Last week Google announced a new search engine algorithm ranking factor. This new factor will penalise sites that have received copyright removal notices.
Google Says
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.
Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.
…while this new signal will influence the ranking of some search results, we won’t be removing any pages from search results unless we receive a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner.
File Sharing Sites Beware
Google is coming after you.
Read the full list of domains that Google records as receiving valid copyright removal notices.
Exceptions to the Rule
There will be some exceptions however. Google announced that Google+, IMDB, YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr & Twitter wont be included in the list.
Why? We don’t know for sure however it is probably something to do with an intent to infringe copyright.
The scenario being a teen posts their vid on YouTube singing to Lady GaGa. There isn’t an intent to infringe any copyright there, but there is in posting the songs mp3 on FilesTube.
Will This Affect Your Site?
Only if you have received a copyright removal notice from Google.
If you have infringed copyright then remove that item from your site otherwise you can send a counter notice to Google claiming false infringement via the link in the original notice.
Of course there are many other factors that affect the Google rankings of your site so make sure your SEO and Content Marketing campaigns are up to date.
