Wordpress themes causing google penalty(need experts to settle a debate)

[impact89]

Hi, I have been having a disagreement with another online marketing company. We are both promoting the same product under a different brand name but we ended up using the same theme to build our WordPress sites off of but in no way is the content the same.

They are telling me that using the same theme in the same industry will cause a Google penalty. I do not believe this and do not see this causing a problem. The sites are relatively new so there is no proof of traffic dropping or penalties as of yet.

What is everyone's professional opinion on this? Can a WordPress theme cause duplicate content penalty? If so would that not mean that anyone using themes will have some sort of penalty?

[impact89]

HI thanks for the response,

This is exactly what I thought I am not sure why they are so confident that this will cause a penalty. The structure of the sites are  definitely different a no links have been made between them as they are essentially two site competing in the same market under different brands.

I am going to send them this thread so I can finally end this ongoing debate. Its a waste of my time.

Thanks again.

[GlobeRunner]

The theme generally doesn't matter at all. As long as the content is unique on your site, then there's no problem whatsoever. Like previously mentioned, there are plenty of people using the same WordPress theme, and it's the content that's unique, not the theme.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Thank you Jane

This is what I was thinking...

..."or they're trying to scare the competition into spending time and money on something that doesn't matter."

-Andy

[Andy.Drinkwater]

It's a pretty straight forward 'no' Tyson. If all that is used that is the same is the theme, there is no penalty to be handed out here.

If they are concerned about it, tell them to change their theme, but you don't need to worry about this at all

-Andy

[sagive]

I think that if you have completely different content this should not be an issue.

You should also notice you guys are not

• using the same phone / visible email address
• linking between each other (tough its only 2 sites)
• have the exact same structure

My other recommendation is that one of you change the structure (not the theme)... each theme - or at least the good ones allow you to create a different structure, different widgets, different icons and similar structure related items.

For example you can use additional tabs in your homepage, use different widgets in your footer and so fourth.

Keep in mind that many people buy the same theme and in a world where themes are content related in many cases meaning real-estate themes, transportation themes and so on it not logical that Google would rate a site just based on the theme.