I originally planned to write an article about how to write unique content, but seeing that this has been recently written about, I decided to focus on an aspect of writing unique content that isn’t always touched on: avoiding plagiarism.
What is PLAGIARISM?
If you recall your communication classes at school, I’m sure you’ve come across the term.
Plagiarism, by its very sound, conjures images of a disease or a parasite. It sounds bad, because it is bad.
Wikipedia gives a polite definition:
…[it] is the use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.
Plagiarism.org, on the other hand, is not shy about condemning the practice:
…plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterward.
Plagiarism is a huge problem in schools and institutions of learning, where students would submit very unoriginal papers with copy-pasted text in them, pass off Plato’s or some other thinker’s words and ideas as their own, and try to graduate without having actually done some real thinking and learning.
Plagiarism is also a serious issue with media people — journalists, broadcasters, tv reporters — it’s an offense that could cost them their careers.
But plagiarism isn’t limited to the academic world or the mainstream media. As a blogger, because you deal with ideas and words, you should be very much aware and concerned. Plagiarism can be committed knowingly or accidentally. And for all you know, it could be losing you money already — from content scapers and unscrupulous people who are copying your content.
Facts on PLAGIARISM
Bloggers are not exempt from the rule.
True, bloggers have a lot more freedom in choosing the topics they write about, or how they write about those topics. What’s really very liberating about blogging is that you can write the most honest critique of a service or product and not get fired for it.
However, this freedom does not mean that you can just take whatever content you like off the sites you visit and post it indiscriminately on your blog. I’m not saying you’ve been doing this with the malicious intent to plagiarize. But the thing is, a lot of people commit plagiarism unintentionally — so it helps to know what it is to help you avoid it and its consequences.
Plagiarizing means you have nothing unique to offer.
Why are you blogging in the first place? Isn’t it to voice out your own thoughts and opinions and let the whole world know that you have something different or remarkable to say?
Blogging provides a very good opportunity for you to establish authority in your selected niche. It may be hard to try to write original material regularly, but think long-term. A good reputation takes a long time to build up, and just a short while to wreck.
Duplicate content is bad for your rankings.
Another good reason NOT to merely copy-paste material from elsewhere. Duplicate content (whether plagiarized or legitimately acquired) does not offer any new value to readers, especially from the viewpoint of search engines. Google and other search engines love unique content — and in case of duplicate material, such as syndicated news, the search engines usually give ranking weight to the source.
Update: Duplicate content is a hotly debated issue. I’d like to clarify that in the context of this article, we’re more concerned with duplicate content obtained without consent, or scraped. While I concede that some scraper sites may rank higher than the original — because often, they do nothing else but aim for high rankings — search engines clearly have policies against what they do.
Plagiarized material does get detected.
When I was working as a web copywriter, one of my colleagues got caught for plagiarism. The actual site owner filed a complaint with an Internet governing body, our company got sent a legal cease-and-desist letter, and we had to promptly take down the plagiarized article. I don’t know what happened to that writer (he was overseas), but the point is, violators do get caught.
Plagiarism will get you nowhere professionally.
I met someone who’s supposedly an SEO copywriter. He showed me his blog. I was impressed by it because it had many articles on SEO and getting good traffic. Then, out of habit, I ran some of the articles by a plagiarism checker. And to my shock, the articles were copied word for word from other SEO sites. Man, I’d never go to that guy for SEO advice, much less hire or recommend him to anyone I know in the future.
Plagiarism is plain stealing.
There are lots of scraper sites out there, sites that offer a hodge-podge of content taken from multiple sites — stolen, I’d say, because those sites don’t know about it. Some manually copy-paste material on their scraper blogs, others use more advanced scripts and bots. These sites exist to make money exploiting other people’s hard work…and that’s just plain wrong. Get good karma, do the right thing.
How to Avoid Plagiarism in Your Writing
- The rule of the thumb is: Let your readers know that the content isn’t yours and show them whose hard work it was. Think of it as common courtesy: Would you like one day to find your best written article or your 5-day-production video posted elsewhere, without your name on either of them?
- Take only what can be taken, in the first place. Keep in mind that some stuff you find online may not be reproduced or republished without the author’s permission, or have other heavier restrictions.Check for any copyright labels or terms of use documentation on any material that you’d like to repost on your blog. If you’re still not sure, it’s always best to check with the authors or creators themselves if you’d like to use their work. (This second point actually refers to copyright, which I’ll write more about in my next post.)
- Say it in your own words. Now this can be tricky. It’s hard to write without using much of your source’s words especially if you don’t fully understand a topic yet.
- Check your work using online plagiarism tools:
- Dupli Checker
- Article Checker
- Plagiarism Checker
- Google – (yep, trusty ol’ Google)
Try this: Research and learn as much as you can about the topic, then let it sink in, then forget about it for a while. When you’re ready to write, imagine that you’re telling your friend about it. Or, have a friend actually listen to you explain the topic.
How to Discourage Others from Stealing Your Blog Content?
- Disable right-click for pages on your site.
- Put an explicit copyright banner on your site. You can also get a creative commons license Copyscape.
What If Someone Plagiarized Your Blog?
- I recommend the steps enumerated by Copyscape: Responding to online plagiarism
- Report plagiarism to search engines
These are just some of the tips. If you wish to know more about plagiarism and how to avoid or fight it, there are plenty of helpful resources online.
Related posts
- Shortcomings of Duplicate Content As internet users, we all more or less go through the same problem of duplication of content. But before going...
- Duplicate Content: Penalty or Policy? What is duplicate content? Will Google penalize for duplicate content? If you copy and republish someone’s article, will you get...
- Google Hates Duplicate Content – The Fix If you are new to WordPress, you will notice that your post content will be displayed or I should say,...
- 15 SEO Tools for Beginners Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of optimizing your site blog to rank higher in SERP or Search Engine...
- I’m in the Top 100 thoushallblog.com – A blog that helps Beginners to blog better has finally made it into the 45n5 Top 100 (#96)...
{ 54 comments }
Great post, made me go back and double check to make sure I’ve given credit where credit is due.
Time to make more time for unique content!
LinearChaos´s lastest post..Ways to Entertain Yourself at Home to Keep from Spending
Thanks for stopping by LinearChaos! May you find more time to write great unique content. (That bored cat on your site is soo adorable –sorry, I love cats, couldn’t help it.) :)
Firstly in regards to academia yes; no point copy and pasting you are not going to learn anything.
‘Duplicate content is bad for your rankings.’
This is…umm bollocks! this is the reason article directories etc works so well; it is IMPOSSIBLE to debunk all copied works.
Hell I would even go as far as challenge you to grab an article from elsewhere and see who ranks higher for the title after a week; If played right YOU could rank higher then the original.
Re: syndications site ‘http://techmeme.com/‘ a great example it ranks very high and all it does is syndicate. Yes partially but it still ranks for content all grabbed automatically.
The SEO site you mentioned I am willing to wage it ranked fairly well and had PR.
Donace´s lastest post..Oh Spammer Spam ME!!!
Thanks Donace for giving a differing view on the matter. I should have been more clear about discussing duplicate content in the context of plagiarism — that is, pure copying without giving credit to the sources, or scraping. Techmeme links back & acknowledges its sources. The SEO site I mentioned merely copied its content and fooled readers into thinking it was original. A pure scraper.
Search engines have rules against scrapers, but I guess it will boil down to how search engines deal with it — policy-wise, and technology-wise. True, many scraper sites rank even higher than the original — but you said it yourself, “If played right YOU could rank higher then the original.” That’s really possible and these sites are keen on taking advantage of every opportunity, every loophole to rank higher. But the issue remains that they steal their content.
some scrapers though are really good at what they do and can be very hard to detect; I know of a few scraper sites that rank very well and bring the owners a nice chunk of change.
Though people who take your content without linking back, fortunate for me its happened only once. All I did was name and shame them and they linked back :p
Donace´s lastest post..Oh Spammer Spam ME!!!
Thanks for a very interesting and indepth look at Plagiarism. Yes, you are right about lots of what you said, especially “Plagiarism is plain stealing”. I think everyone can write what will be interesting, so why copy another person’s work, especially doing so word for word. Thanks for sharing, once again, Junnette.
You’re most welcome. :) I agree that anyone can write something interesting, just as anyone can tell an interesting story or two. Not two persons have exactly the same experience, even identical twins or people living under the same roof.
Hello Junnette,
I just had a mini rant about copy and paste articles last night. I did not go into the Plagiarism details so, I am glad that you have the information here.
I think it is just as easy to write a note about a great article you find and post a link to it. But, the ones who take the whole article are hungry for content and most likely do not have the ‘ability’ (being nice) to write their own. If they take it without permission – well, I will not say what I think here.
Thanks for the information,
Sheryl
Sheryl Loch´s lastest post..Could a Monkey Post Your Blog?
Thanks Sheryl for mentioning me in your blog! I’ve done a lot of major rantings in the past about copy-paste articles, so I can understand where you’re coming from. Not everyone can write, and writers write differently, but the last thing one should do is to steal ideas and credit for another’s hard work. Sometimes though, people are just unaware that it’s a crime, so it helps to write and talk more about it.
I think talking about plagiarism is an important issue, especially on the Web.
Online, it’s easy to copy anything, and I believe you’re right that many do it. I think it’s a particular danger because blogging is a collaborative medium — so the idea is to share ideas without stealing them. (Some people don’t seem to know the difference.)
As you point out in your post, though, why steal if the whole point of a blog is to express your own voice?
Plus, you miss out on the real value of collaborating — linking to other blogs and connecting in a community of readers.
– Gina
Gina Chen´s lastest post..More on Twitter’s usefulness for journalists
Good point on being able to tell the difference between sharing and stealing content. Some people unintentionally steal when all they want to do is share because they forget to include one very important information: the source. There are those who do it intentionally, of course, and unfairly profit from it. But in the long term, I think it’s bad for everyone, because plagiarism kills the incentive to be original and hinders the creation of really good ideas — things that real collaboration are supposed to foster. The net will end up with a lot of trash if plagiarism goes unchecked…and people might go elsewhere for real value.
Thanks for putting out a well thought out post detailing plagiarism. Although I think it should be common sense not to steal other people’s content, some people think that the internet has a different set of rules.
Copyspace is a great tool against people stealing your content.
True. As the cliche goes, common sense isn’t so common. The internet may be a high-tech place, but as someone pointed out a long time ago (I believe it was Marshall McLuhan of mass media fame), technology is just an extension of our existing physical skills (example: cars are for expanding the area where our feet can bring us, radio and phones are for making our voices reach farther, computers are for helping our brains use and make sense of information). So the internet is still made up of people, and basic human rules of decency remain.
Any experience in using Copyscape before?
There is no worse feeling than finding an article word for word that you wrote on someone else’s blog with no credit. Sometimes if you send them a strongly worded email they will take it down but other times people will ignore you. Very frustrating but there are always bad eggs in the basket.
Great detail although I am not sure I agree about the duplicate content.
Jen´s lastest post..Blogging- So Much More Than Just Writing
Hey Jen,
I know that feeling…that sinking feeling that gives in to rage sometimes when your protests go ignored. Have you tried reporting those people? As the author, you have every right to do that.
About the duplicate content part — I’m actually referring to scraper sites. I’m updating that part just to be clear.
Thanks for reading this article! :)
I am just to avoiding plagiarism due to the fact that I was in college for five years. It taught that I needed to site all my sources when I found new information from a source
Donny Gamble´s lastest post..Why I Don’t Believe in Dofollow Comments
Good for you, Donny. :) I think we’ve been taught at school to do just that because we have to use it after we’re done studying. Avoiding plagiarism is not just an academic thing.
I am about to raise a question, but while reading the article you already answered it. Thanks for posting this and i hope bloggers should understand this rule. More power Junette!
Ambo´s lastest post..Bloggers Project for Flash Flood Victims in Cagayan De Oro City
Thanks Ambo! (I commented on your blog about the cdo bloggers project — I want to join the cause too.)
Copying exactly is unethical. Some do rewrites just to make sure it is unique and copyspace pass. If we want to write something that is not belong to us, it is good to give a link back to them saying that it’s source.
Atniz´s lastest post..What To Sell On Your Blog?
You’ve brought up the subject of rewriting. A lot of existing content out there are just rewrites of older information (original doesn’t exactly mean we have to pull out articles out of nowhere, like rabbits out of a magician’s hat). Information is most useful when built upon previous information, because that’s how knowledge improves. That’s why sharing or collaboration, as Gina in her comment said, is very valuable.
Rewriting is trickier and harder, though. There’s a lot of room to make a mistake. The simpler solution is often to show exactly which parts aren’t yours, cite the source and link back to it.
hi Junnette,
this article made me thinking back all my previous entries. Some were mine but not all hehe. Guilty for that got to admit that.
Mostly because my english is not good like all of you. I have to ask someone read my entry first before my blog end up to be a laughing stock.
So, I promise to be a good boy and make my own entry, words by words :)
Thanks for the enlighten entry
lankapo´s lastest post..Win A Bazillion Credits Plus One!
Hi lankapo,
You gave me an idea to write about. I understand that it can be hard expressing yourself in a language you weren’t born with (English is my 3rd language, actually). The rule against plagiarism isn’t just for English blogs, though. It’s for anything that gets published (released to the public).
Getting someone to read your blog first is a good idea. Don’t let it keep you, however, from expressing yourself in the way that you really feel or think. Don’t let your proofreader become a censor. And there will always be people who’d disagree or think that what you’re saying is laughable. Good luck to you! :)
Nicely written, Junnette, especially the parts about scraper sites, which seem to love my posts. A part of me wonders what benefit it does them, since it’s so obvious on all of those sites that those articles were written elsewhere; I mean, they usually link back to the original blog if the post happens to be fairly long anyway.
Of course, if one is doing research or writing about something they read, at least have the courtesy to give attribution, or a link back to the original article. That way, all is forgiven; like bookmarks in a research paper.
Mitch´s lastest post..My Big RSS Subscriber Contest!
Thanks, Mitch! And well-said. I couldn’t agree more. What did you do when you discovered those sites scraping your blog?
Truthfully, I’ve stopped chasing them down, but early on, I would write a comment on the blog thanking them for stealing my content. Even had a couple of them remove the posts. Yan tried it also; not sure if he’s still doing it. I didn’t want to spend the time going after their IP’s; had other things to do. I didn’t worry about the duplicate content issue either, because the search engines seem to have figured out how to know which one was the original. So, I may still comment on it from time to time, but overall, I pass it by.
Mitch´s lastest post..The Sense Or Nonsense Of Captcha
“Disable right-click for pages on your site.” – This won’t work. People can save your site to their local machines and get everything in it: images, contents, scripts, multimedia files, etc.
Ikki at SEO Blog´s lastest post..7 On-Page SEO Factors That Can Influence Your SERP Ranking
“Disable right-click for pages on your site.” – This won’t work……
Well, if someone is intent to plagiarize your content, no amount of prevention could stop it. At the very least, no right-click slows down the effort to a certain extent.
I agree. Disabling right-click or using any other content protection measures using javascript/any other code is just a first step.
Disabling right-click would aggravate me more then thieves. I use it often on my own blogs lol.
Dennis Edell´s lastest post..Blogroll Effectiveness – What Do You Think?
Thanks for sharing this information!
I’ve always been watching out for articles which are copied from other places and all I’ve been doing is running a search through Google for it.
Now that you’ve given me a couple of resources, that’ll be much more useful.
Thanks!
Asher
Asher´s lastest post..How To Be A Professional Blogger
You’re welcome Asher. :)
I believe writing unique content is being smart about it. Just do your research to add substance to your own content. I would rather link to the site as link baiting to get the blog’s owner attention to my blog.
The best thing is to do research before writing something, plagiarism is definitely a broken code of ethic against someone copy right and originality
Ari Lestariono´s lastest post..Top 13 New Years Resolutions
Excellent article and I thank you for all the useful links. :)
I just don’t get why bloggers don’t link out more giving credit where it’s due…it makes you look so much better in all sorts of ways.
Besides, in the end more often then not you just gained at least one more reader/subscriber anyway! (The person you credited with the link.)
Dennis Edell´s lastest post..Blogroll Effectiveness – What Do You Think?
You’re welcome, and nice point you raised there. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Give credit where it’s due, spread goodwill, gain following for yourself, too. Not everyone sees it that way, though. Some are just too focused on reaching top rankings, no matter what.
While we know the difference between sharing and plagiarism, there will be times when you really need to copy a long text quotation from another source to prove a point in your post. When this happens, assuming that the author did not say explicitly you cannot reproduce or republished without permission can we use the information freely and just provide the source link and author. Is there still a need to get explicit approval from the author in this case?
Peter Lee
passive income ideas´s lastest post..Internet Business Opportunities:Frequently Asked Questions(FAQ)
It never hurts to ask, especially if it’s a loooong piece. generally speaking though, it may be OK. At the very least contact them immediately afterward…if they are going to get upset it’s better then find out straight from you then a trackback.
Dennis Edell´s lastest post..Blogroll Effectiveness – What Do You Think?
They had a story not long ago about a top news paper suing a blog because the blogger used “to much” of the news papers content. If I remember write the blog had used less than 70 words and had given proper credit.
So, that leads me to believe that -
A. It depends on who you are quoting.
B. Do they feel you are competition.
C. Are you using the copied text (quote) to bash them or promote them.
I have yet to see someone get mad if you are saying something nice. As long as you have not taken the main concept of their post to your page.
Just my 10 cents.
Sheryl Loch´s lastest post..American Idol Season 8 Begins
It’s impossible to emphasize the importance of avoiding plagiarism and I think you do a great job of it here. Plagiarism causes you to lose in every way. It limits your ability to express yourself, it can hurt your search rankings, and you can get sued which hurts your bottom line. Thanks for running through the details!
Great post. But, i want to let you know that some of the bloggers have exactly copied my blog’s contest and posted it on thier blogspot domain. Now they rank higher than me on search engine. How do you avoid this to happen. I heard google can make out which site content is original and which one is not. But it false on my case. Any thoughts on this?
Nihar´s lastest post..Optimize Windows Registry – Auslogics Registry Defrag
Sorry to hear about what happened. Have you tried contacting those who copied your blog, and ask them to stop? Google does say they can tell apart original vs. duplicate content, but it won’t hurt to give them a nudge regarding your case:
http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html
http://www.google.com/dmca.html
Another thing you can do, perhaps, is to work actively to make your own blog rank higher.
Hi Junnette, thanks for helping to drive awareness of the severity of plagiarism! :) The importance of having original, unique content can never be overstated. Excellent article!
Celes | EmbraceLiving.Net´s lastest post..6 Important Reasons Why You Should Set Goals
Hi Celes! You’re most welcome. Yeah, I think more people should be aware of the topic. Thanks for reading! :)
Junnette
This isn’t talked about much, at least from what I’ve seen online these days. Both a timely post and a relevant issue. You’ve done a neat job helping others to not only understand what Plagiarism is but shared tools to help protect folks from having their content stolen.
A thorough evaluation, not to mention plenty of reason why one shouldn’t plagiarize- it’s wrong, ruins people’s careers and will never benefit you, your blog or business. Thanks for sharing!
-Mig
Miguel´s lastest post..In the Beginning, Blog!
Thanks Miguel! Nice of you to stop by and read this post. :)
Not a wise move.
I do not browse sites with right click disabled as it prevents me from opening pages in new tabs.
Even large sites do not disable right-click, so why should you?
Deimos Tel`Arin´s lastest post..Dodge – Download
Plagiarism will come back and bite you in the end. Even if you plagiarize just one post, if your readers find out, they will be less likely to trust that any of your content is original.
~ Kristi
Kikolani | Poetry, Photography, Blogging´s lastest post..What Do I Want
Well its best to have your blog protected by Copyscape.
Money Money Money´s lastest post..Top 3 Ways To Make Money Online
Junnette.
I have had someone steal my articles word for word from my blog. This has happened to me more than once time. This inspired me to write Combating Online Plagiarism to help other learn how to deal with and handle the issue. I can tell you firsthand how upsetting it can be to have someone plagiarize or scrape your articles that you work so hard to write.
Gerald Weber´s lastest post..When the Ban Hammer Comes Down on StumbleUpon
Plagiarism still an issue, in the opinion of code of ethics violating humans creations.It would be possible if plagiarism is crime and put those in jail, have we ever thought that to improve our learning process, in any fields we are copying or at least steal one two tricks to enrich ourselves.Is that also plagiarism?
Ari Lestariono´s lastest post..Top 13 New Years Resolutions (continued)
Thanks for this awesome post -
I have seen over the years a variation of plagiarism – some have even gone as far as using Google translate facilities to translate someone else’s post into many different languages before turning it back to English.
This should tell you how far some people are willing to go to get paid. This is quite common with those who are paid to post site/product reviews. In fact, I’ve seen one of my reviews recreated by some faceless blogger.
Nice post btw :)
Helen Hunt | Free Links´s lastest post..Blog Post Jobs
Nice post. Plagiarism is definitely unethical and does not add to information. The very nature of the ‘web community’ has been, and is, one of collaboration and information sharing. Plagiarism does not align with these principles.
Gary´s lastest post..Digital Swine Influenza – Distributed via the Internet
Choosing An Online Plagiarism Detector To Check For Plagiarism
Plagiarism is a growing problem in academia and the work place. The internet has made it easy for nearly anyone to copy written material and pass it off as their own work. Because of the legal and ethical dilemmas associated with plagiarism, plagiarism checking software is now readily available. With so many online plagiarism detectors, choosing one may seem like an overwhelming task, but it can be easy if you know what you’re looking for.