With so much information available online these days, it has become more important than ever to check the content before you publish it. This is true for journalists, content writers, and anyone else looking to make an impact on the internet.
These days, you need accurate, quality content if you're going to beat the competition and reach the top of the search engine rankings, so content verification is a must. But while you may be using a plagiarism detector to help ensure original content, you may be wondering: how do I fact-check my content? And why does it even matter?
In this article, we're going to take a look at content verification. We'll discuss what it is, why it's important, and how you can verify yours to ensure that you're putting out the type of quality content that'll help improve your online visibility and reputation.
As the volume of online content grows, so does the importance of checking it for authenticity, originality and veracity. And while a duplicate content checker can help ensure plagiarism-free content, it can't account for the accuracy of that content.
This is why content verification has become a must-have in the toolkit of content writers, editors, and publishers. It helps to ensure that the information they're sharing isn't just original, but also accurate and reputable.
With that in mind, content verification is the process of confirming the authenticity of content before you share or publish it online. Although it's often used when talking about fact-checking articles, it can also mean validating the sources of a story or making sure that a video or image hasn't been doctored or selectively edited.
There are several reasons why content verification is important, most notably:
Incorrect or misleading reports can damage the reputation of everyone, from companies to publishers to individuals. By thoroughly verifying content, you help to build credibility, trust, and a rapport with your audience, which will help them see you as a reliable source of information.
Content verification is a vital weapon in the fight against deep fakes and other fake news that can be rapidly created and spread across social networks and other platforms.
Ultimately, content verification helps ensure that information that is published and shared is accurate. This is especially important when it comes to AI-generated content, as AI writing tools may not cite their sources. And if they do, they may make up their references entirely!
Although content verification tools bring nothing but benefits to each piece you publish, verifying the content itself isn't without its challenges.
There's a lot of content out there, and more being produced every day. It can therefore be a challenge to accurately and thoroughly verify original content.
New advances in technology have made it easier than ever for writers, editors, publishers and journalists to verify the accuracy of their content. But new advances in technology have also made it easier to manipulate images, video, audio and more, making it harder to distinguish between what's real and what's fake.
Sometimes in the race to be first, speed can take a backseat to accuracy. This is particularly true for journalists and content writers. Balancing the need for speed with the importance of accuracy is an ongoing challenge that news and content marketing publishers need to keep in mind when it comes to verifying content.
In order to check the content and verify its quality, you'll want to take a few concrete steps:
The first step in verifying content has nothing to do with content verification - it's more about your approach to content. It involves implementing a systematic, clear process for content creation.
So, come up with some guidelines or a framework for how you plan to go about sourcing, validating, and fact-checking information.
If you're looking for high-quality content, then be sure to prioritize information that comes from credible and reliable sources. For best results, it's a good idea to cross-reference details from a variety of sources to make sure that information presented is consistently accurate.
While you or someone on your team can check every single fact in a content piece manually, this can take a considerable amount of time and resources. So, if you're looking to streamline the process, try using an online fact-checking tool.
Take Originality.AI's automated fact-checker, for example. This real-time tool uses the latest information to help you verify the accuracy of your content. And the best part? It's easy to use.
Simply input your content, specify whether you want to scan the entire article or certain sections, hit the "Scan Now" button, and review your results. Your report will tell you whether the facts in your content are potentially true or false, and give you some extra context and sources to help you make it that much better.
No matter what type of content you're checking for accuracy, there's a technology that helps shortcut and streamline your work. From reverse image search to determine the original source of an image to content analysis tools that check a variety of databases for discrepancies, today's technology coupled with AI can help you save hours of time and effort.
If corrections need to be made after a work is published, be transparent with the audience. This helps to build credibility and trust, and will help cement your relationship with them as a reliable source.
The landscape of blatantly (and sometimes intentionally) false information and misinformation is always evolving. When you keep a finger on the pulse of how it's changing by way of training and workshops, you can stay one step ahead of the latest writing issues and content verification challenges.
Encourage your readers to report any inaccuracies in your content. Not only does this help you sidestep mistakes but it also creates a greater sense of community.
While fact-checking is important, it's not the only thing you should be looking for in your content. If you really want to ensure that you're putting out high-quality content, then you should also be checking your content for plagiarism, readability and AI.
Fortunately, there are tools available that can make checking your content quick and easy.
In case you aren't already using one, you should consider working an online plagiarism checker into your content routine. Search engines like Google typically aren't fans of duplicate content, so it's best to find and fix any potentially plagiarized text before it can hurt your rankings. Besides, they're quick and easy to use, and unintentional plagiarism does exist, so why not take the extra precaution?
Take Originality.AI's plagiarism tool, for example. You input your text into the checker, and hit "Scan". When it's done, you will receive a comprehensive plagiarism report that'll give you a score indicating how likely it is that the text was original vs plagiarized.
Even better, it'll flag any potential plagiarism and give you the matching quotes and URLs, making the editing process a breeze.
If you're a copy editor or publisher, then you already know how important it is to check for AI-generated content these days. While it certainly has its place, you don't want your writers submitting AI content and trying to pass it off as original. Not only can it damage your brand's reputation, but it may even cause you to lose clients.
With an AI checking tool in your back pocket, though, you can confidently publish with integrity, and uphold journalistic ethics. As with the plagiarism detection tool, Originality.AI's AI checker will scan your content in seconds, and highlight any potential instances of plagiarism. And with a 97% accuracy rate, you can be confident in the results.
Finally, if you want to reach your target audience effectively, then you should be using a readability checker on your content. This tool can help you ensure that your writing is at an appropriate level for your target audience - not too simple, and not too complex.
And again, it only takes a few seconds. Just throw your text into Originality.AI's readability checker, and it will give you scores based on the most reliable readability formulas, from the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level to the SMOG Index.
You can then use this information to tailor your content more effectively to your audience, and make any readability issues a thing of the past.
It's worth noting that the responsibility to check the content isn't just on the developers, publishers, writers or content creators themselves. It's also on the people who consume the content.
That's why it's more important than ever that users approach digital content with a critical eye and question its source before accepting it wholeheartedly. It's also important to report any misinformation, especially on social media where it can proliferate in fractions of a second. By helping these platforms to do their job more effectively, you can contain misinformation before it has real-world consequences.
Plus, sharing and promoting content from trusted, verified sources can help drown out the noise of unverified content and disinformation campaigns. This can make it easier for everyone to make informed decisions about what they share and consume online.
As you can see, it's not enough to just check the content with a plagiarism detector these days. Content verification is a necessary part of the process. It acts as a guiding compass to ensure that the information we consume is accurate, authentic and original. To that end, using tools like Originality.AI's fact checker along with our robust AI, readability, and plagiarism detection tools can go a long way toward ensuring that the digital space remains one of trusted information.
However, at the same time, we as digital consumers also need to make a collective effort to scrutinize the information we're presented with and ensure that we're doing our part to verify before we share or spread the news. By working together with the latest technological developments, AI research, machine learning and other breakthroughs, we can greatly reduce the time needed to check the content as we continue to work toward becoming trusted sources for reliable information on every topic out there.