So I received an email from Google this morning that one of my pages was reported for copyright infringement. I have a lot of UGC so this in itself is not entirely impossible and although fairly rare, I do investigate when such reports come through.
But this specific report just reeks of an SEO trying to wipe out their competitors.
The report is available to see on lumendatabase, sent in by a user "werwqe qwrqwer" from Liberia (hmm..)
The description is simply "courier tracking Skopje" and then it lists 171 domains that apparently have violated this copyright including my own.
I had a look at the top 10 results in Google for this search term, and surprise surprise, 7 out of the top 10 domains are listed in this copyright violation.
In the email from Google they state that "It is Google's policy to remove copyrighted content when the copyright holder or their authorized representative alleges that a use is infringing."
Yep, an allegation like this from someone by the name of werwqe qwrqwer is apparently enough to get your content removed from Google. Clearly not even the most basic level of transparency is required.
Source: r/SEO · by /u/daamsie