How To Corp, the website brand founded by Tory chairman Grant Shapps, has been taken down from the internet, taking with it a series of potentially embarrassing details about the former life of the prominent Conservative MP and his alter ego, Michael Green.

Since last week a slew of websites have disappeared, removing all traces of Michael Green's offer to make $20,000 (£12,500) in 20 days "or your money back" and details of phone lines offering expert internet marketing advice for $297 an hour.

on Monday How To Corp's website was replaced by a helpdesk offering support to existing customers, effectively ending the public's chance to download Michael Green's How to Bounce Back from Recession, or pay $497 for TrafficPaymaster, a product that the Guardian revealed broke Google's code of conduct by inflating a site's revenue through apparently plagiarising content.

The Guardian's investigation of How To Corp revealed how Shapps, below, posed as a web guru at a $3,000-a-head Las Vegas conference. The paper also learned that he attended a similar conference at Heathrow in the same year.

The removal of the sites came after a blogger complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that the website "misleadingly implied" that Michael Green was a real person, and that the testimonials were not real.

Over the weekend Shapps was pursued by Channel 4 News through the corridors of the Tory party conference with claims that some of the people and organisations quoted did not exist.

Shapps said that they were genuine and proof of who was behind the testimonials could be provided. However, in response to the complaint, How To Corp told the ASA that "the advertising is no longer appearing and have provided assurances related to any future advertising".

Sources close to the company said that they had provided 10 years' worth of details "all about the testimonials" to the ASA.

The source said that if the Guardian had been able to view How To Corp's main website on Monday, it would have been a "cached copy of the site" that had been saved by a web browser. "We removed the sites a week ago. You were looking at a cached site."

The decision by How To Corp to close down its shopfront will come as a relief to Shapps, who was until recently considered a rising star of the Tory party.

He has had to endure a rash of uncomfortable headlines about his previous life as a multimillionaire "internet marketing guru".

Over the weekend Channel 4 News reported that Michael Green had been selling a book first published in 1915 for $30, when in fact it was out of copyright and freely available on the internet. This has also gone.

Often fond of quoting his business background as proof of his experience and expertise, the Tory chairman left out details of his time as a web guru when he addressed delegates at the Tory party conference on Sunday, preferring instead to dwell on his printing business.

Shapps, along with his wife Belinda, founded How To Corp in 2000, but he transferred his share to her eight years later. He has always maintained that he has had nothing to do with the business in recent years.

Sources close to the Tory chairman said that Shapps was at the party conference with a "massive" schedule.

"It's in the hands of the ASA and we have completely complied with their requests," the source said.