Plagiarism Checkers: 5 Free Websites To Catch The Copycats
“A lack of originality
Couldn’t focus on the day
so much for the radio
Everybody sounds the same
Everybody wears the same clothes now
And everybody plays the game”
That was from ‘Copycats’, a song by the Cranberries. Just swap the radio for the web and we could have an anthem for our times where content is free and content lifting is freedom. Copying is tame, plagiarism is the more serious (and demeaning) word and with the laws against copyright infringement in place, plagiarism as intentional fraud carries a mean look.
Content plagiarism on the web spreads as fast as the web itself. With blogging, which is usually written words, an original thought becomes the archetype . Duplicate content is the bane of webmasters and even bloggers. A webmaster can easily but unsuspectingly publish duplicate content on the fly (though a guy who knows his job won’t!). A blogger can see his work being scraped on another site. The bane – a lower page rank by search engines like Google which hates duplicate content.
Many tools exist which help us in sidestepping prickly copyright issues. The professional ones are of course potent, spiffy and dollar loving. The free ones may not be too much on looks but without a pinch they are adequate for the blogger world. Here at MakeUseOf, we have previously covered quite a few content tracking web services.
Here are five more for the armory.
Plagiarism Checker

A free online service which searches for originality (or lack of it) using a few phrases taken from different parts of the document. The phrases need not be contained within search operators like quotation marks as the plagiarism checker does it on its own through its code. Content checking is optional with either Google or Yahoo.
The two search engines though are word limited in the use of phrases – Google allows 32 and Yahoo’s word limit is 50. Plagiarism Checker thus limits the phrase within the word count. The word limitation restricts the scope of the content check. The matches open up in another webpage.
In a previous post we had looked at how Google Alerts could be used to keep track of your content. This service provides a button to the Google Alerts page for setting it up.
A webpage can also be submitted for a plagiarism check through a URL.
Article Checker

A very similar plagiarism detection tool which checks for duplicate content using either Google or Yahoo. Both the search engines can be used to compare results. Input of content is through a text area box or by giving the URL of a webpage. The checker functions by taking blocks of text and running it through the search engines. A Google Alert can be set up for the positive matches with a click.
Plagiarism Detect

This is a full-featured web service with a free and a paid option. The free option requires a signup and gives us an upload of Doc or Text files (or paste contents in a text area) and basic duplicate checking. The site makes a disclaimer that it does not store the uploaded content. Despite the basic checking service, the results are neatly displayed for us to sift through.
Quote Finder

This is a very simple content checking aid from Google Blogoscoped; a site which unofficially covers Google related news. The plagiarism checker is a simple text area for pasting the relevant text. The results are highlighted in yellow with the number of sources obtained from the web search. Clicking on the highlighted phrases takes us to the Google search results page. It is simple, uncomplicated and relies on the power of Google search.
DOC Cop
This free web service offers the option of a File Check and a Web Check. Using File Check we can scan and compare a maximum of eight Microsoft Word or AdobePDF files of up to 100,000 words each against one another. We can specify the average string length (i.e. the number of words) that must be compared. The report can be optionally obtained in HTML or Doc format through email.

Web Check is where we can put a webpage, a Doc file or a PDF file through a duplicity check on the internet. Web Check is limited to a maximum of 550 words. Again, the word length can be specified using the string length dropdown.

The web tool requires registration and access is through a guest ID. A real time status indicator shows the current status of the submission. According to the site, it takes about an hour to generate and send the report using email.
With the help of these free web tools, detecting duplicate content is not too tough a task. For a content writer, these useful tools serve another purpose – to determine where his ghost written articles have ended up… or even where they have been re-used with due citation and credit. But mostly, it helps each writer check his work against the web to avoid unintentional duplication.
We have featured quite a few other tools here at Makeuseof.com –
Copyscape : See Who is Stealing your Blog Content
Plagium: Online Plagiarism Tracker
The Plagiarism Checker: Check Papers For Plagiarism
CopyrightSpot: Search Web for Copies of Your Blog Content
FairShare: Find Out Who Is Stealing Your Content
CopyGator: Tells You Who Is Stealing Your Blog Content
The use of this rooster of article plagiarism checking apps should be enough to make us all tread on the side of caution and keep our creative spirits intact. If you write (or publish)…do you check? Let us know.
Image: swanksalot
(By) Saikat is a techno-adventurer in a writer's garb. When he is not scouring the net for tech news, you can catch him on his personal blog ruminating about the positves in our world.



Nice selection, almost all these sites i have not heard before~!
It’s becoming a crowded segment.
I don’t think the problem is so much verbatim copy as it is the theft of ideas. You’ll see a blog review an obscure application and a few hours later another blog is covering it when no one ever did in the past. The coincidence is to cute.
On the contrary I think verbatim copy gnaws more. Ideas will always get ‘propagated’ in some form or the other. What is important is that the propagator should extend that idea with his own original take or inputs and not just lift the idea. What we read and enjoy on the web is an example of that. Probably someone somewhere writes about the same things (in their own way)we do but for a different audience.
I am plagiarized regularly. All I have to do is to take a phrase from one of my articles and place it in Google Search (Yahoo and MSN tend to ignore these sites and not index them).
Sadly many of these sites (especially one in particular I just found) display Google Adwords, and calls, letters, emails to Google does not stop this as they always find way of lying about how Google checks the sites out that they display Adwords in. What shows this to be a lie is that I have been denied Google Adsense based on content on the ORIGINAL and copyrighted articles (which are also much more regularly updated for accuracy, but then Google does not care about this either).
Once internet users start calling Google to the mat and stop using Google, this type of rampant plagiarism will continue so as to make money on illegal Adwords ads.
Reference:
http://american-aquarium.blogspot.com/2009/07/google-lies-dishonesty.html
I usually use Google search engine to check for Content plagiarism. It’s easy and the fastest way to detect the duplicate contents. However, the websites mentioned above are worth to try as well to get better result. Nice sharing!
useful tools
Great post and checked several out. Still find advanced Google search quick and effective.
In W.B. Yeats’ work in “Vacillation,” there is a contrast depicted through the theories of antinomies. This is explored throughout the poem by making use of opposite ideas and imagery. It is clear that Yeats has made conscious effort in this poem to unify these antinomies or what he calls “extremities”. Yeats ideas of conflict can be separated into internal and external conflicts, which would imply “quarrels with others and also with oneself.” Yeats does this by unifying conflicting ideas in his mind through combining and contrasting ideas within the contained form of this poem, thus achieving a unity derived from, yet separate from internal conflict. Vacillation entails the mannerism that if one goes throughout life and laughing and being proud. They will not sit back and be taken back by “extremities” and evidently the idea of death but will always move forward. One will take the best out of life and ideally that is how joy comes about in life.
The structure of the poem is very long with stanza one showing a different layout and use of words to the rest of the poem, which makes it stand out and get an initial message across. The other stanzas are longer and have long lines containing a lot of imagery; they incorporate contemplative ideas and make reference to Lords, theologists etc. The poem thus has the combination of knowledge and personal based experience.
In the first stanza Yeats begins by striving a way to find a way to label his notion of unity by showing the culmination of the “extremities” between “Man runs his course” which are “death” and “remorse” (line 6). However Yeats challenges all the ideas he puts forward by asking “If these be right/what is joy?” (line 10). In this stanza, “antinomies” is used to mean contradiction, laws or rules. This definition sets the idea and use of this imagery for the rest of the poem. Yeats’ notion of main theme in this stanza of “joy” is contained together in his call for the unity of “extremities.”
In the second stanza, imagery of the “extremities” is shown. There is a clear contrast of the picturesque seasons of autumn, winter and summer. A picture of autumn is shown by use of trees in,“Is half all glittering flame and half all green,”(line 12). “Abounding foliage moistened with the dew,” (lines 12 and 13), is a reference to the early morning. The use of half and half to make a whole idea saying that one idea is not complete without the opposite one on another side. Therefore stating an early morning is not complete without a day, autumn without winter, and the greenery without the flaming colours during autumn. Reference to Attis’s image is a paradox of how a man was cheated on and ended up castrating himself and thereby harming himself instead of being the culprit to blame. “May not know what he knows, but knows not grief,”(line 18) , creates an idea in the reader’s mind that Attis may not have known what he wanted but he didn’t want to grieve for sure because he cut off what makes a man. The paradox displayed is one of how one suffers pain which has negative connotations but joy can come out in the end and two halves do make a whole. Idea of unity of the paradox is therefore undoubtedly portrayed in this stanza.
In part 3, the next two stanzas, there is an antinomy of greed and ambition but at the same time a link is created between the two. “All women dote upon an idle man,” (line 23 ), means that all women fall in love with men who don’t do anything or in this case it could also mean a poet. The idea of love versus money is also explicated here. Even though the children want money, women still let emotions take over. Yeats contrasts mans insatiable ambition and lust to, “get all gold and silver that you can” with an inability to achieve contentment because no man has ever lived- enough of children’s gratitude or women’s love” (line 25 and 26). Contentment, therefore, cannot be found externally, either through physical accumulation of goods or the emotional devotion of another. The realization of this frees us from the “Lethian foliage” (line 27)/ river of forgetfulness, which previously would allow us to seek meaningless pleasures but now prepares one to live off the Earth. Yeats clearly says this preparation involves “testing every work of intellect or faith/and everything that your own hands have wrought” (line 27 and 28). Yeats’ use of the active verb “test” again brings the idea again that unity can only be found though painful effort.
In part IV, there is complete change in tone and energy from the previous stanzas discussed. It has created a transverse from third to first person narration. “My fiftieth year had come and gone” (line 35), communicates to the reader that the speaker is older than fifty now and seems like he will be reminiscing. Use of solitary explains that he is alone but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is lonely. The combined use of imagery in “a crowded London shop” (line 37) with a “book and empty cup” ( line38) … “on a marble top” (line39) tell us that speaker is in a moment of transcendence but is stuck now because he is dealing with his” extremities.” The stanza following this shows how the speaker was stuck in thought, “While on the shop and street I gazed” (line 40). “My body of a sudden blazed/and twenty minutes or less/It seemed so great my happiness.” (lines 40-43), these lines show that for a blink of an eye he was able to experience happiness/joy and transcend away from his problematic thoughts and probably remorse he endured in his life. “That I was blessed and could bless,” (line 44), show that he endured that moment of transcendence he felt gratitude and could help others to be happy and thankful also.
In part V, there is a subsequent idea of contrasting summer and winter in the first stanza. Yeats has discussed in the first lines, the imagery of the seasons and idea of positivity, “Although the summer sunlight gild” (line 45). This line is saying that there is that “gild”, meaning layer of gold in aspects of life but this positive image is contrasted by the line “cloudy leafage of the sky”. Again same thing in the next two lines the same concept is made but using winter. In the next stanza in part V, speaker says, “Things said or done long years ago/Or things I did not do or say/But thought I might say or do” (lines 51-53), all of these lines are discussing the past and how that has made his heart feel remorse and regret for his decisions made. “But something is recalled/my conscience vanity appalled,” (lines 55 and 56), discusses the present and how he remembered something from past, this refers back to transcendence on how his self confident outlook on life is bought down. The speaker is concluding here that although everything happily and joyfully takes its place in his life, it’s his regrets and remorse that bring him down and stop him from moving forward.
In part VI, there is reference to past lords and knowledge. “In his great nostrils, the great lord of Chou/Cried off casting off the mountain snow,” (lines 59and 60), Chou was the imperial dynasty of china, the ruling class. These two lines discuss how he was transformed into something else, in other words the lord was transformed into something weak. The next stanza refers to Babylon and Nineveh which are non-existent. There well there isn’t much left of Babylon because today it is a compilation of mud-brick building and debris. The next lines show that, in places that had war where men who didn’t want to fight would cry when a new conqueror arose. The last stanza in this part, is saying that although men suffered and endured pain the message of the speaker and repetition of line, “let all things pass away.’ ” invokes the idea of reincarnation, because the old must end in order for the new might begin. The verb “let” indicates willingness and resignation, and the phrase as a whole, is a statement of contentment to allow “all things to pass away” in order to pave for the way new and greater understanding.
In part VII, there seems to be a conversation between a “Soul” and “Heart.” The “Soul” is referring to simplicity and spirituality. The “Heart” is referring to reality, curiosity and complexity. There is a distinction between antinomies of breathing and existing, and in one’s state of getting rid of the extremity of “Heart” and “Soul”.
The final part of this poem deals with an up hall of ideas. The first line mentions “Von Hugel” who was a theologist and the third line refers to “The body Saint Teresa”. The first few lines try to convey the idea of parting because of the Sagree of religion and how there is an eternal life in a pure soul, “Eternalized body of a modern saint once”, (line79) and how that body managed to keep a Pharaoh’s body from decay, “Had scooped out Pharaoh’s mummy. I- thought heart might find,” (line 30). “Did I become a Christian man and choose for my belief,” (line 31) and “What seems most welcome in the tomb- play a predestined part/Homer is my example and his non-christened heart,” these lines mean that he chose to become a Christian because of their after death beliefs. “The lion and the honeycomb, what has Sculpture said?” The honeycomb is referring to poetry and how it can be both sweet and strong. “So get you gone, on Hugel, though with blessings on your head”, (line85), refers to the idea that although theology gets one ahead such as “Von Hugel”, the blessings given and religion is what will get one through and prevail. The antinomy discussed here is permanence versus passing away and the idea of civilization is brought through in emphasis of its resonance.
In conclusion, this poem discuses a various number of idealities and beliefs with an incorporation of personal and knowledge- based historical references by Yeats. Yeats emphasizes his message that if contentment is part of the journey, then blessedness and “joy” show the result of being stuck in transcendence. In “Vacillation’, Yeats finds just as much value in the struggle to achieve unity as he does in the actual attainment of it, for ideally there is contentment in the journey of extremity, and blessedness and joy at its end.