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Good Method to Protect Articles
I got a good tip from Michael James on how he finds folks that have been stealing his content and passing it off as their own, and it really is quite simple.
- Find one of your old posts and copy a sentence from the middle of the article
- Go to google (or whatever search engine you like) and paste the phrase into the search phrase (if you want to be even more clever, you can enclose the phrase in quotes, so you are looking for an exact match).
- Voila, you will see if there is anyone out there passing your good works off as their own stuff.
Protect Your Content
You then need to have a standard DCMA infringement e-mail that you will then want to send to the alleged perpetrator (and maybe copy Google if you wish) asking them to take the content down. It seems to have worked well for Michael James, I have yet to find anyone who has “stolen” any of my content, but I will keep looking.
You wrote it, you should be the one to profit from it.
In 2025, content theft has evolved. Entire sites scrape RSS feeds or spin articles using AI. One defensive trick is internal linking like pointing readers to related posts such as Spam, Censorship, or iPhone categories—so when your content is stolen, your backlinks remain. Another layer is legal protection: register your site under Copyright.ca and keep timestamped backups in Google Search Console.
If you want to get cheeky, embed a digital watermark or Easter egg line in your posts (“Only fools copy this paragraph verbatim”). You’d be surprised how many thieves forget to remove your signature snark.
Honest Perspective on Plagiarization
Let’s be honest: the internet’s like a bad neighbourhood now. You post something good, and some SEO zombie in a “content factory” rips it off, five minutes later. The only difference from 2012? Now they pretend it’s “AI curation.” Protect your stuff, and don’t feel bad about swinging the DMCA hammer.
FAQ Content protection
How can I check if someone stole my blog post?
Copy a unique sentence and paste it into Google with quotes to search for exact matches.
What should I do if I find copied content?
Send a DMCA infringement notice to the site owner and, if needed, to Google.
Does Google penalize content thieves?
Yes, duplicate content is demoted in rankings, and Google honours DMCA takedown requests.
What tools can help automate detection?
Services like Copyscape, Grammarly Premium, or DMCA.com can track plagiarism automatically.
Should I watermark or lock my writing?
Not necessary for text, but including internal links and consistent formatting helps identify stolen content.
Other Articles about Thievery
With the dawn of the AI author, which steals content with impunity it seems, keep this in mind.
- Copyright messages and Scrapers how to embed copyright messages in your articles. This will help find your work as well.
- How to Trap a Scraper a good trap to lay for those nefarious thieves.
- Those Loathsome Scrapers I think you get the point that I am not fond of this.
- Internet and Its Slimy Underbelly the title alone is a good reason to read it.
Nice tip, Big! This post will be very useful to those writers or blogger that are very known and in demand these days. Content thieves will be terrified and they will surely stop doing it if you will do or use the steps from 1 to 3. I think this must be shared to other webpages, so that they will be alarmed. Thanks for this. Such a good tip!
I found this post shared on Kingged.com, the IM social networking site, and I “kingged” it and left this comment.
Better yet, copy a sentence from the beginning of the article. On a lot of the cheap scraper sites, the article page won’t even show up, but a more visible page with summaries of articles (often including the first couple sentences) will show up. I am going through this process to find domains to disavow for Google, and most of the finds are scraper sites that have disabled the links.