Warning: Copyscape and Blogs
Originality is important in all types of writing, obviously and web writing is no exception. When I do a majority of my research online, or when I outsource to another writer, I always run the content through Copyscape.
Copyscape does free plagiarism checks that compare a URL to the rest of the world wide web. In order to use this, I had been uploading my work to my blog, then using the blog URL in Copyscape. Easy, right?
Not so much.
It wasn’t until I was checking someone else’s work that I realized the implications of uploading to the web before delivering to the client. Her work came back as a match to a blog that had a completely different subject from the articles. The articles were word for word, but something didn’t add up. I was confused so I asked her about the similarity.
It turns out that she was doing the same thing I had been doing, and Google had indexed it. You can imagine my horror thinking back on all the times I’d done this with my content.
I got premium credits at Copyscape immediately. At only 5 cents a search, they are a bargain compared to being accused of plagiarism.
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