Page removed from Google search due to DMCA complaint. Am I boned?

[Mack]

Just had a page taken off the SERPs because it had an image within the article of a person who claimed DMCA against it.

1) If I remove the image and request indexing in GSC will that eventually bring it back?

2) If I republish the article (with the image removed) under a new URL, will that allow me to rank for its keywords again?

3) Am I SOL?

 

[voLdie]

A few factors here like:

• How old is your site?
• How well was the page ranking?
• Traffic?

If it was me I would remove the image then resubmit the URL for indexing in GSC and do the Live Test feature so you know Google sees the image removed.

Wait a week or two and see what happens.

 

[LinkPlate]

Google takes DMCA complaints very seriously and its most likely that your page will take a while to get indexed again/if ever - even if you remove the image. The DMCA penalty

This is what I would do:
- Read this thoroughly: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/google-images
- Check all your other posts for images of the same sort. Make sure you attribute/credit the image to the creator and follow the guidelines they listed in the above link.
- Remove the image from that post and resubmit to the Google.
- Wait for 1 month minimum (I would wait longer) and check SERP rankings for the page again. If nothing happened, then I would just create a new post.

Since you only got one page taken down due to the DMCA claim, I think you should be able to recover. However, if you get more DMCA requests you will have a much harder time getting back into the primary index. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-pirate-dmca-penalty-strong-32970.html