Search Engines May Take Action Against Pirate Web Sites
January 3, 2012
From the Sooner or Later Department:
Google has been in the news a lot lately for being biased when it comes to search result ranking. According to a the recent Telegraph article “Google May Give Pirate Sites Lower Ranking,” that bias may be leading to positive results. A new code will force Search engines to automatically rank pirate websites lower than official ones and give priority to those that were certified under a recognized scheme.
The article states:
According to research by the Publisher’s Association, Google searches for the 50 best-selling books in one week in March returned an average of four illegal links in the top 10 listings. The previous year that figure was closer to two.
Under the code, Google as well as other search engines would stop allowing illegal sites to advertise and would step up their efforts in delisting pirate websites as soon as they are flagged by legitimate rights holders.
While the search engines have yet to respond to the proposal, we believe that if this is policy goes into effect, there may be some unforeseen consequences. Exciting to be the one to define “pirate”.
Jasmine Ashton, January 3, 2012
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