Plagiarism checker: find where your sentences already appear on the web.

What this tool checks, exactly

Most plagiarism checkers compare a document against a large private index. This one does something smaller and more transparent. It picks up to about five of the most distinctive sentences from your text and searches the web for each one as an exact phrase. If a sentence appears word for word on another indexed page, you see where.

That makes it a spot check, not a certificate. It is good for catching copied passages from public web pages and for finding sites that have lifted your writing. It does not search academic databases or paywalled content, it only checks a handful of sentences, and it cannot see reworded copying.

How to check originality by hand

You can run the same method yourself in any search engine, and it is worth knowing for longer texts:

1. Choose distinctive sentences. Pick ones with a specific detail, an odd turn of phrase or a concrete example. Skip generic lines that appear on thousands of pages.
2. Search them in double quotes. Quotes ask for that exact wording. If a sentence is long, use its most unusual stretch.
3. Sample across the text. Check the opening, the middle and the end. Copied passages are often in the parts that took research, such as definitions and explanations.
4. Read every match. Look at the page, its date and how the text is used before drawing a conclusion.

A match is not a verdict

When a sentence turns up elsewhere, there are several explanations:

• A credited quotation. Quoting with attribution is normal and fine.
• A common phrase. Some sentences are simply how people say a thing.
• Someone copied you. Check the dates. If your page was first, the other page is the copy.
• The text was copied from there. If the other page came first, rewrite the passage in your own words or quote and cite it.

Paraphrase is the harder case. If a match looks close, read both texts side by side. Same structure, same examples in the same order, and light rewording usually mean the text was reworked from the source.

If someone copied your work

Start with the site owner: a short, polite request to remove the copy or credit you often works. If it does not, contact the site’s hosting provider, which usually has an abuse or copyright process. To have the copy removed from Google’s results, use Google’s legal removal request for copyright infringement. In every case, keep dated evidence of when your version was published.

Where AltoRank fits

AltoRank drafts original content for a site every week, and a person approves each piece before it publishes, which is the point to check sources, quotes and wording. See how the approval-first workflow works.