Do you check to see if others are plagiarizing your content?

[MichaelCorfman]

Plagiarism is a common problem on the web. How affiliates deal with this issue when it arises has been the subject of several poll questions in the past. Here are three examples:

Have you ever filled a DMCA complaint?
Have you ever reported copyright infringement or spam to an affiliate program?
Have you gotten an affiliate program to take action based on content theft?

For this weeks poll, I ask whether you ever check to see if others are plagiarizing your content? And, if you do check, be sure to share the approach you use, how frequently you find others have copied your content, and what you do about it.

Perhaps the best known service for checking for plagiarism is copyscape. But there are many other tools available (just search the web for plagiarism checker). And, of course, you can always check for plagiarism yourself by simply doing a web search for content from pages on your site to see where that content appears on the web (that is what most plagiarism checkers do under the covers anyway).

Michael

[Cash Bonus]

I try to find a way to see how I can get in touch with whoever is plagiarizing my content.

[Triple7]

Yes, I did a few times and every time I've seen other webmaster copying content. Usually with just a few words changed. Without any tools I found sometimes re-written content that apparently passed this kind of tests.

The thing is a bit what to do about it. I've heard all kind of excuses of webmaster that I've mailed about it:
- it really won't happen again
- i got a new content writer and I am too busy to check if content is plagiarized
- my content writer didn't know the difference between copying and re-writing
- what the &%%&% are you complaining, you were the first with this content, Google knows that, hence you're not affected.

I must say in some cases after the mail it stopped. Although almost every program has in its terms that affiliates are not allowed to promote them on websites with copyright breachments, it didn't seem that the programs I've contacted were annoyed with the behaviour of their affilates.

It's a big problem in my eyes. Recently I had even a newspaper copying some content. Of course without the backlink.

[Vargoso]

Yes I have done that checks before, but never took actions about that. All our content is internally written so we know for sure our team is not copying, but when checking the competitors website we found lots of similitudes, not only with content, also with some other strategies we use.

I have just made a test with CopyScape and OMG we have some winners out there

[AussieDave]

I check periodically, however, what seems to be the status qou these days are hackers using scraped content.

Of those who aren't the aforementioned, in the past I have sent out cease and desist emails to the hosting provider. Only problem with this is... If the site using the scraped content is on a dedicated server, the host-company does sweet FA, and instead forwards my complaint (which contains my email addy and full name) to the person who has stolen my content - the last person I want knowing my details. In which case, a mountain of spam, and all manner of crap arrives within a day or two.

Hence, no longer contact anyone.

Instead I've added, meta name="robots" content="noarchive", to the header tags. Also have other security measures in place, which limits access from all but genuine ISP visitors. Bona fide SE bots have access too. This has stopped my content being scraped by a lot of script kiddies and other scrapers.

NB - There are a lot of fake SE bot UA's, and other trash bots which don't gain access.

Adding no-right-click and/or other javascript deterrents, don't work.

This also includes some WP security plugins (which imho are mostly all snake oil).

[Globalscore]

Great post, and I believe there are many of us who have suffered from plagiarism and copycats all these years.
My question is whether you use any free or paid anti-plagiarism tool. Is there something out there worth trying?

[wonderpunter]

i only check if i see a drop in traffic for a particular page, I remember a few years some other site was rehosting all my content which caused a big drop. ithink the algo is smart enough now to deal with it

[Rostick]

As a betting tips website I get plagiarized frequently by tipsters around the web, I check it manually in Google and generally the website owners are kind enough to take action. But unfortunately there`s even somebody who scraped my entire website and duplicated it, and I still wasn`t able to convince GoDaddy (who hosts it) to take it down . I`m not sure if it affects my rankings, but I think it might.

[AussieDave]

unfortunately there`s even somebody who scraped my entire website and duplicated it, and I still wasn`t able to convince GoDaddy (who hosts it) to take it down . I`m not sure if it affects my rankings, but I think it might.

Does this clone site rank in Google?
You can lodge a DMCA with Google, to have the entire site (or pages using your plagiarized content) removed from the index.

[Rostick]

Does this clone site rank in Google?
You can lodge a DMCA with Google, to have the entire site (or pages using your plagiarized content) removed from the index.

It does. Thank you for the advice, I will do that for sure!!

[allfreechips]

I have had entire sites copied in the past but don't really seem to have much issues anymore. Using a free trial service now and then on main pages can not hurt to check though.

[blackjackzilla]

take it down, push godaddy to the limit, at the ned this is your business to protect. good luck

[AussieDave]

push godaddy to the limit

GD or for that matter 99% of hosting companies these days wont do jack, unless you hold a Trademark, or you produce a court order.

The best way to deal with plagiarism these days is to submit a DMCA to Google. The offending pages will be dropped from the index, or if it's a cloned site, the entire URL will be dropped. Either way, this is the BEST solution to protect your copyrighted content, and also your Brand

[slotcatalog]

We faced plagiarism a couple of times. Mostly people used our images. In this case we asked them remove it or indicate the source.

[casinodonkies.com]

I check it manually once a week.

[tipsterp]

I check it manually but copied content doesn't rank well.

[hgambler]

Found out via google search console strange urls pointing to my site and I did file a DMCA 2 times, as my website where entirely copycat on 2 different domains hosted on a Russian server. Obviously contacted the host company which was useless since no reply. were hundreds of copy of websites on this russian server lol

[best5-casinos.com]

Maybe once a month, I check it manually.

[Online Poker America]

What a great post, and very interesting to see and learn about this! I'm sure many of us are in the same boat too.

[gil.langelaan]

Checking underperforming pages for plagiarism time after time.