I use Google.

Search for a few sentences deep in the copy; If they're there, Google will find 'em.

But what's your problem with copyscape? I've never used it, but never heard a bad review.

I've never had problems with it, but my best strategy is to use google alerts to notify me. I catch scrapers all the time with it.

My other question is what is plagiarism software, how can I use it?

Google [Plagiarism software]

Search for them and read their website stuff.

You'll need to decide if it's better than Google and copyscape - and if it justifies the not inconsiderable costs.

Google is free; even Google alerts are free. It needs to be pretty special to beat that!

Ive always found copyscape easy to use and accurate to

my vote goes for the software called plagiarism finder. This is a really nice tool. It can find literally anything that is on the web.

But how does it justify the cost?

What's special about it?

Kool002 - what's wrong with copyscape?

kool002 said: I have an account with copyscape to check duplicate content.... But it is not very effective....

In what manner is Copyscape failing you? Is it missing lots of scrapers? Or returning false positives? Taking too much time? Or something else?

Thank you.

Eliz.

Interesting ...

Three of us have now asked. Anyone else, ever, had a problem with copyscape?

Just a teeny, tiny one?

Ever?

Do share!

A copy will pass copyscape but when I take a phrase and google it I can usually find the source phrase was taken from.

so its at phrase level.

I have a better tool it's free but they won't let me post the website address here. I have before and they deleted the post.

kool002 said: A copy will pass copyscape but when I take a phrase and google it I can usually find the source phrase was taken from. so its at phrase level.

Could you possibly provide an example of this? (The mods probably won't allow the posting of page links to the forum thread, but perhaps you could "sticky-mail" me? It would be helpful if you provided a URL from your site which comes up "clean" in Copyscape, along with a phrase which returns a "hit" in Google.)

Since Copyscape works through Google, and checks the entire text of your page against the Google index, it would be very odd, it seems to me, if Google could find a copy of one particular chosen phrase from within your page, when Google/Copyscape can't find any duplication of any of the phrases within your entire page....

Eliz.

It all depends at how copyscape is set up; if, for example, it looks at phrases over four words, it may miss (random, not from a page) ["zebra yawns widely"], which may then find a page with substantial stolen text in a bloated large page.

Both may be using Google - but in a different way.

The example I've used was made up as I went along, and may not stand up to close scrutiny; but it's likely that the principle holds :)