(The Guardian) – Google is preparing a new tweak to its search engine to ensure that some of the most ‘notorious’ piracy sites are less likely to appear when people search for music, films and other copyrighted content.
A previous promise to do this in 2012 has since proved controversial, with music and movie industry bodies regularly claiming Google did not follow through on that promise. This time round, Google says the results will be noticeable.
“In August 2012 we first announced that we would downrank sites for which we received a large number of valid DMCA notices,” wrote Google’s senior copyright counsel Katherine Oyama in a blog post published on Friday (17 October).
“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.”
Oyama did not give details on which sites are being demoted, or by how much their demotions will affect their rankings – the attribute that determines how close to the top of its results a site appears when people search for relevant keywords.