How to Deal with Plagiarism
With a ton of websites being launched on the internet each day, plagiarism has become a dreaded thing. Not only is the content being copied, but even the design of a popular and well-ranked website can also get stolen.
What can you do when your website graphics and content are stolen? How can you prevent online plagiarism? What action can you take against websites that are stealing your content?
How to detect if someone is copying your website?
Today it's quite simple to detect if your website content is being stolen. There are so many reliable plagiarism checker tools on the internet. You can search for an online plagiarism checker or plagiarism detector website. Run a test on them and select one plagiarism detector that you think is the best and easy to use.
Some website owners think that they can use search browsers to detect plagiarism. Search browsers have limitations and are limited in their search capabilities. On the other hand, plagiarism checker tools do a very good job of checking plagiarism.
Copy a few sentences from the content on your website into a plagiarism detector tool and run it. If it lists websites that have verbatim the same text, you will know that your content is being plagiarized. You can then visit those websites and see the extent to which your content has been plagiarized.
How can you get copied content removed?
The easiest approach would be to send a polite email to the website owner and request him to remove the copied content from his website. If you cannot get hold of the website owner's email address, you can post a comment on the website.
What to do if the website owner refuses to comply?
Yes, this does happen, and at times the website owner ignores your request or refuses to comply or accuses you of copying his site's content.
In such cases, you should request the web hosting company to stop hosting of the website that's copying your content. Send the proof with your complaint. Most web hosting companies are very strict and will warn the website owner to remove the plagiarized content.
You can track the web hosting company by using SEO tools. Most of these tools are free to use, and you will be able to find the website hosting company's email address by visiting the website and tracking their address in the 'contact us' section.
Request search engines to remove the duplicate content site
If all your efforts fail to produce any positive results you should contact the search browsers. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others accept complaints of getting websites removed if they violate copyright laws.
Send your complaint and send them the proof that you have gathered using a plagiarism detector tool. An electronic copy of the plagiarism detector's results should be ample proof for the search engines to flag the website and include them in the black list.
By taking these measures, hopefully the website that’s plagiarizing your content and graphics will get the punishment that it deserves.
