Google causes disruption in visits to piracy sites like PirateBay

[Chewy_fox]

The main piracy sites like PirateBay lost up to a third of the volume of visits during the year 2020. The trend is notorious and shows us that search engines like Google tighten the siege on websites that promote illegal practices.

Even more interesting is the fact that only Google, with a slight change in the search algorithm, has caused a significant break in accesses / visits to most of the websites that fall into this category of file sharing.

Search engines started by "helping" piracy sites

"The Pirate Bay" has disappeared from the Google search homepage.

With the arrival of several online piracy hubs, search engines like Google were the main means of discovering these places where illegally downloading files is as simple as typing your name in the Google search field.

The content on piracy websites is easy to browse with the help of search engines. This also applies to the sites of streaming and illegal transmission of content, platforms for downloading files, portals with links for illicit purposes, among others.

In all cases, it was very easy, through a simple Google search, to discover such platforms. Something that naturally does not aggravate the legitimate copyright holders who, over the years, have called for justice from the search engines.

Calls for restrictions or removal of these platforms from search engine algorithms. Something that has not yet materialized globally, but which is gradually and phased in already, reducing the visibility of pirated sites.

Google pushes piracy sites down

The measures and changes applied by Google have negatively affected direct traffic to these platforms, but according to the torrentfreak publication , in 2021 the measures will be even more severe. A gradual stranglehold on piracy.

With the help of the company MUSO, an entity dedicated to tracking and investigating piracy platforms, being one of the European Union's partners in combating this scourge, new restrictive measures will be imposed. Their efforts are now focused on understanding search patterns and reaching audiences through search engines.

It is worth noting that this investigation is not limited to the results of Google, but naturally it falls mainly on this one, taking into account its preponderance. Since Google is the largest search engine in the world, it is also the largest source of worldwide traffic.

Visits to piracy sites fell in 2020

Above we can see a graph that shows the approximate visits of all public piracy sites, illegal streaming , IPTV lists, among other options such as torrents and various links for downloading files. The graph calculates the values between December 2019 and November 2020, excluding traffic generated by search engines. The drop is gradual and is around 10%.

We can also notice the slight peak between the months of March and April, coinciding with the beginning of the confinement in 2020. Even so, the pattern of drop in the views is notorious, being possible to measure a well-defined pattern.

Google will continue to penalize these pirated platforms

Above we have the graph that shows us the visits that the piracy platforms received from the search engines. It is referals from Google and other search engines that brought the user to these pages. Here the effect is more pronounced, despite the slight recovery in the last months of 2020.

Between the months of December 2019 and November 2020, visits from search engines fell by about a third. Here, it is also possible to assess some patterns and behaviors such as the slight peak during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Google will continue to penalize sites that address piracy

We can also notice at least two major instances of drop in visits. Phenomena that coincide with changes made by Google to its search algorithm, applied on January 13, 2020, and on May 4 of the same year.

This latest change - May 2020 - is particularly effective in reducing pointers to piracy sites. That is, causing a sharp drop in visits that come from the results presented by Google's search engine.

Finally, more recently, Google returned to apply changes to its algorithm, but for now without data to present. According to the aforementioned sources, it will be yet another measure that penalizes platforms and content that fosters piracy.

In 2021, the fight against this scourge will continue to be led by Google.

Edited May 21, 2021 by Chewy_fox

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