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Google Pirate Update Analysis and Loser List

With the Google Pirate Update sites that infringe copyrights were banned from the index

Google announced that the Pirate Update 2 was rolled out this week. After many criticisms that Google is not doing enough against Piracy it updated its filter to help stem piracy. It works similar like Panda or Penguin. Based on a huge set of queries and the data Google had from the first Pirate update, which was released about 2 years ago Google is looking for copyright infringements. Any site where Google finds a violation or was filed through Google’s DMCA system will receive a huge drop in rankings or will be even removed from search engine result pages (see screenshot).

movie4k_to - Google Search

In our data that I analyzed I found that almost all sites where I think they had a drop because of the Pirate Update the drop was enormous. Some sites received a loss in SEO Visibility to 98%. I don’t know how many false positives are amongst these pages, so the loser list is just an observation of sites that lost.

Normally I conduct a longer analysis and explain the patterns why sites lost or won, this time I make an exception. There is not so much to say about the losers. Amongst the loser sites are sites that had links and/or content to movie, TV and music content. Sites like movie4k.to which lost 98% of SEO Visibility have typical loser keywords like “download free movies”, “watch [movie name] online free”, “online free movies”, “movies download”, “watch [movie name]”, “where can I watch [movie name] online” etc.

movie4k_to loser keywords - Searchmetrics

 

The top 30 loser list

It’s based on our SEO Visibility and sorted by biggest net loss. You can click each loser and continue the analysis in our Searchmetrics Suite.

Domain SEO Vis 10/19 SEO Vis 10/26 net loss in percent
156,352 5,677 -150,675 -96.37
107,017 2,599 -104,418 -97.57
109,791 14,588 -95,203 -86.71
84,415 7,890 -76,525 -90.65
72,013 24,400 -47,613 -66.12
43,544 5,814 -37,730 -86.65
68,630 31,007 -37,623 -54.82
60,177 31,597 -28,580 -47.49
40,243 12,731 -27,512 -68.36
31,697 6,206 -25,491 -80.42
24,273 787 -23,486 -96.76
23,584 2,010 -21,574 -91.48
20,631 440 -20,191 -97.87
20,090 704 -19,386 -96.50
36,400 19,200 -17,200 -47.25
17,576 2,083 -15,493 -88.15
14,717 487 -14,230 -96.69
12,484 587 -11,897 -95.30
34,724 23,009 -11,715 -33.74
15,028 4,126 -10,902 -72.54
11,055 1,523 -9,532 -86.22
10,402 1,044 -9,358 -89.96
17,977 9,050 -8,927 -49.66
27,292 18,631 -8,661 -31.73
8,559 578 -7,981 -93.25
7,419 1,430 -5989 -80.73
7,569 2,189 -5380 -71.08
2,081 267 -1814 -87.17
1,844 250 -1594 -86.44
1,515 464 -1051 -69.37

Here you see the SEO Visibility chart for 3 loser domains in the Google Pirate Update. The pattern is simple, all have a huge drop and share similar keywords or keywords with the same intention.

Example Pirate Update loser movie4k_to Searchmetrics

Example Pirate Update loser free-tv-video-online_me Searchmetrics

Example Pirate Update loser downloads.nl Searchmetrics

 

Marcus Tober

Marcus Tober

My name is Marcus Tober and I’m the founder of Searchmetrics. Because we really love to analyze all kinds of online data, we can give you more insights than any other company in SEO, SEM and Social Media. It’s not a job, it’s passion.

61 thoughts on “Google Pirate Update Analysis and Loser List


  • This is interesting. Our site aero-stream suffered a significant loss in traffic starting the days following 10/20/14. Our site has nothing to do with piracy or movies, music, etc. However, there is a company named “Aero” that was “streaming” TV over the internet. The federal courts shut them down. Could it be that we were caught up in their penalty because of the similarity of names?

  • Really I don’t know how we can keep trusting in Google…

  • It’s a very great update, but i think that Google not shows all of their weapons in this case.

  • Shayna Hennegan 2016/02/08 at 8:11 pm

    There are some fascinating deadlines in this article however I don’t know if I see all of them middle to heart. There’s some validity however I will take hold opinion until I look into it further. Good article , thanks and we wish more! Added to FeedBurner as well

  • Debendra Prasad 2016/12/07 at 8:54 pm

    Google is showing the path for other search engines and web designers, how to give quality online search experience. Google is not only concern about the quality of its search results quality, but it also concern about making user experience better on sites its referring. AMP is one example of making better UX in mobile.

  • It’s always been about great user experience, and you can’t improve it with building external links. It’s always on page user experience optimisation first before anything else.

    It’s just matter of time, further Google’s algorithms will be more smarter like an AI, and most spams will go away.

  • Google continuously work on spammer to give online search experience. Google is not only concern about the quality of its search results quality, but it also concern about making better user experience on sites.

    In these day google does not confirm any update. But some random tweets from industry SEO

  • It’s a very great update, Thanks for providing use full information.

  • Jasa Pembuatan Skripsi 2018/01/19 at 3:36 am

    Valuable info. Lucky me I discovered your web site accidentally, and
    I’m stunned why this accident didn’t came about in advance!
    I bookmarked it.

  • New updates are already rolled out, so this information is quite old now.

    Anyways thanks for sharing.

  • Mykel The Prince 2018/01/25 at 11:35 am

    Very very nice blog this is.. i really appreciate you for this type of information source.

  • Mykel The Prince 2018/01/25 at 11:38 am

    Hi this is very useful blog for digital aspirants.

  • Day by day google has sharpened their algorithm to give the better result to people. today google came up with many new features.

  • Nice. Keep Updating


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