Web Tools to Check for Plagiarized Content

Published by Emily Chang on Thursday, July 18, 2024 in Content Marketing.

Many organizations, including your competitors, are directing more time, effort, and resources into content in 2024. The importance of content marketing is increasing, and if it isn’t already a big part of your marketing efforts, it likely will be soon. However, creating high-quality original content that ranks on Google and blows your competition out of the water is challenging.

When done well, content can be highly lucrative. It attracts quality leads who genuinely care about your products and services. The result is high conversion rates and leads that turn into long-term relationships. However, plagiarized content can render the hard work, time, and effort to create it useless.

You might assume plagiarism is only an issue with low-quality writers, scammers, and lazy students. But it’s a little trickier than that. Plagiarism can happen accidentally, and it’s more prevalent in content marketing than you might think. It can also undermine your content's success without you even realizing it.

Before we dive into the importance of original, non-plagiarized content and the best tools to meet the challenge, let's define plagiarism.

What Is Plagiarism?

Plagiarism is stealing someone else's work by publishing or presenting that content without crediting the original creator. This can mean not citing a source or wording a blog post in a way that’s too similar to an existing piece. Worse still, plagiarism can involve copying and pasting an entire piece of someone else's content without explicit permission. 

These are big mistakes in content marketing, but you'd be surprised at how often plagiarism occurs, even when collaborating with quality writers and creators. Plagiarism is almost inevitable with such a massive volume of content on the web. Nevertheless, not all plagiarism is created equally.

The Types of Plagiarism

• Self Plagiarism: Re-using your content without citing the source.

• Direct plagiarism: Intentionally copying existing content.

• Accidental: Writing something similar to other content on the same subject. As an organization with an established content strategy, be extra alert to this type of plagiarism.

• Patchwork: Copying and pasting sections of existing content into a new piece. Credit (quotation marks or a link) is required when you add existing content to your work.

Why Use a Plagiarism Checker Tool?

Credibility

You can damage your organization's reputation and your website’s ranking by copying competitors' content, even if it’s accidental. Copying and passing off content as your own, no matter how it’s done, is never worth it. Whether you're a start-up trying to establish your name or a large enterprise with a content strategy already in place, don't risk losing the credibility you've worked so hard to build.

Authority

The most authoritative, reputable company in your niche never creates duplicate content and ensures everything they create and publish is 100% original, fact-checked, cited, and well-written. Original content is vital to becoming an authority and go-to source in your niche. Publish the type of content people crave.

SEO

Using any form of copyrighted material without written permission can seriously damage your website's performance. Along with text, all photos, videos, and other media you embed in your content must be original or licensed for commercial use. If you copy existing content, your SEO content strategy has no chance of beating your competitors.

Your content won’t make the top search engine results pages (SERPs) if you’re uploading blog posts that don’t offer more value than what's already available. Plus, you may be penalized for duplicate content.

So, how do you avoid plagiarism and ensure your content maximizes its potential? Enter plagiarism checker tools.

The Best Plagiarism Checker Tools

While many plagiarism checker tools get the job done, some are more comprehensive. These multi-tasking tools ensure plagiarism-free content and offer much more. We've handpicked the best, so you don't have to sacrifice valuable time searching and testing them. Here's our shortlist:

Grammarly

It's no surprise that multifunctional Grammarly also features a plagiarism-checking tool. It pulls data from scholarly databases and billions of websites to instantly check your content against what already exists. 

With its plagiarism, spelling, grammar, and style checkers, Grammarly gives you the power of error-free, concise, and compelling copy. Many writers, including Scripted writers, use it to sharpen their writing and ensure plagiarism-free copy.

One of the best aspects of Grammarly is its integration capabilities. While you can use the website or desktop program (Windows or Mac), you don’t have to. Grammarly offers extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari browsers plus Microsoft Office or Google Drive products. You can even use Grammarly with your iOS or Android device.

Grammarly Pros:

• Plagiarism checking with billions of sources across the web

• Generous limits

• High accuracy

• Multiple mobile and desktop extensions

Grammarly Cons:

• Paid subscription required 

Scribbr

Scribbr is an excellent plagiarism-checker tool for high-quality text. It compares content to over 99 billion web pages and 8 million publications. Upgrading shows a similarity percentage and highlights suspect passages. Plus, with the premium service, you can check for self-plagiarism in your own work, which we recommend if you want to know more than the top five matching sources. 

Scribbr Pros:

• In-depth plagiarism highlights

• Free and premium versions

• Satisfaction guarantee and live support

• Additional content checkers

Scribbr Cons:

• Less-detailed results in the free version

• Per-check prices

• Lack of editing function

Originality

With AI-generated content everywhere you look, ensuring content reads like a human wrote it is as important as avoiding plagiarism. Originality is a newer paid tool that includes plagiarism, readability, and fact-checkers. It even looks for paraphrasing and patchwork plagiarism, so you can rest assured that your content is original, accurate, and accessible before you publish it. 

Originality also scans for AI-generated content created by popular AI tools such as ChatGPT, which is becoming more common. This tool has already been recognized for its ability to detect AI. Hopefully, this means it’s around for the long haul, and users will see more extensions and functionality.

Originality Pros:

• AI-powered nuanced plagiarism checking

• Other writing checkers

• User-friendly interface with highlights of problematic passages

• Live trial on the site

Originality Cons:

• Credit-based scan subscription

• Few integrations

• Reported issues with Chrome extension

Copyscape

Copyscape is another tool for spotting plagiarized content. It checks for obvious and minor plagiarism that’s easy to miss. The free edition offers basic insights into potentially plagiarized content, while the paid edition is more comprehensive. 

Copyscape is also useful for detecting sites where your content has been plagiarized. We love CopySentry, an optional premium feature that automatically alerts you when others have used your content.

This plagiarism checker is very affordable if you only need to check a few hundred words occasionally. However, the price goes up if you need to check a lot of content. You might want to learn more about Copyscape’s pricing and features.

Copyscape Pros:

• Content protection feature

• Batch checking, results exclusion, and multiple upload formats with premium

Copyscape Cons:

• Minimal document support

• Less affordable for high-volume users

• No editing functionality within the tool

Copyleaks

This plagiarism checker is designed for both academic and content writing. Copyleaks stands out with its support for multiple input formats. It can even extract text from images or code to look for plagiarism. 

Like Originality, Copyleaks checks for AI-generated content while searching for nuanced types of plagiarism, such as paraphrasing. If your work includes a table of contents or references, you may appreciate this feature-rich tool’s ability to skip detection in those sections.

Currently, the least expensive Copyleaks plan is less than Grammarly’s monthly price, although it’s unclear if this includes the Writing Assistant to check spelling and grammar. You can try Copyleaks before subscribing.

Copyleaks Pros:

• Comprehensive scanning options

• Automatic content plagiarism check scheduling

• Multi-language support

• Direct comparison between documents

• Dedicated support and in-depth help center

Copyleaks Cons:

• No free option

• Limited to two users

• Premium plans have (adjustable) word limits

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid is one of the best-known Grammarly alternatives. It has many of the same bells and whistles, making it a terrific option if Grammarly doesn’t satisfy. Like Grammarly, ProWritingAid has an excellent plagiarism checker feature. With this plagiarism detection software, you can check your content to ensure it is not plagiarized. 

The other writing functions help align your content with a particular style. ProWritingAid includes unique features that can inspire you to start or continue writing. The result is sharp copy that’s concise, compelling, and error-free.

ProWritingAid Pros:

• Simple-to-use integrations for browsers, desktops, and office software

• Free and premium options, including lifetime subscriptions

• Writer tools to improve content

ProWritingAid Cons:

• The plagiarism checker costs extra

Final Thoughts on the Best Tools To Check Plagiarized Content

For a successful content marketing strategy in 2024 and beyond, excellent, unique content is essential. There's no point wasting precious time and resources on acquiring the top writing talent to have your content not reach its full potential due to a plagiarism flag.

Thankfully, these top plagiarism checker tools can alleviate many plagiarism issues you might experience as a business owner or content manager. No matter what type of content you're publishing, you’ll find one of these tools helpful in detecting plagiarism despite their minor differences.

But you don’t have to do it yourself. Scripted is here to provide you with content to elevate your content marketing from inspiration to publication. Use AI for keyword-optimized content at scale or the expertise of highly vetted writers to connect with your audience. Many of our writers use one or more writing tools to avoid plagiarism and sharpen their copy, which is further checked by editors and our AI-assisted plagiarism detection. 

To get started with Scripted, contact us today to start your free trial and see how our services can improve your content marketing strategy.