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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?

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.