A new type of negative SEO is emerging, as imposters are using bogus DMCA takedown requests to manipulate Google search results. Reports indicate that scammers are pretending to be legitimate copyright holders and have successfully removed hundreds of thousands of links using Google’s DMCA takedown tools. This problem is also being discussed in the Russian Google webmaster forum.
Some of the entities being impersonated include anti-piracy companies MUSO and Blue Efficience, who confirm that not all takedown requests made in their name are legitimate. The primary goal of these fake requests is to lower the ranking of competitors. Imposters have managed to succeed by using slight variations of names that seem legitimate.
Google is aware of the issue and is marking some notices as fake, but others are still slipping through. This has resulted in potentially millions of URLs being removed by scammers without any copyright ownership, purely to harm competitors’ site rankings.
A site owner initiated a discussion about this issue on Google’s Webmaster Central help forums, noting that it has been ongoing since February. Respondents in the thread advise targeted individuals to file a counter-notice against the fake takedown requests. While many targeted sites are pirate sites, evidence shows that a small business website has also been targeted by a competitor, leading to several of its URLs being removed.
Google has yet to release an official statement on the matter.
