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Glossary
Brand protection terms in one or two lines, with examples from our checks of brand search results.
What appears when people search your name
Clone · clone site
A copy of your site on someone else's domain, with your logo, content and buttons. It appears in search results for your name and steals your customers' money and data.
Phishing · phishing site
A fake login, wallet or payment page. It collects logins, seed phrases, card details and documents. We file a phishing complaint without a letter of authorization (LOA), on the same day you confirm “not ours”.
Lookalike domain · look-alike domain
A domain that reads like yours. It has a typo, an extra word (login, bonus, app), a similar character (rn instead of m) or a different domain extension. We find them by checking similar names across domain extensions.
Typosquatting · typo squatting
Registering a domain with a typo in a brand name to catch people who mistype the address. It is one type of lookalike domain.
Cybersquatting · domain squatting
Registering a domain that contains someone else's trademark in bad faith. The goal is to sell it to the trademark owner, take traffic or deceive customers. You can get a domain like this transferred to you through UDRP.
Parasite SEO · parasite page
A page with your name on someone else's high-authority domain: an open platform, a help center, a hacked site. It appears high in search results because of that domain's authority. For one crypto brand, 12% of findings were on open content platforms.
How they hide and how we prove it
Mirror · mirror site
Your own site on another domain, for example, a version for one country. It looks the same as a clone. So before any complaint, we check it against your domain list and certificates.
Cloaking · cloaked page
A site shows one page to Googlebot and another page to people. The proof is the difference between the two responses. Googlebot gets a page with your name, and a browser gets a 404 error.
Rotator · link rotator
An affiliate link that sends different visits to different destination sites. After one visit, a rotator looks like an ordinary competitor. So we check it several times.
Affiliate ID · affiliate tag: btag, stag
The affiliate account number in a link: btag=…, stag=…, ref=…. It links a network of domains to one account. In one check, 127 domains turned out to belong to two affiliate accounts.
Transit host · redirect host
A host between the button and the destination site: a tracker, a link shortener, a link-masking service. It is not in search results. You only see it after a click. It connects sites that share neither a domain nor a page layout.
Certificate Transparency
Public logs of all issued SSL certificates. Names listed together on one certificate show domains owned by the same party, including domains that are not in search results.
How takedowns work
Brand infringement · trademark infringement
Using your trademark without permission, so that customers are confused about whose site it is. Trademark complaints remove almost nothing from Google organic results and nothing from Bing. Copyright complaints work there. Trademark complaints work with registrars, in ads and in UDRP.
Letter of authorization · LOA
A document in which the trademark owner lets an agent file complaints on its behalf. You need it for search results, trademark complaints and UDRP. You don't need it for phishing and fraud. The trademark owner listed in the registry signs it. This is not always the company that runs the site.
UDRP
An ICANN procedure in use since 1999. A domain that contains your trademark is transferred to you without going to court, in about 2 months. The complainant proves three things. The domain is similar to the trademark. The domain owner has no rights to it. The owner acts in bad faith.
Lumen
A public database of content removal notices. Google sends copies of complaints there. It confirms that a complaint was filed, not that the page was removed. The page URL in the copy is hidden, and only the domain is visible.
Google Safe Browsing
Google's list of dangerous sites. Before you open such a site, the browser shows a “Deceptive site ahead” warning. It is a channel for phishing, and the complaint needs no LOA.
Trusted Flagger
A status under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). Platforms review notices from such an organization first. This gives priority in the queue, not the right to demand removal.
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