Google’s John Mueller responded to a question about whether Google will penalize nearly identical sites. Mueller used examples of different levels of similarity between sites and suggested which ones to avoid.
Does Google rank sites that look alike?
The question asked was whether two sites that look similar can be ranked in Google Search.
It wasn’t mentioned if the content was similar, but John included that scenario in his answer as well.
This is the question asked:
“We plan to share the same backend and frontend for the two brands.
On Google, both rank quietly.
How big is the risk of penalties for using the same HTML structure, same components, layout, same look and feel across different brands?
What is different are the logos, fonts, and colors.
Or would it be better to move to the same front end and maintain a different experience between the two brands?”
No penalty for being similar to another site
John Mueller confirmed that when these sites look nearly identical, they don’t negatively impact search result rankings.
He said:
“First, there are no penalties or manual actions for web spam for creating two nearly identical websites.”
Next, I explained how Google handles two websites that share the same URL structure and content.
He went on to answer:
“However, if the URL and page content are the same on these two websites, the system may choose one of the pages as the canonical page for the same page.
This means focusing crawling, indexing, and ranking on that canonical page.
For non-identical pages, I usually index both.
For example, if both websites have the same document, select one to display only that one in the search.
In practice, that’s often fine.
If you need both pages to appear in search results, make sure they are significantly different than just changing the logo or color scheme. ”
Google handles duplicates with normalization
John’s answer is interesting because it provides insight into how Google handles real duplicate content that is identical throughout the content.
In this case, he says, normalize one version of the content. This means choosing his one version of the content for ranking purposes.
This can cause problems for sites that syndicate website content. Therefore, it is important for websites to require publishers of syndicated content to use cross-domain canonical.
Why there are no penalties
In 2013, then-Google Search Engineer Matt Cutts said that up to 30% of all content on the web is duplicate. Because this is the normal state of the internet.
He cited this statistic as part of the explanation why Google doesn’t penalize duplicate content. This is because innocent sites lose rankings.
Is there a penalty for having two nearly identical looking websites?
The answer is no unless the content itself is identical.
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Watch the Google After Hours Hangout for an 11-minute spot where John Mueller answers questions about the nearly identical website.
Featured image from Shutterstock/The Faces
