A fraudulent copyright complaint briefly scrubbed two major investigations into parasite SEO firm Clickout Media from Google's search index - and then Google reversed the removals within days, confirming the takedowns were without merit.

Press Gazette published its original investigation on March 25, 2026, detailing how UK-based Clickout Media has been systematically acquiring news websites, firing journalists, replacing them with AI-generated content, and stuffing those sites with links to offshore gambling operations. On March 30, 2026, Press Gazette reported that its own investigation had been removed from Google's search results following what it described as a "spurious legal complaint." The article, titled "The SEO parasites buying, exploiting and ultimately killing online newsbrands," disappeared from Google's index. A Search Engine Land follow-up to that investigation was also removed.

By March 31, 2026, Google had reinstated both articles. SEO consultant Glenn Gabe, president of G-Squared Interactive, confirmed the restoration on LinkedIn, writing that "the SEL article and the Press Gazette article that were removed due to a BS DMCA takedown are now back in the SERPs again." He praised Google for moving quickly to rectify the situation.

The mechanics of the bogus complaint

According to the Lumen Database - a public archive of legal complaints sent to internet platforms - the removal was triggered by a complaint sent via the "US Hub" of an unnamed "private" entity. The phrasing suggests the complaint originated outside the United States. The complaint claimed that Press Gazette's original investigation had infringed the copyright of a 2024 article on The Verge covering a similar topic. Critically, The Verge was not listed as the complainant.

The complaint stated, according to Press Gazette's reporting: "The infringing news website has blatantly and willfully violated copyright law by copying our entire content word for word, including all images, which are solely owned by our company."

Press Gazette described its investigation as "entirely original." A note appearing at the bottom of Google search results for the exact headline had confirmed the removal, stating: "In response to multiple complaints that we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 2 results from this page."

Writing on X, Gabe said: "Surprised this was approved by Google... This is a BS DMCA takedown that doesn't even make sense."

Under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, legal challenges to takedown requests can take weeks or months to play out through formal counter-notice processes. Google's decision to reverse the removals in under 48 hours was notably faster than the DMCA process typically allows. Press Gazette asked Google to comment and explain why the article had been removed - the company had not, at time of publication, provided a substantive public response.

What Clickout Media does

The underlying Press Gazette investigation documented a pattern that has drawn growing scrutiny from both Google and the marketing industry. Clickout Media, which trades as Finixio, was founded by Sam Miranda and Adam Grunwerg. In the year to September 30, 2024 - the most recent financial data available - the company reported turnover of £40m, declared a loss of £3m, and paid no tax.

According to former employees who spoke to Press Gazette on condition of anonymity, Clickout Media may own up to 300 websites. Acquisitions began in the casino sector and later expanded to sports and videogame publications. The organisation has previously bought multiple sites including Football Blog, She Kicks, Sportslens, Sportslens UK, Sportscasting UK, Football Blog UK, and Gambling Insider - for which Clickout Media reportedly paid at least £12m.

The operating model, as described in the investigation, follows a consistent arc. Websites are acquired for large sums while still functioning as legitimate editorial outlets. Human writers are gradually replaced - first with casino content, then with AI-generated articles and fabricated author profiles. Revenue comes from affiliate arrangements with casino operators, sometimes reaching up to 35% of money lost by gamblers, with casinos retaining the remainder.

One former employee described the working conditions: "I was moved from site to site. Writing guidelines and strategies changed every other week with very little explanation. At first, I didn't write casino content, but then I wrote articles on bets and odds. Then AI articles started appearing." Other staff reported being paid as little as $1,200 per month for eight articles per day.

Staff working for site owners who sold to Clickout Media described frictionless acquisitions conducted by anonymous buyers with "little digital footprint." One sports site owner told Press Gazette he had no idea he had sold to Clickout Media until after the transaction was complete. The deal was, in his words, "paid in full" rapidly.

Google penalties and site abandonment

Once Google detects the manipulation and issues a penalty, the acquired sites are typically abandoned. Esports Insider, once an active news outlet employing multiple journalists, appears to have been de-indexed from Google's search results following its takeover by Clickout Media. Even searching the exact name of the site no longer returns a link to it. Long-time editor Tom Daniels publicly posted that it was "sad to see Esports Insider seemingly close its doors." Videogamer, another Clickout acquisition, appeared to face similar de-indexing.

Techopedia is a comparable case. Taken over by Clickout, its content was shifted towards casino reviews and cryptocurrency content. Google penalised it in 2024 for reputation abuse, and the site cannot be found through a search for its own name. Sportslens has been abandoned after Google apparently removed it from search results entirely.

The tactics even reached charitable organisations. According to the Press Gazette investigation, the website of the Charlie Gard Foundation - a children's cancer charity - was being used to host content about "Best non-Gamstop casinos in Britain today," with an author profile identified as 100% AI-generated by the tool Identifai. Gamstop is a UK self-exclusion scheme designed to prevent problem gamblers from accessing regulated betting sites; the promoted offshore casinos operate outside that system. Road to Peace, a site set up by the car accident charity Brake, was reportedly redirecting visitors to online casinos.

The business model explained

Danish SEO expert Kristoffer Holten, believed to be linked to the business, explained the underlying economics in a 2023 podcast. According to the Press Gazette investigation, Holten said: "The casinos are struggling to get players themselves and they're all competing. So they want to pay individuals like us to get them as many players as possible." He added: "Well, obviously there is a parasite part of it. We have the money to invest in parasites. Then we buy up sites."

Vince Nero, director of content marketing at BuzzStream, provided context on the spectrum of such tactics in the Press Gazette piece. According to the investigation, Nero said: "There are a few degrees of parasite SEO, and it's not all bad per se." However, the extreme version - acquiring entire domains to publish casino content - is what draws Google penalties. "The extreme examples are frowned upon not only because it's considered 'cheating' but also because Google can manually issue a penalty to your site," Nero said. He added: "Most of these sites are in it for quick wins."

A Google spokesperson, responding to the original Press Gazette investigation, stated: "While we aren't able to comment on a specific site's ranking on Search, our policies prohibit publishing content at scale for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings."

Why this matters for the marketing industry

The incident sits at the intersection of several trends that have been reshaping the search ecosystem. Google's March 2026 spam update launched on March 24, just one day before Press Gazette's investigation was published, targeting exactly these kinds of scaled content manipulation tactics globally across all languages.

Google's site reputation abuse policy, introduced in March 2024 and enforced manually from May 2024, was designed specifically to address the pattern Clickout Media exemplifies. The policy was updated in November 2024 to eliminate exceptions for content with first-party oversight, tightening its reach. Expanded FAQs published in December 2024 gave site owners more detailed guidance on remediation procedures.

What the Clickout case introduces that is new for marketing professionals is the weaponisation of DMCA takedown requests as a tool to suppress critical coverage. The DMCA, a US law, creates a mechanism under which platforms receive safe harbour from copyright liability provided they act on takedown notices. Because the volume of such requests is enormous - platforms like Google receive thousands daily - the default response is often removal first, review later. As one analysis of the abuse of takedown mechanisms noted, economic incentives favour removal because platforms "simply don't have the time or the resources to review every review."

The fact that the removal targeted a Press Gazette investigation - and simultaneously a Search Engine Land article covering the same subject - suggests a coordinated attempt to reduce the discoverability of reporting on Clickout's practices. The sequence unfolded within days of multiple Clickout-owned sites being de-indexed by Google, raising the question of whether the DMCA complaints were filed in response to those penalties. Google's apparent speed in reversing the removals - under 48 hours after SEO professionals publicly called out the takedowns - reflects a heightened sensitivity around DMCA abuse at a moment when platform trust and search result quality are under intense scrutiny.

For digital marketing professionals, the episode illustrates a concrete tension in how search results are governed. The DMCA counter-notice process exists, but it is slow. A well-resourced actor with a plausible-sounding legal complaint can, in principle, temporarily suppress inconvenient journalism - and the cost and time to reverse it falls on the target, not the complainant. The parallel EU regulatory investigation into Google's site reputation abuse policy, launched in November 2025, adds another dimension: regulators are simultaneously pushing Google to be less aggressive in penalising publishers for hosting third-party content, while cases like Clickout demonstrate exactly why those penalties were introduced.

The parasite SEO concept itself is not new - the practice of exploiting high-authority domains to rank content for competitive keywords has been documented for years. What distinguishes the Clickout case is its scale, the involvement of charitable organisations, and the apparent use of legal mechanisms to suppress reporting about it.

Timeline

  • 2023: Clickout Media acquires multiple sports and football sites, including Sportslens, She Kicks, Sportscasting UK, and Football Blog UK, according to Press Gazette.
  • 2023: Kristoffer Holten describes the business model on a podcast, calling it "the name of the game."
  • 2024: Techopedia is penalised by Google for reputation abuse after Clickout acquisition.
  • March 2024: Google introduces its site reputation abuse policy, targeting the exact tactics Clickout uses.
  • May 2024: Google begins manual enforcement of the site reputation abuse policy.
  • September 2024: Forbes Advisor experiences significant ranking drops following site reputation abuse scrutiny - a high-profile early enforcement case.
  • September 30, 2024: Google updates web search spam policies with expanded site reputation abuse definitions.
  • Year ending 30 September 2024: Clickout Media (trading as Finixio) reports £40m turnover and a £3m loss in its most recent financial data.
  • November 2024: Google updates site reputation abuse policy to eliminate the first-party oversight exception.
  • December 2024: Google publishes expanded FAQs on site reputation abuse remediation.
  • November 13, 2025: European Commission announces investigation into Google's site reputation abuse policyunder the Digital Markets Act.
  • March 24, 2026: Google launches the March 2026 spam update targeting scaled content manipulation globally.
  • March 25, 2026: Press Gazette publishes investigation by Rob Waugh: "The SEO parasites buying, exploiting and ultimately killing online newsbrands."
  • March 25, 2026: Google appears to de-index Esports Insider and Videogamer following Clickout takeovers, according to the investigation.
  • March 26, 2026: Search Engine Land publishes a follow-up to the Press Gazette investigation.
  • March 30, 2026: Press Gazette reports its own investigation has been removed from Google's index following a DMCA complaint filed by an unnamed private entity via the "US Hub."
  • March 30, 2026: Search Engine Land's follow-up article is also removed from search results after a similar complaint.
  • March 31, 2026: Google reinstates both articles. SEO consultant Glenn Gabe confirms restoration on LinkedIn.

Summary

Who: Clickout Media (trading as Finixio), a UK-based company founded by Sam Miranda and Adam Grunwerg, is at the centre of the story. Press Gazette journalists Dominic Ponsford and Rob Waugh published the investigations. Google processed and subsequently reversed the DMCA complaints. SEO consultant Glenn Gabe publicly documented the reinstatement.

What: Press Gazette published an investigation revealing that Clickout Media buys legitimate news websites, replaces journalists with AI-generated content, and fills the sites with links to offshore gambling operators. After Google de-indexed several Clickout-owned sites, an anonymous entity filed DMCA complaints that removed both the Press Gazette investigation and a Search Engine Land follow-up from Google search results. Google reversed the removals within approximately 48 hours.

When: The original investigation was published on March 25, 2026. The removal was reported on March 30, 2026. Reinstatement was confirmed on March 31, 2026.

Where: The story spans UK-based media outlets and their digital search presence. Clickout Media is incorporated in the UK. The DMCA complaint was filed through the "US Hub" of an unnamed entity, suggesting an originating party outside the United States. The Lumen Database, a public archive maintained in the US, logged the complaint.

Why: The DMCA removal appears to have been an attempt to suppress investigative journalism that was directly damaging to Clickout Media's ability to operate. The investigation led to Google de-indexing multiple Clickout-owned sites, effectively destroying their commercial value. Removing the Press Gazette and Search Engine Land articles from Google search would reduce the discoverability of reporting on those penalties - and on the broader business model. The episode demonstrates how copyright complaint mechanisms designed to protect legitimate creators can be abused as a tool against critical journalism, at a moment when Google's enforcement against site reputation abuse is intensifying.

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