Google has always allowed you to request that content be removed from Google Search via the legal DMCA request form. But in the past year or so, this legal route has become a negative SEO nightmare. Real content, owned by the original publisher and website, has been removed from Google Search due to fraudulent DMCA requests that Google is complying with, even though they are not legit.
The Press Gazette posted about the second time it had content removed from Google over these fraudulent DMCA takedowns. Even Search Engine Land had content removed last March over this fraud and Moz had this happen in 2022. I see complaints about this daily and it seems to be a growing issue.
To be fair, Google did sue over companies weaponizing the DMCA request route in 2023. But honestly, since then, the situation has only become more of an issue. There are even companies blackmailing sites with fake DMCA notices.
You would think they would at the least have some sort of automatic verification in place. This is too easy to have checked.
— perdrix (@perdrix_fl) June 30, 2026
Google has a serious problem and no one is working to fix it... Or willing to.
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) June 30, 2026
"Spurious copyright claim sees second Press Gazette story removed from Google search
Claim filed under US law seeks to hide Press Gazette reporting about Clickout Media."https://t.co/5CoYBwiy9j
Here is a sample DMCA request notification, which you should be on the look out for, because the sooner you act on these, the sooner your content appeal will work:
Sometimes your content can be out of Google not just for hours, but days or weeks, if not months.
Pedro Dias posted more about the mechanics of this on LinkedIn - he wrote:
This will be the last post I write about DMCA shenanigans going on and targeting sites on Google. I think that, in order to force Google to solve this, the whole working methodology needs to be exposed:Right now, you can take ANY of your competitors down just by targeting them with fake DMCA takedowns. Google doesn't check for ID or credible information on the submitter and the process just goes on unchecked.
Every URL taken down, will take your competitors at least 2 weeks of waiting to get them back. And, if you compound multiple DMCAs on the same URLs, the waiting time can increase to at least a couple of months.
Also, if your competitors are relying solely on GSC warnings, and do not have active mechanisms to track all of it, compounding DMCA takedowns on the same URL across multiple URLs means they'll miss ~80% of the DMCAs against them (GSC misses a lot of these), which will compound negatively against the whole domain.
So, it turns out, the best strategy to win in Google search in 2026 is to DMCA the crap out of your competitors!
It is surprising that Google cannot get a handle on this. If Google has been watching the industry over the past year or so, they would know that this is a growing issue.
Forum discussion at X.
