Google will be rolling out a new search algorithm that will downgrade the rankings of torrent and file hosting websites.
In a blog post, Google senior copyright policy counsel Katherine Oyama announced that Google will be updating its algorithm next week to remove websites such as RapidGator, 4Shared and Pirate Bay from the top of the list of search results. Oyama also says that Google will be "pointing people to legitimate sources of movies and music," such as Google Play, Amazon and Netflix. The update will also affect autofill results to demote predictions that point users to DMCA demoted websites.
"In August 2012, we first announced that we would downrank sites for which we received a large number of valid DMCA notices," she says. "We've now refined the signal in ways we expect to visibly affect the rankings of some of the most notorious sites."
This comes after Google released an updated report on how it fights online piracy, where it says that the search engine received 224 million takedown requests from copyright owners, 222 million of which were taken down from the search results. Around 43 million of these requests come from the BPI, the music industry lobbying group in the United Kingdom, and another 31 million from its American counterpart, the Recording Industry Association of America.
The BPI, which has long been pressuring Google to demote websites where users can download content for free, says it is "encouraged" by Google's latest move, but is pushing for more aggressive efforts against these websites and for its own interests. Ultimately, the BPI wants Google to place "legitimate sources" of entertainment at the top of the search results at "no cost" to the websites and have these websites completely blocked from the search results.
"When fans search for music or films, they should get legal results - it's as simple as that," says Geoff Taylor, CEO of BPI. "If these new steps help guide more consumers to services like Spotify, Deezer and iTunes, which give back to music, instead of to fraudulent torrent or hosting sites, then they would represent a step forward for artists, labels and all those trying to build a thriving music economy online."
Google, however, is not likely to give in to these demands anytime soon. What the BPI essentially wants is a secure place on the top of search results, which are essentially paid advertisements that Google charges businesses so they can maintain prime position on the search results list. Also, Google says it will not take down these websites because the DMCA requests affect only a few pages on the sites.
"Even for the websites that have received the highest numbers of notices, the number of noticed pages is typically only a tiny fraction of the total number of pages on the site," says [pdf] Google in its report. "It would be inappropriate to remove entire sites under these circumstances."
