Under a certain amount of pressure Google has announced that starting next week it will be changing the ranking algorithm. The aim is that those who are presenting other people's copyrighted material will turn up lower down in the search results. But there's one particular problem with this:
Google is to make a significant change to its search algorithm from Monday, downgrading websites that persistently breach copyright laws.
The move is a victory for media and entertainment giants, which have complained for years that Google does not do enough to prevent access to material that breaches strict copyright laws on content such as music videos and TV shows.
Google said in a blogpost that it would take into account the number of valid copyright takedown notices that it received for any given sites. Those sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in user search results, it said.
The basic idea seems to have a lot going for it. We all know that unless you're on the first page of Google results (or possibly, maybe, the second) then you're not going to get much traffic. Anyone hosting material that breaches the copyright laws is obviously doing so in the hope of attracting traffic: perhaps to make money from advertising, that sort of thing. So, lower down the results, less traffic, theft of copyrighted material becomes a less attractive career option. That logic works.
However, there's a trick in the tail there. A "valid copyright takedown notice" is not in fact a proof that a site has been violating copyright. That's not the "valid" that they are talking about. What it does mean is that it is a complaint that is validly formatted. Google doesn't in fact check whether any copyrights have been harmed by a site. They look only at the complaints. If there is no counter-complaint by the host through the courts then it is simply assumed that the original complaint was valid.
At which point we've got the possibility of malicious complaints being used. imagine that you were selling widgets over the internet. The prime source of leads is through Google (this would not be unusual at all). And you have a couple of major competitors in this game of gaining a place on the first page of Google results. Now you've got your tool: just accuse your rivals of copyright violations and make sure you file your complaint with Google in a valid format. They will either lose their place in the index or, at best, will spend expensive time and effort having to make that counter-claim.
And believe me, in the wild world of SEO, this will indeed happen.
Then again, it's very rare that there are ever solutions: it may be that this is the best trade off we can get presently.
