Fake copies of our website made us disappear from Google search

They don't even need to copy your website.

Anyone can point a few hundred domains to a few haproxy instances with LetEncrypt certs, then point the backend to anyones website. They just need to change the header to the backend to request your domain instead of the proxy domains. Easy to do. They are not copying the website, just proxying. Google will see that as the same thing and SEO downrank your site. With cache enabled, the proxied versions may even be faster.

This could be done on anyone. I feel bad for businesses who rely on traffic from google.. One more nail in the google coffin since they’ll most likely ignorore it or its too small for them to fix...