Google on Friday announced that beginning next week, Google Search will begin filter results based on “valid” copyright complaints. Websites that receive a high number of complaints will be pushed down lower and further back in Google’s search results. As Google explained about the new policy in a blog post:
Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results.
Google says that the change will result in higher placement in search results of “legitimate, quality sources of content,” e.g. legal ones, such as Hulu, or NPR Music, driving more traffic to those websites and away from those that post material accused of copyright infringement. Getting Google to tweak its search alogrithms to push down, or remove altogether websites accused of infringement was one of the main goals of the supporters of the anti-piracy U.S. legislation known as SOPA and PIPA. The bills did not pass.
(H/T: Mike Masnick, Techdirt)
