Google Fights Piracy, But Users May Ultimately Lose

Should search engines fil­ter organ­ic search results? What will be cen­sored next?

Martin Woods By Martin Woods from SALT.agency. Join the discussion » 0 comments

If it isn’t requests from the EUs con­tro­ver­sial “right to be for­got­ten” rul­ing, then it’s algo­rithm updates tar­get­ing con­tent pira­cy. Last week we saw the lat­est Google update, which is designed to make it more dif­fi­cult for sites infring­ing on copy­right to be found in organ­ic search results. As com­pa­nies includ­ing Google con­tin­ue to mod­i­fy their prod­uct to stay with­in the law, the ques­tion is: are they los­ing their cus­tomer-cen­tric focus?


Once upon a time, Google arguably dis­played the best results for the user. But are we mov­ing into a more cen­sored envi­ron­ment?

What is next? Might search engines remove user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent (e.g., reviews that don’t por­tray a prod­uct, or brand in a favor­able light) in the future?

Google updat­ed its anti-pira­cy algo­rithm update on Oct. 21. The goal of the update is to make it hard­er for Google’s bil­lions of users to find search list­ings for sites which are alleged to infringe copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al. This update comes only weeks after Robert Thom­son, chief exec­u­tive of News Corp, pub­licly attacked Google, call­ing it “a plat­form for pira­cy” in a let­ter to the EU that demand­ed Google do more.

Google seems to be remov­ing more con­tent from organ­ic search results. How­ev­er, what effect will this have on users? Where will fil­ter­ing search results end?

Removing Links To Copyright Content

Google have been remov­ing more links to copy­right­ed con­tent from its search results over recent years, as detailed in their Trans­paren­cy Report

A Summer Of Landmark Legal Rulings

This lat­est Google anti-pira­cy update comes after a sum­mer of con­tro­ver­sy fol­low­ing the Euro­pean Court of Jus­tice rul­ing against Google, in a case brought by Mario González, for dis­play­ing links to infor­ma­tion which infringed his pri­va­cy. There is cer­tain­ly a grow­ing trend of search engines being found account­able for the results they return to their users. Also more peo­ple seem pre­pared to take on the goliath that is Google.

There were even more land­mark legal rul­ings against free­dom of speech, and search engines in July. A French blog­ger was fined over a review which ranked too promi­nent­ly in search results after a restau­rant own­er suc­cess­ful­ly argued it was hurt­ing their busi­ness.

What Does This Mean For The Consumer?

It’s fair to say web­sites that infringe copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al are a pret­ty clear-cut case, with regard to the law in most coun­tries. As such, it’s doubt­ful that many peo­ple would object to Google’s pira­cy fight when fil­ter­ing makes it hard­er for peo­ple to prac­tice ille­gal activ­i­ties.

How­ev­er, what effect does this has on users find­ing the con­tent? Peo­ple always find a workaround to access tor­rents, for exam­ple, even it’s made a lit­tle hard­er. For every site that is blocked, anoth­er 10 are there ready to take its place.

Even going back to the days of Nap­ster, the MP3 shar­ing peer-to-peer ser­vice, there were plen­ty of oth­er tech­nolo­gies which facil­i­tat­ed the trans­fer of copy­right­ed mate­r­i­al. The only dif­fer­ence being that they didn’t get the same media atten­tion, main­ly due to Nap­ster’s size of 80 mil­lion reg­is­tered users. So it comes as no sur­prise that Google is cen­ter of atten­tion because of its dom­i­nant mar­ket share.

What Will Be Filtered Next?

Right now, Google only fil­ters organ­ic search results for indi­vid­u­als who are able to demon­strate that their pri­va­cy needs pro­tec­tion, and when copy­right-own­ers expose web­sites that are host­ing pirat­ed con­tent.

One of the things I love, respect, and val­ue the most about the Inter­net is the free­dom of speech. We’ve already seen a shift in Google being more account­able for the links it dis­plays to users, even though it doesn’t cre­ate, or host the con­tent.

What’s next for cen­sor­ship? Will com­pa­nies start to request bad reviews of their prod­ucts, or ser­vices also be removed from Google, and maybe even web­sites talk­ing about them?

Will User-Generated Content And Reviews Be Next?

Cus­tomer reviews are very influ­en­tial to con­sumers dur­ing the pur­chas­ing process. Neg­a­tive reviews are as impor­tant, if not more impor­tant, than pos­i­tive ones.

How­ev­er, what if com­pa­nies are able to request that unfa­vor­able reviews be removed from search engines in the future? How would con­sumers find these less favor­able reviews and make an informed deci­sion?

If users lose trust in Google’s abil­i­ty to return accu­rate, unbi­ased search results, both Google and its loy­al users may ulti­mate­ly lose.


Where will the cen­sor­ing of search results end? Share your thoughts in the com­ments.

Martin Woods

Written by Martin Woods

SEO Consultant, SALT.agency

Specialising in search, Martin has worked as an SEO Consultant at some of the biggest SEO agencies in the UK, helping big brands achieve success online through sustainable organic search. He has a passion for helping in people in difficulty suffering from Google penalties, and has removed over 130 Google manual actions for link spam to date. When he isn't glued to his smart phone, he enjoys traveling, music and cats.

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