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What can be done about fake websites popping up pretending to be the real one? It is specific to restaurants where there are services provided by food delivery services such as in the UK; Just-eat and a few others. Just-eat is a food portal platform listing thousands of restaurants.

The scenario is, a restaurant has its own website `essex-restaurant.com and uses services from Just-eat and possibly others.

Because Just-eat wants users to go to their platform they make fake websites such as essex-takeaway.com and other platforms make similar such as essex-takeaway.co.uk.

They end up with 3 to 4 websites all competing against each other. This results in the original restaurant website competing with these fake websites to rank.

Is there a way to tell search engines about fake websites, contacting the companies to remove it is not an option as it has been tried without success.

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    Are you using schema.org and Google my Business? If not, you should take full advantage of these opportunities to rank your site and build a card for your business. Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    Jun 2, 2020 at 19:14
  • Yes I'm using Google business page and it seems Google has commercial relationships with those companies too, they're creating links within the business listing and there are no options to remove them either. What would I do to increase ranking with schema.org?
    – Abu Nooh
    Jun 2, 2020 at 21:42
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    At the risk of going too far off-topic, IMO impersonating a restaurant and refusing to take it down on request seems like a lawsuit in the making to me. I think it could be very easy to demonstrate that the "average reasonably prudent consumer is confused" over which company controls the website, which is the hallmark of a good trademark infringement case. As mentioned in my other comment, I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
    – Maximillian Laumeister ♦
    Jun 2, 2020 at 21:55

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I think you can use the Legal troubleshoot service of Google:

https://support.google.com/legal/troubleshooter/1114905?hl=en#ts=9814647%2C1115655

If your content has been stolen, you can also report it by using Google Search Console:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-notice?&pli=1

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  • I'm not a lawyer but this seems like more of a trademark issue to me, in which case Google probably can't offer any help without a court order.
    – Maximillian Laumeister ♦
    Jun 2, 2020 at 18:36
  • This was my thought too, I've previously filled requests without much success. But it might be worth speaking to a solicitor too.
    – Abu Nooh
    Jun 2, 2020 at 21:43

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