A clone store is a copy of a real store on a different domain. It takes the theme, the product photos and the product text, often the refund policy too, and puts them on an address like yourstore-outlet.shop. Then it buys ads, takes orders and never ships them.
You rarely find a clone by looking for one. You find it because something odd lands in your inbox. Here are the signs, and the checks you can run yourself.
The signs
Customers ask about orders you have no record of. This is the most common first sign. Someone writes in about an order number that is not in your system, often paid at a price you never charged. Ask them for the address of the site where they ordered and for a screenshot of their confirmation email.
Reviews and chargebacks mention a sale you never ran. “Closing down sale”, “80% off everything”, “last day”. Clones use the same few offers, because they never have to honour them.
Your photos show up in ads you did not pay for. Customers or friends send you an ad with your product photos, and the ad leads somewhere other than your store.
Odd traffic in your analytics. A copied theme often keeps your analytics or pixel code, so the clone’s visitors show up in your reports under a hostname that is not yours. Check your analytics for page views on hostnames other than your own.
Images loaded from your store by another site. Some clones do not even copy your images: they load them straight from your store’s servers. That can show up as requests with a referrer you do not recognise.
Five checks you can run yourself
1. Search your brand name with sales words
Search for your brand name followed by words clones like: outlet, sale, official, store, shop. Also search your exact product names in quotes. A site that sells your exact product with your exact description, at a price far below yours, is worth a second look.
2. Try the obvious domains
Type your domain with other endings (.shop, .store, .online) and with words added (-outlet, -sale, -official). Most will not exist. One that loads your own homepage, under another name, is a clone.
3. Search the ad libraries
Meta’s Ad Library (facebook.com/ads/library) shows active ads on Facebook and Instagram. Search your brand name and your domain. Open each ad and look at where it leads. TikTok has an ad library too, with more limited coverage.
4. Look for new certificates with your name in them
Every security certificate (the padlock in the address bar) is recorded in public logs. Search your brand name at crt.sh and look at recent entries for domains you do not own. A new certificate often appears before the clone has any traffic, so this can catch one early. The service is free and sometimes slow.
5. Look up a suspect domain’s registration
For any site you find, a registration lookup such as lookup.icann.org shows when its domain was registered and through which registrar. Clone domains are usually weeks or months old. Your own domain is probably years old. Write down both dates: you will want them later.
If you find one
Before you do anything else, save the evidence, because clones move:
- Screenshots of the clone’s home page and a product page, next to the same pages on your store.
- The addresses of every page you looked at, with the date and time.
- The ads, with their Ad Library links.
- Customer emails that mention orders from the clone.
Then do not contact the site. Its operators gain nothing from talking to you and learn that you have noticed.
The next step is reporting it to the companies that can take it down: the platform it runs on, its host, its domain registrar, its payment provider and the ad platforms. We wrote a separate guide on who can take down a clone store and in what order.
Doing this every week
The checks above take an hour or two, and catch the clones that use your name. They miss the ones that do not: a clone on a domain with nothing to do with your brand is found only by what it carries over from your store, such as your tracking code or your exact files.
That is the work Fjerne automates. A beacon in your theme reports a copy’s address the moment it goes live, whatever its domain, and every candidate is compared with your store and documented. If you would like to know whether your store has a copy right now, the first check is free.
