Google SVP of Engineering Amit Singhal announced last week that Google is going to be taking a firm stance on copyright violations. The enforcement of copyright will likely be based on notices of removal that are sent in by the owners of the copyright.
As Google stated, “We will begin taking into account a new signal in our ranks: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high number of removal notices may appear lower in our results.’
Obviously search engine rank is vital to the success of online marketing, so many people are afraid that recent changes in Google algorithms (Panda, Penguin) could seriously degrade the value of websites that are improperly accused of infringing a copyright. As we all know, the recent Penguin update (with another coming soon) had a big effect on how websites rank in Google, so some people think that an algorithm with copyright infringement rules built in could have similar, serious consequences in the industry.
It seems that if a website is accused of some sort of copyright infringement, then Google may possibly refuse to allow the site to promote any ads for some types of products.
Some experts are wondering why Google is doing this now. One possibility is that it has been embarrassed in the past with pirated content appearing in search results. Google says that it merely has much more data available now about copyright infringed content.