What if Two Websites Look Nearly Identical?

By now, there are over a billion websites in the world. This should come as no surprise as the world shifts to a more digital landscape. In order for a website to stand out, it should be as unique as possible. With this many websites, its only bound for some to look similar. If you notice or come across a website that looks similar to your website, here are some important aspects to know.

Google Will Still Rank Sites That Look The Same

Website owners can be reassured that if two websites look the same, they can still rank on Google Search queries. The condition is that neither website duplicated content from the other. Websites can look identical to rank on Google, but plagiarizing or copying content can prevent a website from ranking on Google and cause it to get penalized. Always make sure the content being put on your website is original and organic. Unique content will outweigh two websites looking identical. Content across different websites should not look the same.

No Penalty For Similar Websites

Going off the previous paragraph, there is no penalty from Google for websites that look similar as long as it is unintentional. Google has a variety of algorithms in place to detect when one website is intentionally attempting to duplicate another. While gathering ideas from websites can be a good idea, intentionally copying a website’s design, layout, and content is a big no-no.

Google’s Canonicalization Method

At some point, Google will “crawl” pages of your website and index them for search engine query purposes. Canonical Tags are a way for search engines like Google to differentiate content that looks similar. Canonical Tags are codes website owners can put on the back-end of their websites to help Google decipher what is the “master copy” of a website.

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