We have had a pdf brochure on our site with reference to a commercially trademarked product.

We received a cease and desist letter from their lawyers.

The ONLY reference to that word was in the pdf which is now removed.

Our challenge is that the file is referenced in Google and many other sites who are shonky link bait sites.

Is there any way we can we break that reference without having Google remove us totally from their whole system?

Never had this before.

How about this article from Google?

support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en

I've never actually needed to do this

Cheers
Paul

Thanks Paul.

Our challenges is the link bait sites
I created a disposable address and made contact with them. Not holding my breath but at least the lawyers can see something has been done.

Realise they have a job to do but they have zero idea about ISP caching, caching on other sites etc. Absolutely ignorant which is really scary.

Yes not something I've come across

Cheers
Paul

Hi Andrew

Personally I would handle incoming requests with a 301 redirect, here is googles take on it,

support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93633?hl=en

Redirect the whole path leading to the pdf file to somewhere else, another page on your site. This will then keep the google goodness. Once done ask google to crawl the site again.

A cease and desist can only ask you to remove content or images that you do not have copyright to, which you can demonstrate you have done. You cannot control link site or anyone else linking to you, in my view. The redirect method should tell google that the link is false and they should then stop indexing that duff link.

I would not get too intimated by the lawyers, once remove from your site you have done what is asked. Your pi insurance should cover you if they sought damages, of course depends on your location and is only my opinion.

Good luck with it.

Regards Ian

For the redirects you can add as per the article at root level manually or via several joomla extensions.

Most commonly for us sh404sef or admintools.

Both make it easy, especially if you already customise the .htaccess in your normal workflow.

Ian

Thanks Ian, much appreciated.

We did some more searching and ended up with content in Yellow Pages cache which they obviously refuse to deal with. We sorted out a couple of product portals that we no longer use and asked them to remove, they have.

I ended up responding that we have done everything within our power and that the link bait sites had acted illegally and we would not act on their demand to deal with them.

We got our graphics people to re do the file and have changed the file name on the site. we also copied the same file and re-named it to the old file name so that if they checked they will see we have been real.

What I was so OFF about is they had previously given us approval, in writing, to refer to their product with applicable links. Some guru in their business decided to change their mind and act like a right royal fool.

Salutory lesson.

Thank Ian

Learnt a lot