Using Copyscape

In view of the fact that home business people are likely to gain inspiration from other people’s articles when they are writing their own, there is a risk of plagiarism.

Either deliberate copying as a shortcut to get the writing job done, or accidental plagiarism which can happen when a particular expression lodges in your mind and you only find out later that it was a copyrighted or even trademarked expression.

Wikipedia defines plagiarism as “the practice of claiming, or implying, original authorship or incorporating material from someone else’s written or creative work, in whole or in part, into ones own without adequate acknowledgment. Unlike cases of forgery, in which the authenticity of the writing, document, or some other kind of object, itself is in question, plagiarism is concerned with the issue of false attribution.”

To prevent this from happening, you can use an online service available at Copyscape.com for 5 cents per search. You pre-pay for batches of searches, with 100 as the minimum. That’s a tiny $5 and your credits last for one year.

To search, you paste in either the text or the URL. It returns within seconds with all the results in its extensive database.

The results will look quite similar to a Google search results page, showing the hyperlinked title of the page, two lines of text and the URL of the page which contains the copied content.

To examine the duplicated content in any of the results pages, you can either click the ‘Compare Text’ button or copy the URL manually and paste it into a new browser window.

Here are a few tips from a Copyscape user.

CHECKING PDF DOCUMENTS

What I clicked on the button to view a PDF, all I saw was encrypted gobbledegook – of no use at all. So I copied the URL into a new browser window to see the PDF. Of course that way, there is no highlighting of the duplicate content.

When you click the Back arrow to return to the results screen at Copyscape, you’ll notice that the counter of ‘Premium searches remaining’ has gone down by another 1. At 5 cents each, that’s not going to put you out of business of course, but it’s mildly annoying to have to pay twice to see the same set of results.

So for PDF documents, I always copy the URL and visit the site in a new browser window and then I may look for duplicate text using the search function built into my Firefox browser.

In other words, Copyscape is not so helpful when the duplicate text turns out to be in PDF documents. However it’s great for regular web pages.

CHECKING WEB PAGES

For regular HTML pages, when you click the ‘Compare Text’ button you see the duplicate content highlighted – each expression in a different color. Just know that it will cost you an additional 5 cents when you go back to the search results page.

Overall, it’s a great tool for article writers and re-writers, whatever you’re writing about.

Article by Gary Harvey of http://FindHotMarkets.com, the Internet’s BIGGEST LIST of ways to find hot niches, best selling products and hot markets.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gary_Harvey

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