Google’s algorithm to fight piracy is working

The number of takedown notices sent by copyright holders has spiked exponentially following the roll out of Google’s search algorithm.

Google announced the update last month as part of its How Google Fights Piracy report. The algorithm, which downranks sites for which it receives a large number of valid DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) notices, has affected pirate sites.

According to Torrentfreak, some sites are losing millions of visits each week, halving their search engine traffic. In the last week alone, Google was asked to remove 11,668,660 allegedly infringing sites, an increase of nearly 100% on stats reported in early October.

The five main offenders last week were onexaomp3.com, vmusice.net, tpbt.org, proxymirror.co and helpamillionpeople.com.

When Google rolled out the update it said it would make a global impact and “visibly affect the rankings of some of the most notorious sites.” Now, the new measure has also given rightsholders an invigorated incentive to report more infringing sites.