Spotting fake stores
How to find websites pretending to be your brand
Check for unfamiliar shops using your business name, photos or branding. Learn which searches to try, how to assess a domain and what to save before reporting it.
The starting point
Search your brand name and distinctive content, compare unfamiliar results with your authorised shops, and keep the exact URLs. Use alerts and customer reports as extra signals rather than assuming any single search covers the web.
A website can borrow your brand name without copying every product. It may use a similar domain, an ‘outlet’ label or a familiar logo to suggest a connection with your business. Product-image searches alone may not find it.
This guide gives you a separate routine for checking how your business appears online. It is about finding and assessing possible impersonation. Another shop mentioning your brand could be a stockist, reviewer or unrelated business, so a search result is a reason to investigate rather than an automatic accusation.
Make a list of your real shops and partners
Start with your official domains, regional shops, marketplace accounts and authorised stockists. Include any agency-run campaign pages or previous trading names still in use. Keep the list available to whoever handles customer questions.
This sounds basic, but it prevents an unfamiliar legitimate partner being treated as an impersonator. If a search reveals a reseller that is not on the list, check the relationship with the person responsible for wholesale or licensing before deciding how to respond.
Search your name with the words a shopper might use
Begin with the exact brand name in quotation marks, then search it alongside words such as ‘shop’, ‘sale’ and ‘outlet’. Try a distinctive product name as well. Look at the website address shown with each result, rather than judging only from the page title or logo.
Hypothetical example: a studio trades as ‘Fern Table’. It might search ‘Fern Table’, ‘Fern Table shop’ and ‘Fern Table outlet’, then compare the results with its authorised-address list. A result for a differently named garden business is not evidence of impersonation merely because it shares the words.
Search a short, unusual passage from your own About page too. It can uncover copied content even when the other site has changed the brand name. Keep this as a separate lead: copied prose and an attempt to impersonate your business are not automatically the same issue.
Add alerts for new mentions of your name
Google Alerts can email you when matching results appear in Google Search. Enter your brand or a distinctive phrase, review the preview and use the options to choose notification frequency, language and other filters. Follow Google’s current setup instructions below.
Treat an alert as a prompt to review a result. It is not a guarantee of notification for every new website or domain, and the absence of alerts does not mean nobody is impersonating you. Keep a periodic manual check and an easy route for customers to send suspicious addresses.
Check the full address before judging the website
Read the complete domain, including added words and spelling differences. A page title or logo can claim to be official; it does not make the address part of your business. Compare it with the known-address list and note the exact difference.
ICANN’s registration lookup can provide available domain-registration information, including the registrar and abuse contact. Some information may be redacted or unavailable. Use the record to help identify a contact route, not as a verdict: a recent registration or private contact details alone does not prove a scam.
Do not treat the registrar as the website owner or assume it also hosts the shop. Record what the lookup actually identifies. If the record is inconclusive, keep the uncertainty in your notes.
Look for specific claims that could confuse a customer
Useful observations include a site presenting your business name as its own, describing itself as your official outlet, using your contact details or showing your original photographs throughout the shop. Check those observations against permissions and partner relationships.
Save existing screenshots and the relevant page URLs. For a suspected scam, avoid entering account or payment details to investigate it. You can record or report an address without completing an order. The NCSC’s reporting guidance covers suspected scam websites, including cases where you are not certain.
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Use the result to choose a next step
If the site appears to be a copy of your shop, follow the cloned-store response guide. If the issue is one reused photograph, the photo-removal guide may be a better starting point. Keep claims limited to the material and behaviour you actually reviewed.
Repeat brand searches alongside your product checks. Copywatch’s recurring visual and product-name searches can surface pages using selected Shopify products, but it is not a comprehensive brand-name or domain-registration monitoring service. A tip from a customer may reveal something that product searches missed.
Less searching. More creating.
Check for copies of your product images too
Alongside your brand searches, try a scan of one example product from your public Shopify store.
Try a sample store scanOne example product. No sign-in required for the initial scan.