Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results

[Matrix]

With the aim to protect the interests of copyright holders, Google is making ‘pirate’ sites more difficult for its users to find. This week the search engine revealed more information about the scope of this effort. Thus far, Google has downranked 65,000 sites, a measure that led to a 90% reduction in referrals from search results.

The entertainment industries have repeatedly accused Google of not doing enough to limit piracy while demanding tougher action.

Ideally, groups including the MPAA and RIAA want search engines to remove clearly infringing websites from their search results entirely, especially if courts have previously found them to be acting illegally.

While Google doesn’t want to remove whole sites, the critique did prompt the company to make changes.

For example, in 2014 it updated its core algorithms aimed at lowering the visibility of “pirate” sites. Using the number of accurate DMCA requests as an indicator, these sites are demoted in search results for certain key phrases.

“Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in search results. This ranking change helps users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily,” Google explained.

While the effects were felt immediately, it’s been unclear how many sites were affected by the algorithmic change. This week, the search engine is filling in some of these blanks.

In a comment to Australian media, Google states that it has demoted 65,000 sites in search results, a list that’s still growing every week. In total, the company received DMCA takedown requests for over 1.8 million domain names, so a little under 4% of these are downranked.

The result of the measures is that people are less likely to see a pirate site when they type “watch movie X” or “download song Y.” This means that these sites see a drop in visitors from Google and a quite significant one too.

“Demotion results in sites losing around 90 percent of their visitors from Google Search,” a Google spokesperson told The Age.

Indeed, soon after the demotion signal was implemented, pirate sites were hit hard. However, pirates wouldn’t be pirates if they didn’t respond with their own countermeasures.

In recent years, many infringing sites have hopped from domain to domain, in part to circumvent the downranking efforts. In addition, Google’s measures also created an opportunity for smaller, less reputable, sites to catch search traffic that would otherwise go to the main players.

Overall, however, it’s probably safe to argue that Google’s demotion efforts lowered the search engine’s referrals to pirate sites.

That said, demands to do more won’t subside. In Australia, Village Roadshow co-chief Graham Burke has been especially vocal. He has accused Google of profiting from piracy-related traffic and wants the search engine to permanently remove infringing sites from search results.

Blaming piracy for declining revenues, Burke noted this week that there are “empty desks everywhere … we can’t compete with stolen goods being sold for free.” And he is not alone.

Google sees things differently of course. The company has repeatedly highlighted that it has taken several measures to address the piracy concerns, while noting that the entertainment industries have a responsibility of their own as well.

source

[Archanus]

Step by Step, the Internet will be controlled  

[bubbada]

duckduckgooooooooooooooooooo!?

[steven36]

7 hours ago, bubbada said:

duckduckgooooooooooooooooooo!?

Duckduckgo  , searx,  torrent search engines  , kodi addons  just like piracy  search  engines ,  r/Piracy  for   info of  the latest sites , web master forums  and book marks because each site  has it's own internal search engine  ...  The only thing i use Google for now days is images  i  even dont use it for news sources i  get my info from other news feed sites , Google has been dead for piracy  search  for a few years now and there new news api sucks as well too . 

 

It was Google to begin with that open the door to  piracy on the www before they became a thing everyone used yahoo search and it was not tell i started using Google search that i found warez forums before i used  old p2p programs like Kazza lite  and Imesh lite and i went to sites like slyck.com for the fileshareing news .What Google giveth, Google taketh away.

 

[Thrandisher]

heh, ya.  I remember back when ICQ was brand new and hearing about trying google for searching. It was the greatest thing back then!

 

Kindof sad that i still remember my icq uin and i dont even know important id #'s.  Was so burnt into my brain i guess back then.

 

 

[DKT27]

3 hours ago, steven36 said:

Duckduckgo  , searx,  torrent search engines  , kodi addons  just like piracy  search  engines ,  r/Piracy  for   info of  the latest sites , web master forums  and book marks because each site  has it's own internal search engine  ...  The only thing i use Google for now days is images  i  even dont use it for news sources i  get my info from other news feed sites , Google has been dead for piracy  search  for a few years now and there new news api sucks as well too .

 

 

Some time ago, I was introduced to this. What are your views about it and would you recommend anything better for it.

[steven36]

53 minutes ago, DKT27 said:

 

Some time ago, I was introduced to this. What are your views about it and would you recommend anything better for it.

It's a good site  to find links in open directories i have it saved for quite awhile . Reddit has a sub  dedicated to this  if you like to find out more about it Open Directories.

Read the (How to Threads:) to learn more how to find them.  There are a few search engines that use Google to find them that take all the work out of it and Google still list these sites by using keywords.      I even have and kodi addon that lets me  add  open directories some of the sites will work in the addon some want but most any of them  work for downloading or sticking a link in a media player  to stream if the site is pretty fast. 

[DKT27]

30 minutes ago, steven36 said:

It's a good site  to find links in open directories i have it saved for quite awhile . Reddit has a sub  dedicated to this  if you like to find out more about it Open Directories.

Read the (How to Threads:) to learn more how to find them.  There are a few search engines that use Google to find them that take all the work out of it and Google still list these sites by using keywords.      I even have and kodi addon that lets me  add  open directories some of the sites will work in the addon some want but most any of them  work for downloading or sticking a link in a media player  to stream if the site is pretty fast. 

 

Yes, I know about that subreddit. I do not know who introduced me to it though, maybe you did. I also know about the how to things. Really helpful indeed.

 

I actually am looking for an alternative to this or it's other site if you know which one I'm talking about. Specifically searching links from this site in addition to others here.

[steven36]

31 minutes ago, DKT27 said:

 

Yes, I know about that subreddit. I do not know who introduced me to it though, maybe you did. I also know about the how to things. Really helpful indeed.

 

I actually am looking for an alternative to this or it's other site if you know which one I'm talking about. Specifically searching links from this site in addition to others here.

I posted  a site once  here that have a lot of openload links,  ololo.to  it just makes you solve a captcha once per visit this i guess is to stop bots from scraping it  .I used it for a few videos i could not find on other sites  it worked good. lol. Alluc sold  out to a porn site witch is paid only now. Alluc tired to use coin miners because of  adblockers  and Kodi  and so many complained  so they removed it and no one  much bought there api service they sold out as soon as they got a good offer . Before Alluc they was FilesTube  witch try to go legit  after years of indexing filelockers because of DMCA  and no one used it anymore after this and they faded away. If i see any more filelocker search engines start up i will keep you posted .ololo.to has Openload and its child sites - streamango and streamcherry  all very fast for streaming for free.

[debebee]

GOOGLE Recaptcha?

[DKT27]

3 hours ago, steven36 said:

I posted  a site once  here that have a lot of openload links,  ololo.to  it just makes you solve a captcha once per visit this i guess is to stop bots from scraping it  .I used it for a few videos i could not find on other sites  it worked good. lol. Alluc sold  out to a porn site witch is paid only now. Alluc tired to use coin miners because of  adblockers  and Kodi  and so many complained  so they removed it and no one  much bought there api service they sold out as soon as they got a good offer . Before Alluc they was FilesTube  witch try to go legit  after years of indexing filelockers because of DMCA  and no one used it anymore after this and they faded away. If i see any more filelocker search engines start up i will keep you posted .ololo.to has Openload and its child sites - streamango and streamcherry  all very fast for streaming for free.

 

I tried it. Gives no results for what I want. Tried several things. Almost nothing.

 

Yes, I was talking about that site which recently stopped working too.   It was really good in finding links. I had found that site not so long ago and was disappointed when it stopped working there.

[iNemesisX1]

As much as I despise multi-billion dollar 'copyright holding' corporations, I feel this is a strategic move by Google to thrust more legitimate channels of media consumption (Netflix, Prime Video) to the top of the search results page.