Copycats - How to Check if Your Copy is Being Scraped

For people who have spent a lot of time creating new copy for their website, their blogs and their collateral materials, nothing is worse than having people use their copy without permission. Amazingly, many Internet users think nothing of lifting some content to repurpose for their own needs. Maybe because the content is so easy to find, maybe because they don’t think anyone will find out. Who knows? But one thing’s for certain. Stealing copy (otherwise known as copy scraping) is just that… stealing. And it’s a punishable offense.

1. Copyscape.com - Check to see if your content is original or check if someone has used your copy on their site. They also have an affordable program that helps you thwart copy thieves with their Copysentry product. For pennies a page, you can have them email you daily, weekly, monthly pages that have used your content.
    
2. ArticleChecker.com - You can paste your article in blank field and the site does a quick analysis of content on the web. Any pages come up with your content, those page links will display. Of course, if you post your articles in multiple locations, those pages will come up too.
    
3. Google.com - The old-fashioned way to check for copycat pages is to paste a few sentences or paragraph into the Google search bar. All web pages showing those same words will display. Then "Gotchya" - you can even report this to Google to have their web pages removed!

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