Plagiarism Checkers: 5 Free Websites To Catch The Copycats

“A lack of originality
Couldn’t focus on the day
so much for the radio
Everybody sounds the same
Everybody wears the same clothes now
And everybody plays the game”
That was from ‘Copycats’, a song by the Cranberries. Just swap the radio for the web and we could have an anthem for our times where content is free and content lifting is freedom. Copying is tame, plagiarism is the more serious (and demeaning) word and with the laws against copyright infringement in place, plagiarism as intentional fraud carries a mean look.
Content plagiarism on the web spreads as fast as the web itself. With blogging, which is usually written words, an original thought becomes the archetype . Duplicate content is the bane of webmasters and even bloggers. A webmaster can easily but unsuspectingly publish duplicate content on the fly (though a guy who knows his job won’t!). A blogger can see his work being scraped on another site. The bane – a lower page rank by search engines like Google which hates duplicate content.
Many tools exist which help us in sidestepping  prickly copyright issues. The professional ones are of course potent, spiffy and dollar loving. The free ones may not be too much on looks but without a pinch they are adequate for the blogger world. Here at MakeUseOf, we have previously covered quite a few content tracking web services.
Here are five more for the armory.

Plagiarism Checker

A free online service which searches for originality (or lack of it) using a few phrases taken from different parts of the document. The phrases need not be contained within search operators like quotation marks as the plagiarism checker does it on its own through its code. Content checking is optional with either Google or Yahoo.
The two search engines though are word limited in the use of phrases – Google allows 32 and Yahoo’s word limit is 50. Plagiarism Checker thus limits the phrase within the word count. The word limitation restricts the scope of the content check. The matches open up in another webpage.
In a previous post we had looked at how Google Alerts could be used to keep track of your content. This service provides a button to the Google Alerts page for setting it up.
A webpage can also be submitted for a plagiarism check through a URL.

Article Checker

A very similar plagiarism detection tool which checks for duplicate content using either Google or Yahoo. Both the search engines can be used to compare results. Input of content is through a text area box or by giving the URL of a webpage. The checker functions by taking blocks of text and running it through the search engines. A Google Alert can be set up for the positive matches with a click.

Plagiarism Detect

This is a full-featured web service with a free and a paid option. The free option requires a signup and gives us an upload of Doc or Text files (or paste contents in a text area) and basic duplicate checking. The site makes a disclaimer that it does not store the uploaded content. Despite the basic checking service, the results are neatly displayed for us to sift through.

Quote Finder

This is a very simple content checking aid from Google Blogoscoped; a site which unofficially covers Google related news. The plagiarism checker is a simple text area for pasting the relevant text. The results are highlighted in yellow with the number of sources obtained from the web search. Clicking on the highlighted phrases takes us to the Google search results page. It is simple, uncomplicated and relies on the power of Google search.

DOC Cop

This free web service offers the option of a File Check and a Web Check. Using File Check we can scan and compare a maximum of eight Microsoft Word or AdobePDF files of up to 100,000 words each against one another. We can specify the average string length (i.e. the number of words) that must be compared. The report can be optionally obtained in HTML or Doc format through email.

Web Check is where we can put a webpage, a Doc file or a PDF file through a duplicity check on the internet. Web Check is limited to a maximum of 550 words. Again, the word length can be specified using the string length dropdown.

The web tool requires registration and access is through a guest ID. A real time status indicator shows the current status of the submission. According to the site, it takes about an hour to generate and send the report using email.
With the help of these free web tools, detecting duplicate content is not too tough a task. For a content writer, these useful tools serve another purpose – to determine where his ghost written articles have ended up… or even where they have been re-used with due citation and credit. But mostly, it helps each writer check his work against the web to avoid unintentional duplication.
We have featured quite a few other tools here at Makeuseof.com –
Copyscape : See Who is Stealing your Blog Content
Plagium: Online Plagiarism Tracker
The Plagiarism Checker: Check Papers For Plagiarism
CopyrightSpot: Search Web for Copies of Your Blog Content
FairShare: Find Out Who Is Stealing Your Content
CopyGator: Tells You Who Is Stealing Your Blog Content
The use of this rooster of article plagiarism checking apps should be enough to make us all tread on the side of caution and keep our creative spirits intact. If you write (or publish)…do you check? Let us know.

How To Promote Your Blog Using Facebook Pages

One of the more effective ways of promoting your blog is to use a site everyone either loves or hates – Facebook. The social networking site allows you to create a page to promote your blog or business – and it’s completely free.  MakeUseOf has one and it’s doing very well.
By having a Facebook page for your blog, you can set up your RSS feed so your new posts appear on your fan page. Facebook members can then become a “fan” of your posts and comment on your posts inside Facebook.
In short, you can:

• create a mini community of loyal blog readers inside Facebook.
• encourage them to click through to your blog and sign up for the proper RSS feed.

So, are you interested in getting your page set up?   If so, here’s how to get it set up quickly.

1.  Sign up on Facebook

First you have to have a free Facebook account.   If not then go here and set one up.

2.  Click zee link

Then click on this link to get your fan page going.   Here is the page that will then appear :

If you are creating a page for a blog / website, you will need to choose “Brand, Product or Organization”.   Then from the drop-down list, select “website”.
Enter the name of your site (or whatever you want your page to be called) in “Name Of Other Business”, tick “I am authorized to create this page” (assuming of course you ARE authorized), enter your name under “Electronic Signature” and then click “Create Page”.

3.  Customize Your Page

Your page will now be set up and you will be taken straight there.
Here are some of the things you can do to customize your page :

Customize your image :

The first thing your page obviously needs is an image.  For blogs, the obvious image to first consider is your logo.
To upload an image, just point your mouse to the image area and a menu will pop up with various options.
You can either upload a photo, take a picture with your webcam or choose from a Facebook album.

Customize your site information :

In the “Info” tab, you can type detailed information about your site such as the URL, the “overview” (so this would be a good place to enter any tagline or motto that your site has.   MakeUseOf’s is “Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips”).
You can also enter information such as when you started the site  and if you have any “products” you’d like to talk about.
In short, use this section to blab away about your site.

Set up your blog RSS feed to show your new posts in Facebook

This is, I think, one of the most important aspects of a blog fan page.   If you are unable to show your new posts, how can you possibly persuade people to come to your site and sign up for the RSS feed?

• First, click on the “notes” tab at the top of the page.

• Select “Import A Blog” in the Notes Setting section. You can only import from 1 RSS feed at a time. Simply “Stop Importing” if you want to change the RSS feed.

• Enter the RSS URL in the box provided. Check the box next to the statement that you actually own the content. You cannot import RSS feeds from websites that are not your own or that you do not have permission to reproduce.

• Click the “Start Importing” button. Facebook will import the content of the RSS feed for you to preview. If everything looks OK, then go ahead and press the “Continue” button. Your RSS feed will now be automatically imported into your “Notes” section.
• After that, everytime you publish a post on your blog, a summary of the post along with a link will appear on your Facebook page.

4. Publicise Your Page

Now that your Facebook page is all set up, all that remains to be done is to publicise it to your readers so they can “fan” you.  Some methods to get the word out there include :

• Writing a blog post about your new Facebook page (don’t forget to link to it).
• Putting a prominent link at the top of your blog or in the sidebar.  Just grab a Facebook logo from Google Images and then link it to your page.
• Sending out an email to all your Facebook friends and telling them about your new fan page.  If they were interested enough to become Facebook friends with you, I’m sure they will be interested in your blog too.