About a week ago, we reported that Google would be changing its search engine algorithm to better fight piracy. Prior to this Google had an algorithm in place that would remove piracy listings or those flagged by DMCA, thus not showing those results in the process. So with Google’s change in their algorithm, have there been any improvements?
Well according to an early analysis conducted by SearchMetrics, it seems that at the moment the changes Google has made have been successful. Some sites have reportedly experienced as much as a 98% decrease in visibility on Google’s search results thanks to the new algorithm that Google has put into place.
According to SearchMetrics, “Amongst the loser sites are sites that had links and/or content to movie, TV and music content. Sites like movie4k.to which lost 98% of SEO Visibility have typical loser keywords like ‘download free movies,’ ‘watch [movie name] online free,’ ‘online free movies,’ ‘movies download,’ ‘watch [movie name],’ ‘where can I watch [movie name] online’ etc.”
The website also compiled a top 30 list of websites that have been affected by the changes. Some of them might not be familiar to some of you, but if you have ever browsed for torrents, websites such as “torrentz.eu”, KickassTorrents, and The Pirate Bay are some of the more prolific ones.
Will this make a huge impact on these websites? Chances are those who use these websites already know how to find them. However for those in the budding stages of pirating movies, music, books, and software might have a harder time trying to find them, which we guess is better than nothing.