Google Will Punish “Pirate” Sites Harder in Search Results

[Ernesto]

Over the past few years the entertainment industries have repeatedly asked Google to step up its game when it comes to anti-piracy efforts.

These remarks haven’t fallen on deaf ears and Google has slowly implemented various new anti-piracy measures in response.

Today Google released an updated version of its “How Google Fights Piracy” report. The company provides an overview of all the efforts it makes to combat piracy, but also stresses that copyright holders themselves have a responsibility to make content available.

One of the most prominent changes is a renewed effort to make “pirate” sites less visible in search results. Google has had a downranking system in place since 2012, but this lacked effectiveness according to the RIAA, MPAA and other copyright industry groups.

The improved version, which will roll out next week, aims to address this critique.

“We’ve now refined the signal in ways we expect to visibly affect the rankings of some of the most notorious sites. This update will roll out globally starting next week,” says Katherine Oyama, Google’s Copyright Policy Counsel.

The report notes that the new downranking system will still be based on the number of valid DMCA requests a site receives, among other factors. The pages of flagged sites remain indexed, but are less likely to be the top results.

“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,” the report reads.

Looking at the list of sites for which Google received the most DMCA takedown request, we see that 4shared, Filestube and Dilandau can expect to lose some search engine traffic.

The report further highlights several other tweaks and improvements to Google’s anti-piracy efforts. For example, in addition to banning piracy related AutoComplete words, Google now also downranks suggestions that return results with many “pirate” sites.

Finally, the report also confirms our previous reporting which showed that Google uses ads to promote legal movie services when people search for piracy related keywords such as torrent, DVDrip and Putlocker. This initiative aims to increase the visibility of legitimate sites.

A full overview of Google’s anti-piracy efforts is available here.

Originally Published: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 21:04:50 +0000
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[ddoking007]

the problem with legit sites is all the FUCKING ads you get when you watch stuff on those sites... that and some want an arm, leg, and both eyes to even view the site....

I get that publishers for the most part need to make money but would you go pay 10$ to go out to a theater and leave 10 minutes in or down load it for free and not waist that 10$ on a piece of crap when you could have spent that 10$ on a beer and hung out with friends longer than that...

I mean really I have paid for everything I pirated that I Wanted a copy of to promote the creator but If I watch a movie, play a game, use a program, or read book and I don't like it I gets deleted off my computer and I write a review on it whether I like it or not.

[Ernesto]

In recent years Hollywood and the music industry have taken a rather aggressive approach against Google. The entertainment industry companies have accused the search engine of not doing enough to limit piracy, and demanded more stringent anti-piracy measures.

One of the suggestions often made is the removal or demotion of pirate sites in search results. A lower ranking would lead fewer people to pirate sources and promoting legal sources would have a similar effect, rightsholders argue.

While Google already began changing the ranking of sites based on DMCA complaints in 2012, it announced more far-reaching demotion measures last week. According to Google the new alghorithm changes would “visibly” lower the search rankings of the most notorious pirate sites, and they were right.

TorrentFreak has spoken with various torrent site owners who confirm that traffic from Google has been severely impacted by the recent algorithm changes. “Earlier this week all search traffic dropped in half,” the Isohunt.to team told us.

The drop is illustrated by a day-to-day traffic comparison before and after the changes were implemented, as shown below. The graph shows a significant loss in traffic which Isohunt.to solely attributes to Google’s recent changes.

Torrent site traffic drop

The downranking affects all sites that have a relatively high percentage of DMCA takedown requests. When Google users search for popular movie, music or software titles in combination with terms such as “download,” “watch” and “torrent”, these sites are demoted.

The new measures appear to be far more effective than previous search algorithm changes, and affect all major ‘pirate’ sites. Below is an overview of the SEO visibility of several large torrent sites in the UK and US, based on a list of 100 keywords.

Google SEO visibility torrent sites

The true impact varies from site to site, depending on how much it relies on Google traffic. Confirming their earlier stance, The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak that they are not really concerned about the changes as they have relatively little traffic from Google.

“That Google is putting our links lower is in a way a good thing for us. We’ll get more direct traffic when people don’t get the expected search result when using Google, since they will go directly to TPB,” they said.

To get an idea of how the search results have changed we monitored a few search phrases that were likely to be affected. The before and after comparisons, which are only three days apart, show that popular ‘pirate sites’ have indeed disappeared.

A search for “Breaking Bad torrent” previously featured Kickass.to, Torrentz.eu and Isohunt.com on top, but these have all disappeared. Interestingly, in some cases their place has been taken by other less popular torrent sites.

old – “Breaking Bad torrent” – new

The top torrent sites have also vanished from a search for the movie The Social Network. “The Social Network download” no longer shows results from Kickass.to, ThePirateBay.se and Movie4k.to but shows the IMDb profile on top instead.

old – “The Social Network download” – new

Searches for music tracks have changed as well. The phrase “Eminem lose yourself mp3″ no longer shows links to popular MP3 download sites such as MP3Skull.com, but points to legal sources and lesser known pirate sites.

old – “Eminem lose yourself mp3″ – new

The traffic data and search comparisons clearly show that Google’s latest downranking changes can have a severe impact on popular “pirate” sites. Ironically, the changes will also drive a lot of traffic to smaller unauthorized sources for the time being, but these will also be demoted as their takedown notice count increases.

Rinse and repeat.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.



Originally Published: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 19:29:21 +0000
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[Ernesto]

Every adult knows. Give a child a treat and before you know it all others in the vicinity are queuing up crying for the same. And if you don’t play fair with the goodies, feet are stamped until you do.

Google has been handing out treats too lately, and like parents everywhere it’s now realizing that when you do something for one and not another, you get accused of discrimination.

As usual the problems center around piracy. During October and after years of applying metaphorical Band Aids, Google flicked its algorithmic wrist, pirate sites were demoted, legal content was promoted, and the creative industries rejoiced. Well some did at least.

Less than a month has passed and now Google is suffering fresh wailing in its other ear, this time from the porn industry. Entirely predictably the skin-flick pushers say they too want a piece of the piracy put-down pie.

According to the BBC, “prominent figures” in the porn industry are now demanding that Google does for them what the search engine just did for the audio-visual sector.

“Our whole industry has been turned upside down due to the stealing of adult content,” studio owner and actress Tasha Reign told the corporation.

But if Google’s movie and TV show issues are complex, that’s nothing when compared to getting friendly with the porn industry. Firstly, Google has begun placing ads at the top of search results when people search for TV shows such as Game of Thrones. Friendly links therein direct users to legal sources.

That is not going to happen with porn – Google forbids it. In fact, AdWords doesn’t even allow promotions for dating or international bride services. Good luck with Gangbangs of New York and Saturday Night Beaver.

Secondly, the porn industry is virtually impossible to navigate. While the MPAA and IFPI might have the luxury of speaking for the major studios and 90%+ of the recorded music sector, no such coordination exists in the porn industry. Reaching consensus on what precisely should be done could prove impossible.

Then comes the issue of demoting sites. The ‘pirate’ enemy cited most often by the adult industry are so-called tube sites but that raises even more complex issues, not least since some of the biggest companies in porn own several of the largest tube sites.

Throw in the fact that many tube sites carry both licensed and unlicensed content and any demotion could hit legitimate creators’ distribution strategies of using thousands of adult movie clips to drive traffic to external sites.

But whatever the complexities are, they are all completely moot. When approached by the BBC on the topic, Google declined to comment – period. The search engine wouldn’t be drawn “on any aspect” of the discussion, a sign that in this case the porn industry isn’t going to get what it wants.

“By working with adult companies, Google could ensure the content that is seen contains age restrictions, unlike pirated content,” protests Tasha Reign.

Tumbleweed, stage left…..

Originally Published: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 09:40:31 +0000
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[Tophat]

Well maybe they shouldn't charge ridiculous fucking prices for movies and music.

[Ernesto]

For years the world’s largest entertainment industry companies have been putting Google under intense pressure to do something about the prominence of ‘infringing’ listings in its search results.

Periodically the search giant has announced a tweak here and there, but in mid October Google said it was about to implement the most important change yet.

The effects were quickly noticeable. Within days the world’s largest torrent sites took an immediate hit in search engine traffic. So was this the holy grail the studios and record labels had been looking for?

Each week TF publishes a list of the top 10 pirate movie downloads and in our latest edition Dawn of the Planet of the Apes topped the charts. So, with the big sites mainly disappeared from the first pages of results, would the movie still be easy to find using “dawn of the planet of the apes torrent” as a search?

Simple answer – yes. Not only that, sites the majority of people have never heard of are now reaping the rewards of Google’s downgrades.

Rags to riches

The first result in Google comes from the suspicious sounding “yify-movies-official.com” which is definitely not an official YIFY site. However, not only does it comes up with the goods as promised, check out the effect Google’s downranking has had on its popularity according to Alexa. It’s a new site that started quickly, but the short growth plateau in mid October was soon overcome.

The next result pointed to TorrentsMovies.net, a site that boosted 20,000 places from nowhere following Google’s mid October tweaks. However, the site’s progress is dwarfed by that of the largely unknown KickassTorrents.link site.

Somewhat similar fortunes are echoed on ThePiratebay.org.in, a site that appeared just a couple of months ago. Thanks to Google’s new algorithm its growth looks like it could burst out of the top of Alexa’s chart at any moment.

But it’s not all fun and games

While torrents can still be easily found for this movie after the October downranking, there are some big negatives for anyone who relied on Google to provide them with the best possible results.

First of all, since Google is essentially gaming the system, it’s no longer possible to rely on the search engine to produce the best links on the most popular sites. It doesn’t matters if Pirate Bay or KickassTorrents links are the most trafficked torrents, sites with unusual names that few people know are now at the top of results. This has undermined a valuable commodity….

Trust

While the sites mentioned above are offering torrents and clearly benefiting traffic-wise, we have deliberately left out several sites from our report. Thanks to their lack of DMCA breaches some sites are much closer to the top than they should be when Google is presented with movie + torrent searches. Sadly these sites have something evil in mind – malware.

Hollywood might publicly warn that some file-sharing sites are havens for viruses and spyware, but Google’s actions have dredged up the real filth from the bottom and that will mean a lot of people paying the price. Having these sites downranked is not on the agenda.

Overall

All things considered, Google’s efforts have given its search results a very unfamiliar look which is bound to undermine trust and confidence. The big question is whether it has made unauthorized content harder to find. The answer thus far is a definite ‘yes’ although better results are obtainable by tailoring searches.

However, a much easier option is to switch over to Bing, which not only automatically and conveniently adds “torrent” to the end of a search for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but also presents the world’s biggest torrent sites on the first page.

When that fails users can simply visit the sites themselves, which the majority have been doing anyway.

Originally Published: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 12:29:46 +0000
source

[Gusali]

Over the past few years the entertainment industries have repeatedly asked Google to step up its game when it comes to anti-piracy efforts.

These remarks haven’t fallen on deaf ears and Google has slowly implemented various new anti-piracy measures in response.

Today Google released an updated version of its “How Google Fights Piracy” report. The company provides an overview of all the efforts it makes to combat piracy, but also stresses that copyright holders themselves have a responsibility to make content available.

One of the most prominent changes is a renewed effort to make “pirate” sites less visible in search results. Google has had a downranking system in place since 2012, but this lacked effectiveness according to the RIAA, MPAA and other copyright industry groups.

The improved version, which will roll out next week, aims to address this critique.

“We’ve now refined the signal in ways we expect to visibly affect the rankings of some of the most notorious sites. This update will roll out globally starting next week,” says Katherine Oyama, Google’s Copyright Policy Counsel.

The report notes that the new downranking system will still be based on the number of valid DMCA requests a site receives, among other factors. The pages of flagged sites remain indexed, but are less likely to be the top results.

“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,” the report reads.

Looking at the list of sites for which Google received the most DMCA takedown request, we see that 4shared, Filestube and Dilandau can expect to lose some search engine traffic.

The report further highlights several other tweaks and improvements to Google’s anti-piracy efforts. For example, in addition to banning piracy related AutoComplete words, Google now also downranks suggestions that return results with many “pirate” sites.

Finally, the report also confirms our previous reporting which showed that Google uses ads to promote legal movie services when people search for piracy related keywords such as torrent, DVDrip and Putlocker. This initiative aims to increase the visibility of legitimate sites.  

A full overview of Google’s anti-piracy efforts is available here.  

Originally Published: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 21:04:50 +0000
source

As far as I know, Putlocker is an illegal site. That and the more it is already closed.

[RobertX]

No, Putlocker is still here.

[MattShizzle]

Google's slogan used to be "don't be evil." Now they ARE evil. They said my Youtube had unusual activity. They thought I might be hacked. Their solution was to delete my channel. They are eliminating Google+ very soon. Just another evil company that only cares about profit.

[RobertX]

Well, controversy defines one's image these days.