The key thing here is whether the space is shown in the search results.

I think its unlikely that it would cause any SEO issues, if however the space shows in Google results there is a high chance it would affect your click thrus as extra spaces, weird characters etc in page titles tend to suggest that the site is less trustworthy (in my opinion).

So if space is visible in your page title and/or search results, get it sorted. If it is just tabs and line returns in the source code you don't need to worry about it too much.

Hope that helps.

Hi Gerd

Thanks for the reply and suggestions.

My biggest concern is not with the new site, I am more concerned with the impact this might have on the existing site.

My logic being that if we rel=canonical any duplicate content to the existing site we would minimize or even eliminate any impact.

Justin

Would re-skinning, duplicating an exising ecommerce website with a new domain name cause any ranking issues?

The plan would be that all product data, pricing info etc would be identical, the site would have a minor redesign to change colours, logos etc and all duplicate content would be rel=canonicaled to the original site.

In case you are wondering the reason for this is a customer with an existing site wants to try out a new brand without incorporating a massive development costs.

The majority of traffic would be driving through google shopping, a bit of PPC, social etc.

Is this site duplication likely to harm the original site or will setting up rel=canonical to point to the original site going to be sufficient enough to prevent this happening?

Is there anything else is should consider?

Many thanks for your help

Domain authority is one of the most difficult metrics to influence.

Good quality inbound links from sites with good domain authority and mozTrust is one of the biggest factors in increasing domain auth, therefore you should consider the following....

1. Build good content, i'm sure you have read it a thousand times before on here and many other forums, but good quality content and being active through social channels is by far the best and most sustainable way of building inbound links and ultimately influencing domain auth.

2. Ensure you are listed with the "good" directories such as DMoz, Yelp, Yahoo etc, these are no where near as powerful in terms of link juice as they once were, but you should still be on them.

3. Embark on a traditional link building strategy, but ensuring you don't build spammy links and ensure you have anchor text diversity (ie don't try and keyword stuff anchor text)

4. Use tools such as SEOmoz's newly acquired followerwonk to find influencers in your industry who are likely to be interested in your site and connect and interact with them to see if you can get them to link/retweet your content.

Of the above the biggest gain for the least amount of work is likely to be item 2, registering with directories, but sadly there is no magic bullet for increasing domain auth, but then again, if there was, everyone would be doing it!!

You may also want to check out the SEOmoz explanation of "what is domain authority?" for an indepth explanation of how domain auth is calculated.
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/domain-authority

Hope that helps

Justin