Google Pirate
Google Pirate was launched by Google in the year 2012. This was the update that affected pirate sites. Google pirate attacks websites that take content from other websites. Especially for the entertainment industry. The sites that post movies or songs illegally. The entertainment industry has been fighting against piracy for years, so Google has launched this algorithm.
Posting anything without copyright is a huge violation. So Google took this step to ensure that the websites that have stolen or pirated content do not get any benefit. According to the USA firm, any pirated websites will be punished. Or even supporting it is illegal. Google always penalize websites that violate their copyright law. And the major penalty is dropping rank in Google search results, which is a major blow to your website.
The penalty for illegal websites or content is on search engine results because this is where users discover the website in the search results. It will remove your website or content from the search results, severely affecting your traffic. Even if you have a high page ranking. If Google finds out something is illegal, it will immediately lower your ranking or remove the page. Some sites still fool the search engine, but Google pirate discovers the pirates’ sites.
How does Google Pirate Work?
Google pirates attack websites that break DMCA’s rules (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). Google Pirate reports websites with more copyright violations filed through the DMCA system. Let us see how exactly this works.
The Google search engine will look out for websites with a high rate of filed complaints then the first step is lowering the ranking of those websites that provide stolen or pirated content. This will eventually affect your website traffic.
They also accuse these websites of pirated content piracy when Google arrayed any user searching for a movie or a song was offered with pirated websites due to its high ranking in search results.
But after the development of Google Pirate, users are now offered non-pirated and legal websites even if the user uses any term related to piracy. Google has removed the autocomplete suggestions that return to the websites removed from DMCA lists. Well, not all websites that are pirated are not removed from Google; still, some of them are left.
Criticism of Google Pirate
There is criticism of Google handling piracy is a subject that many stakeholders have raised. Some of the most raised criticism are mentioned below:
Some content creators and copyright holders have raised the issue of Google’s slow response to take certain pages or websites. They said removing content from the search results or other platforms is taking too long and allowing piracy to continue.
Some of them requested Google to have more transparent information or policies and steps they are taking to remove pirated websites since there is a lack of transparency in the Google algorithm.
Other critics complain that Google has not done enough work in the algorithm to prevent copyrighted resources from being shared or accessed through search engines and other platforms. They also mentioned that many unauthorized links are shared in the search results making users find pirated websites.
And lastly, they also argued about how the Google search engine may prioritize some websites engaged in pirated content. Since they also claim that these websites appear in the search results, leading users to use them instead of legitimate ones.
Conclusion
Hence it is necessary to remember that Google has made huge efforts to address these problems for many years, implementing measures such as the DMCA takedown process and refining their algorithm to relegate pirated websites. As mentioned above, the criticism is an ongoing challenge for Google and requires improvements in combating online piracy.
