Last week, Max Prin from Merkle, notified me that one of his awesome free tools on technicalseo.com was removed over a false DMCA takedown request. There are a couple of issues here (1) the DMCA takedown was false and successfully removed his free tool from Google Search and (2) he was not notified of the removal until much later.
Here is when Max Prin found out:
Yesterday I noticed that my Fetch & Render tool wasn't ranking at all. No issues reported in GSC but simply gone from results. Then I noticed this copyright complaint notice 🤨 Is this some kind of new negative SEO hack? What am I missing here? @JohnMu @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/Z3VMI2bGsM
— Max Prin (@maxxeight) February 25, 2021
It was a fraudulent claim that some companies are using to remove sites from Google's search results:
This is ridiculous: now if I want to send a counter-notification, my personal information will be sent to whoever submitted the original claim... https://t.co/B2cJ4o7PId pic.twitter.com/0i9W9PvzXe
— Max Prin (@maxxeight) February 25, 2021
John Mueller of Google replied on Twitter saying there isn't much he can personally do because this is a legal issue. DMCA goes through legal and he cannot handle legal issues. He said "There's often not a lot we can do when it comes to legal issues like these. You're welcome to work to change the legal foundation for these processes though... (I'm not the one you have to convince, and Twitter is likely not the best medium for legal discussions, YMMV.)"
But on the second point, Max should have been notified of the takedown sooner. John added "You should be getting search console notifications for DMCA complaints. If that's not happening, that would be a bug afaik. Maybe it's just a timing issue? I can double-check on our side though."
Max did not receive the email that his page was removed until Friday night:
I eventually got the notification/email on Friday night (2/26), so maybe the issue is simply a delay?
— Max Prin (@maxxeight) March 1, 2021
Danny Sullivan from Google told Max to file a counterclaim, which he did. Danny wrote "Filing a counter-claim is the right things. When DMCA removals happen, my understanding is sites do indeed get notified. That said, there's enough weirdness here that I'm also passing it on for further review."
Then sometime on Saturday the site returned to Google. Max didn't know it returned either, he did not receive any notification that it returned.
Nice! No I did not know, when I checked yesterday it was still gone. Thanks!
— Max Prin (@maxxeight) February 27, 2021
Nothing about the return in the SERP or about my counter-claim. But I got the « notice of DMCA removal » on Friday night (2/26)
— Max Prin (@maxxeight) March 1, 2021
Scary to think it can be that easy to remove a site or page and potentially cause that much damage.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
