How to Use CopyScape to find Who Plagiarized your Work

There are many people out there who are cunning whereas others are outright lazy and copy content published by others and publishe it as if it was their own. What this does is that it infringes on the copyright of the original owner. This is just not morally right and you will lose the trust of your clients and this may have serious implications on your business. The first step towards curbing plagiarism is to find out if any of the content in your website has been duplicated elsewhere. There are many ways how you can do this but the best is to use plagiarism checkers such as CopyScape.

CopyScape is free plagiarism checker which is available online and will help you find anyone who has copied your work no matter where they have posted it in the internet. The ease of use is what makes this tool a great one.

Step by step guide

1. Visit copyscape.com.

2. There will be a search box on the home page. Type your website’s URL or copy then paste it here. 

3. Click on the 'Go' button. 

The CopyScape tool will go through all the website libraries there are online and bring up results showing the websites that have similar content. The results are obtained fast thanks to the proper indexing that has been done on the internet. 

Free CopyScape is good but it has its limitations. 

You can only be able to obtain ten results and so if there are more people copying your content out there you will not be able to know it. To widen the number of results you get, opt for Premium CopyScape which only costs you 5 cents for every search. With this, there is no limit to the results you get. In this case, you can use CopyScape alternative to check your text on plagiarism.

There are several results shown; what next?

When you receive several results, it means that someone is probably misusing your content out there. The very first thing to do is to confirm that these are not your web pages. If they belong to others, then it is a cause for alarm. But before taking any action stay calm. Do not start sending out messages to the culprit angrily using nasty words. This could later land you in trouble. There are several steps you could take.

Place warning banners on your website

CopyScape allows users to add warnings to their websites. These state that the website is protected by CopyScape and warn people against copying your content.

Contact the culprit

If you can find the contact details of the one who has plagiarized your work send them a message and ask them to kindly take the copied parts down. Start off with kind messages but ensure that your point is firmly pointed out. If you do not receive a response, send another message threatening to take legal action.

Report

You have two options in this regard. The first is to report the website to Google. This will cause them to be removed from any Google search results. You may also write a letter to their host requesting that they take the site down.

Sue

This should be the last course of action when all else has failed. Find a good lawyer and engage their services in filling a court case on Copyright.