Today we are beginning to see the first signs of Google's announced punishment of "pirate" websites. The changes are resulting in lower search rankings for many file-sharing sites, but that doesn't seem to bother The Pirate Bay. They are, however, disappointed that Google is giving in to the demands of the entertainment industries. The owner of fellow BitTorrent site isoHunt has gone a step further with a call for protest against antitrust bullying and censorship.

Last week Google announced that it would lower the search engine rankings of websites that receive a high number of DMCA takedown requests, independent of whether the linked content is lawful or not.

The algorithm change is being implemented this week and it should severely degrade the rankings of websites such as The Pirate Bay and isoHunt. Today we are beginning to see the first signs that this is indeed the case.

A search for “The Dictator Download” returned several BitTorrent sites in the top results a few days ago, and now these have vanished entirely. While these results vary depending on people’s location and the search phrase, it could be the result of the algorithm change.

The “old” search results

That said, BitTorrent sites are not completely absent from the search results. For example, replacing “download” with “torrent” brings them right back to the top. Nonetheless, incoming searches via Google should decrease.

In a response to Google’s announcement, The Pirate Bay crew say that they’re not too worried by these development. Only a small fraction of their traffic comes through Google, and they now expect more people to access the site directly.

“That Google is putting our links lower is in a way a good thing for us. We’ll get more direct traffic when people don’t get the expected search result when using Google, since they will go directly to TPB,” they write.

Traffic aside, The Pirate Bay is disappointed that Google is caving in to the “dictate” of Hollywood and the major music labels.

“The thing we don’t like with this is that a corrupt industry is deciding what another industry has to do. They’re dictating terms.”

“It’s really ironic: an industry that makes funny movies about dictators, where the dictator is essentially calling the USA a dictatorship, is trying to dictate terms where they have no place to do so….”

Another major BitTorrent site impacted by Google’s changes is isoHunt. In common with the sentiments at The Pirate Bay a traffic dip isn’t a major concern for isoHunt owner Gary Fung, but downranking perfectly legitimate search results is.

“What is really wrong with downranking/censoring websites based on ‘valid’ DMCA notices however is that what’s valid is simply notices that have not been countered,” Fung writes.

“With millions of links subject to notices, we never bothered countering any DMCA notices on Google. That does not mean all links under isohunt.com which Google has filtered by notices are valid, just because we haven’t countered them.”

Another problem Fung signals is that Google’s YouTube may be excluded from the downranking, even though it’s one of the top receivers of takedown requests.

“Sounds exactly like antitrust to me,” Fung says.

IsoHunt and others are keeping a close eye on the impact of the algorithm change to see how it impacts access to legal content. According to Fung, Google should be held accountable, and to that end he’s calling for protest.

“We need a protest against Google censorship and antitrust,” Fung notes.

At the moment it’s too early to measure the total impact of Google’s search update, but it’s clear that the last word hasn’t been said on the topic.