I fully agree.  We have notified them all and let them know its in their best interest to modify the content throughout the site.  Unfortunately most of them don't and the copy remains templated.

Thanks for your answers

I fully agree with you EGOL "There is another problem - maybe bigger than Google's desire for unique content."

We give each franchisee the opportunity to expand on the content and make it their own, however I would say 90% of them don't make any changes.

I don't think that either the franchisee or corporate would want to pay the $$$ it would cost to have our Copywriters write unique copy for each site.  (50-100+ products/services) per site or franchisee.

I wish we could redo the strategy but we aren't talking about small franchises here.  We are talking franchises anywhere from 100 stores all the way up to 5,000 stores.

The products/services they offer are described very well and unfortunately the only thing we add into each product page is maybe a few location identifiers and a company name.

I don't want to use the canonical solution because each site has to be seen as a stand along site.

Each Franchise has their own domain.

Each Product/Service has a single description - Each franchisee has to use the same corporate approved logo.

All Images are named the same thing so it can matter.

I like your suggestions though...you are going the same route we have in the past.

I know that duplicated content is a touchy subject but I work with multiple franchise groups and each franchisee wants their own site, however, almost all of the sites use the same content.  I want to make sure that Google sees each one of these sites as unique sites and does not penalize them for the following issues.

All sites are hosted on the same server therefor the same IP address

All sites use generally the same content across their product pages (which are very very important pages) *templated content approved by corporate

Almost all sites have the same design (A few of the groups we work with have multiple design options)

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again

Aaron