Will an identical site impact SERP results

[STF]

I came across two identical sites for two different business owners in the same industry. I'm sure you've seen these. A web company offers individuals in the same profession a template site with the exact same content for each site. All that is different is the domain.

i.e. mycompany.com/news/topicsname will have the exact same content, images, tags, etc. as mycompany2.com/news/topicsname.

I would assume having the duplicate content, especially if two site owners are in the same town, will ultimately hurt the rankings of at least one site. Is this correct?

Thank you for your help.

[EGOL]

I would assume having the duplicate content, especially if two site owners are in the same town, will ultimately hurt the rankings of at least one site. Is this correct?

Yes.  They will certainly compete against each other in the search results. One of them could be filtered for duplicate content - maybe both if this same design and content is sold to other businesses in other cities (which I bet that it has).

I have seen dental sites that are sold complete with content, photos (awful photos IMO), etc.  A great money maker for the creators but they probably don't tell the dentists the potential problems with duplicate content.

I would not be surprised if the creators of these sites are clueless about SEO.  I know a dentist who bought one of these... and the title tags were awful - misspellings, chop English, etc.   However, he is a smart guy and did some customization and now he is #1 for the good queries in his town.

[STF]

Thanks for the confirmation and insight. Much appreciated.

bh