In a post on Google’s official blog, Google announced an update of the anti-piracy algorithm.
There are three major changes:
- New ad formats that show legal alternatives: “We’ve been testing new ad formats in search results on queries related to music and movies that help people find legitimate sources of media. For the relatively small number of queries for movies that include terms like “download,” “free,” or “watch,” we’ve begun to show [legal alternatives]”
- Improved DMCA demotion signal in Search: “In August 2012 we first announced that we would downrank sites for which we received a large number of valid DMCA notices. 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.
- Removing more terms from autocomplete: “Based on DMCA removal notices. We’ve begun demoting autocomplete predictions that return results with many DMCA demoted sites.”
Regular sites with legal content won’t be affected by this update.