, 2007

I don’t mind really as long as it’s not commercially compromising.

I suppose I’m still in the early stages of having fun with blogs. While I have some very clear goals and direction, it is still fun simply writing stuff that people may find useful.

Barbara

said on October 25th, 2007

Ian,

Yes, blogging is a lot of fun. And we write to try and help others.

In one sense plagiarism could be construed as a compliment, but I would rather see others be original with their content, and just link to blogs that may add value to what they have written.

said on October 26th, 2007

What is the incentive of people plagiarizing other sites? How do they make money out of plagiarizing other sites? I am not sure why people want to do this.

This is a difficult word, I can barely spell it.

Barbara

said on October 26th, 2007

People steal content, because they don’t want to write their own. They may need content so their site gets crawled. They also may steal content that is ranked high on search engines, in hopes of having their page ranked high too. Undoubtedly, their sites are probably filled with ads they hope readers will click on.

They may steal content from a business blog that’s doing well, and hope that the content brings traffic to their site as well.

I’m sure there are other reasons, but those are ones I can think of.

said on October 29th, 2007

Wow…. people take such an effort to make money? It feels it is easier to write own your article. Luckily, my article has not been stolen I am not sure if I should be pleased or I should be sad that it is not popular enough!!

Barbara

said on October 30th, 2007

Asako,

Unfortunately, a lot of the time, it all comes down to money. It’s sad that some resort to stealing content from others, but….it happens.

Be happy your content isn’t plagiarized, as then you would have to decide how to deal with that situation.

Catherine Lawson

said on October 31st, 2007

Barbara - I haven’t tried checking yet, but one day some plonker actually wrote in the comments section on my blog that I’d stolen his post. He had blocked my IP so I couldn’t check.

But, the thing that confused me was the fact that it was one of the things I’d written about interviewing and it was written from personal experience. I thought it was a bit of a cheek for him to accuse me of stealing something that he couldn’t possibly have written to begin with.

Barbara

said on October 31st, 2007

You know Catherine, we meet all kinds, on the web.

He must have really liked your post to say you stole it from him. He wishes, he could have written such a great post.

Try testing your blog on Copyscape. If he has the same post as you, a link to his site will appear. That’s how I found the sentence that was copied from one of my posts. That….wasn’t a big deal, however, what didn’t make sense to me, was that they inserted a sentence from a product review I did, in a page of recipe links. (makes me wonder where the recipes came from).

said on January 5th, 2008

Well Barbara have checked a few of my pages and they were ok. I have found copies of my articles that I put on Ideamarketers etc before and they had been used and the link removed. So I just emailed and asked that they either reinstate the link or remove the article.

Barbara

said on January 6th, 2008

Catherine,

That was a good ides. Hopefully they comply.

I have to check mine again too. Seems like that will have to become regular blog “maintenance”….as if we don’t have enough to keep us busy.

said on February 6th, 2008

I’ve used the copyscape site twice and it’s very helpful. I have people linking back to my blog with my posts as their entry. Why do people do that.

Hey I like your blog, I will subscribe. Thanks!

Natural Woman’s last blog post..Meet the Bloggers

Barbara

said on February 6th, 2008

Hi Natural Woman,

I don’t know why people use our entries as their post. I imagine they are too lazy to write their own stuff, and want to pull traffic from what we write based on our keywords.

Thank you for the compliment, and for subscribing.

Barbara’s last blog post..If Content Is Queen, Where Is She Hiding

said on March 21st, 2008

One more thing, my friend informed me that she was going to copy my blog content to her myspace blog and call it Blog Biting. I said well I’ll see you in court. I’m sure she was kidding, she better be.

I do find that some people on certain blogs release it to public domain meaning they are free to do whatever with it, steal, rip or change it. It’s freeing in that nobody can steal what’s already free. Peace of mind. I used a money article that was part of free domain, but I still gave the original author credit.

Natural Woman’s last blog post..Free Stuff!

Barbara Swafford

said on March 22nd, 2008

Hi Natural,

I don’t know why but your comments are going to my spam folder. I fished this out one…

Hopefully your friend was kidding.

Those free articles make be think about duplicate content. It’s written that Google frowns on that, but maybe they don’t. Who really knows for sure.

Like you, I always link to my source.

John Jonson

said on October 14th, 2008

What about sites with creative content? like poetry, short stories, etc. Does this mean I should get everything I post copyrighted for risk of others taking my stuff and using it elsewhere?

Barbara Swafford

said on October 15th, 2008

Hi John Jonson:

Anytime we put our work on the internet we risk having it stolen. Posting a privacy policy, terms of use statement or copyright symbols may deter some (usually the honest ones), but if someone really wants to plagiarize our content, they’ll do it no matter if it’s copyrighted or not.

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