On my IVAA newsgroup, one of my fellow VAs gave us the link for a website where you can go, type in your URL and it will give you back any web pages it found with identical wording to yours. Just for kicks, I went on it and guess what? I got a search result. It appears that someone found my press release from November and used a lot of wording from it, then linked to my website and lifted some more of my wording. The “offender” was a newspaper reporter, and I wouldn’t have minded at all if she mentioned me in her article, but apparently she used my content as background material and quoted other VAs in the article. I ended up sending her a friendly email, letting her know that while I was flattered she liked my copy well enough to use it, I would have appreciated being given the credit.

Has this happened to anyone else? Want to check your own website? Visit Copyscape’s website