Copied storefronts are often discovered through a customer complaint. A short manual check can surface obvious copies and give you a record of what you found.
The good news: you can check for clones yourself, for free, in about 15 minutes. Here are five methods that work, ordered from quickest to most thorough.
Method 1: Google Your Brand Name + “Shop”
Open an incognito/private browser window (so your search history doesn’t bias results) and search for:
"[your brand name]" shop"[your brand name]" store"[your brand name]" official"[your brand name]" buy
Review several pages of results. Anything you do not recognize deserves a closer look, especially a result using your name on a domain you do not own.
What to look for: Domains that are similar to yours but slightly off. Common patterns include adding a country code (yourbrand-france.com), swapping the TLD (yourbrand.shop instead of yourbrand.com), adding words (official-yourbrand.com, get-yourbrand.com), or subtle typos (yourbrnad.com).
Time: ~3 minutes.
Method 2: Search for Your Exact Product Descriptions
Copy a distinctive sentence from one of your product descriptions, not generic manufacturer copy. Paste it into Google inside quotation marks:
"Our hand-poured soy candles are crafted in small batches using 100% organic essential oils"
Exact-text search can surface indexed pages that reused a description, including sites that copied only a few product listings.
Run this for 3-5 of your best-selling products. Scammers tend to clone the most popular items first.
Time: ~5 minutes.
Method 3: Reverse Image Search Your Product Photos
Go to Google Images and click the camera icon to search by image. Upload your main product photos (or paste their URLs) one at a time.
Google will show you every site using that image. Filter out your own store, your social media accounts, and any legitimate marketplaces you sell on. Anything left is potentially a clone using your photos without permission.
TinEye is another reverse-image search option and may return a different set of matches.
Time: ~5 minutes for your top products.
Method 4: Check Common Domain Variations
Typosquatting uses domains close enough to the real one to escape a quick glance. Check common variations of your domain:
- TLD swaps: yourbrand.shop, yourbrand.store, yourbrand.co, yourbrand.net, yourbrand.org
- Country codes: yourbrand.fr, yourbrand.de, yourbrand.co.uk, yourbrand.com.au
- Hyphenated: your-brand.com, your-brand-official.com
- Common typos: Switch adjacent letters, double a letter, drop a letter
- Additions: shopyourbrand.com, getyourbrand.com, yourbrandofficial.com
You can check registration status at who.is. A registered lookalike is a lead, not proof of abuse, so inspect what the domain actually serves.
Manual coverage gets unwieldy as the variation list grows. Recon generates likely lookalikes and checks whether they are registered, active, redirecting, or serving copied content.
Time: ~10 minutes for basic checks, but you’ll never cover every variation manually.
Method 5: Check Certificate Transparency Logs
This is the most technical method, but it’s also the most proactive. Whenever someone sets up HTTPS on a domain (which basically every site does now), the SSL certificate gets logged in public Certificate Transparency (CT) logs. You can search these logs for any certificate issued to a domain containing your brand name.
Use crt.sh: Enter %yourbrand% in the search box. This will show every SSL certificate ever issued for any domain containing your brand name. Look for domains you don’t own.
A certificate shows that a domain was configured for HTTPS. It does not prove that the domain is malicious, but it gives you another lead to investigate.
Time: ~3 minutes, but interpreting the results takes some knowledge of how SSL certificates work.
Recon includes certificate changes in the reputation picture so the domain can be rechecked when its state changes.
The Manual Check Scorecard
| Method | What it catches | Effort | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google brand search | Copies appearing in search | Low | Moderate; only finds indexed pages |
| Product description search | Sites using your exact copy | Low | Good for text theft, misses image-only clones |
| Reverse image search | Sites using your product photos | Medium | Good but labor-intensive for large catalogs |
| Domain variation check | Typosquatting and lookalike domains | High | Low at larger scale |
| CT log search | New SSL certs for brand-related domains | Medium | Excellent for catching clones early |
The Problem with Manual Checks
These methods produce a snapshot. They do not tell you when a new domain appears or when a parked domain starts serving content. Coverage also drops as the number of possible variations grows.
Recon turns those checks into ongoing monitoring. It keeps lookalike domains, storefront evidence, redirects, certificates, and recommended next steps in one place.
What to Do if You Find a Clone
If these checks turn up a copied storefront, preserve the evidence before you report it. Continue with Someone Cloned Your Shopify Store. Here’s What to Do for the reporting sequence.
Recon is a free Shopify app that automates brand monitoring, clone detection, and phishing domain scanning. Install it at recon.bot.
Recon detects this automatically. Install free on Shopify →
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