Removal of 21 lying articles for a developer
A local developer became the target of a smear campaign. Within 34 days, we led to the removal of all texts from regional portals.
A development company from Wroclaw lost customer trust due to a mass attack online. Someone published 21 texts full of lies on local portals. We entered the game in August 2024 and cleared the search results in 34 days.
The challenge
InvestBud Wroclaw is a company with 12 years of experience building estates in Krzyki. In July 2024, articles appeared on three regional portals about alleged cracks in foundations. The authors used photos from another construction site in a different city to cause panic. The articles were linked by automated bots, which meant that after typing the company name into Google, 7 negative results appeared on the first page. The number of inquiries for new apartments dropped from 42 per week to just 9 within seven days. The developer was losing an average of 147,000 PLN a day due to halted reservations and customers withdrawing from development contracts.
Our approach
The Nick Castro team started with securing electronic evidence and OSINT analysis. We used specific paragraphs from the press law and GDPR. Instead of asking for removal, we sent pre-trial notices to the editorial offices based on the right to be forgotten. We don't play with PR requests for corrections that no one reads. We strike where it hurts – at the publisher's legal liability for spreading untruths and failing to verify sources. We act in silence so as not to provoke further attacks, but our letters are hard and technical.
The solution
We identified a total of 21 unique URLs spread across 6 portals. Every editor received a set of evidence from us that the photos were forged and the authors did not exist. We conducted disputes based on technical facts and errors in publishing procedures. In parallel, we reported violations directly to Google, citing a violation of personal rights and the right to be forgotten. We withdrew the lies from circulation that were blocking the sale of apartments in the Zacisze 4 estate. We monitored search engine indexes every 4 hours to make sure the links were gone permanently.
Results
After 34 days, there was no trace of the lying articles in the Google search engine. All 21 texts disappeared from the web without a trace. Apartment sales returned to normal in mid-September 2024, and the developer regained credibility with contractors. Your data, your control – this is not just a slogan, it's a real effect of our work.
Timeline
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August 12, 2024Analysis of 21 links and gathering evidence of foundation photo forgery.
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August 17, 2024Sending removal notices to 6 regional portal publishers.
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August 29, 2024Removal of the first 14 texts from Google's top ten results.
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September 15, 2024Full cleaning of the web and handing over the final report to the client.
"Initially, I thought it was a tilt against windmills and Google would destroy us. Nick Castro handled the matter in a month without unnecessary talk. Now, after typing the company name, only our offers and good resident reviews are visible."