Would you like to know how many times someone has copied and pasted text from your website, even to email a friend?  And would you love to add some code that appends your URL to the bottom of the code?

Sure you would.  Who wouldn’t?

Now go one step further.

What about knowing whether the information was posted on a forum or blog and how many clicks it generated? Wouldn’t that be worth something?

Put your wallet away, though, because Tynt Analytics is a free tool.   I’ve been playing with it for the last day or two and plan to deploy it on several more sites this week.   The functionality that appends a site’s URL to copied paste is something I would monetize tomorrow.  The rest of the analytics appear to be strong and presented in a clean, easy-to-understand dashboard.

I’m not ready to move Tynt to the Tools We Use section yet, but you’ll see it up there by May if the next few weeks echo the last few days.  That’s because many of our businesses are pure-play content sites.  We create content and sell advertising space.  Some of our clients do the same and retain us to advertise their sites.   Tynt’s metrics are solid enough to be a good supplement for most sites.  But Tynt shines when it tracks engagement and its script appends the URL to copied content.

Tynt claims to be able to track some engagement metric between 2 percent and 6 percent of the count of a site’s pageviews.  Assume your small business has some articles and other content on a site that receives 10,000 pageviews each month.   Your business isn’t content, but there’s valuable knowledge you share with customers and prospects.  Using Tynt means that you’ll know about a few hundred times each month that someone copied and pasted your content elsewhere.

Maybe they sent that copy to a spouse or a friend.  Maybe it went to a purchasing office or boss.  I would sure like to know the latter.  Maybe there’s an online community that used your data and knowledge to answer a question or even solve an online disagreement.  This type of engagement is critical to know about, and there is now a free tool for you to use.

Go ahead.  Try copying and pasting some of this text in an email or on your own blog.  I don’t work for the company.  I don’t even get paid by them.  I’m just a big fan after seeing their core functionality.   Give Tynt a try.  I think you’ll be  a fan soon too.