Are you a website owner, educator, or content professional who needs to check for plagiarism in Google Docs? As one of the leading word processing solutions online, many professionals and students alike use Google Docs over Microsoft Word or Apple Pages. It’s secure, it’s intuitive and most importantly, it’s free and always accessible. That makes it an attractive option for any type of content creator.
Interestingly enough, Google Docs does not have a built-in plagiarism checker although it does have many other helpful built-in tools like a grammar and spelling checker.
If you need to check Google Docs for plagiarism, you have a few options available. Whether you’re a content creator who wants to verify the authenticity of your work, or you’re a professional who wants to submit research or other documents while making sure credit is given where it’s due, choosing the right plagiarism checker can make all the difference.
Get insight into the latest in plagiarism detection. Read our reviews on the Copyscape and Grammarly plagiarism checkers.
Some schools and universities are enrolled in the Google Classroom suite of programs which include a built-in “Originality Checker” as part of their tools. If a teacher or professor has turned on originality reports, students can use these reports to check for themselves if they may have accidentally plagiarized from a website or book, or if they failed to cite an author correctly. Teachers are not able to see whether or not a student has run the report.
In some cases, IT administrators may have enabled “school matches” which checks the student’s work against other submissions of theirs from that school or area. It can also be compared against the work of other students, so there’s less of a chance of someone paying their friend to write their essay or buying such a service online.
Google’s Originality Checker is only accessible on the off chance that your school or university is enrolled in the Google Classroom program. There is no standalone plagiarism checker within Google. To that end, some programmers have created extensions that you can add to your Google Chrome browser which then work inside of Google Docs to check for plagiarism.
As you might expect, different extensions approach this process differently. Some simply ping basic text checkers whereas others go a little deeper. However, before you download a plagiarism checker for Google Chrome, it’s important to note that there are some potential downsides to installing such an extension in your browser:
Some Google plagiarism checkers request access not just to Google Docs, but also to your browsing history, personal data, or other identifiable information. In some cases, the extension can steal this information for use in identity theft, or by selling your data to third parties. Be sure before you install a Google plagiarism checker extension, that you fully trust the company behind it and are willing to allow it to access the information it needs in order to check. If it asks for too much or you don’t feel comfortable, look elsewhere.
Hackers may be able to use some extensions to access your computer or hard drive. If the extension is not secure, it could potentially infect your computer with malware or viruses. This not only applies to Google plagiarism checkers but other types of Google extensions or browser plug-ins as well.
Some extensions, including certain plagiarism checkers, can eat up too much of your computer’s memory, which can slow down your browser and other programs. At worst, it may cause your computer to freeze, shut down or become unresponsive.
Google Chrome isn’t the only browser that these extensions work on, however, if you use a different browser like Firefox or Edge, you may discover some compatibility issues between browsers, which can give you less than reliable results as a plagiarism checker.
Some extensions open up your computer to third-party advertising in an attempt to get you to upgrade to a more premium (paid) version. These pop-ups can be annoying and intrusive.
If you decide on a particular extension, make sure that it comes from a trusted source. Look carefully at the reviews and ratings and check permissions before you install it.
Originality.ai isn’t a direct plagiarism checker for Google Docs, but it does allow you to copy and paste (or link to) your Google Doc and check for plagiarism seamlessly from there. In addition to plagiarism, Originality.ai also checks for any of the tell-tale signs that a piece has been written by an AI program, including the latest versions of ChatGPT.
You can also use the Originality.ai plagiarism checker and text compare tool to compare two different versions of the text. You can upload the documents, share a URL, or simply copy and paste and then check for similarities between the two files.
Originality.ai’s content checker scans for types of plagiarism and AI-generated sentences that may indicate work that is not authentic. It gives you greater flexibility to ensure that the content you’re checking is authentic, genuine, and human-written.
To get started with reviewing content from Google Docs for plagiarism and AI-generated content, copy and paste the text into the AI checker. Alternatively, if you are analyzing content that is already published on the web, try out the Originality.ai website scanner.