After so many ups and downs in the Google algorithm updates, like Google Panda Update in Feb 2011 and Google Penguin in April 2012, now quite recently, Search Giant, Google announced that it would be updating its algorithm to include a new ranking signal for the number of “valid copyright removal notices” it receives for a given site. This latest Google algorithm update has further enforced and cemented their authority on content infringement, with special concern on copyright laws, which in turn would have a negative impact on the ranking of the sites.
As per latest statistics, Google received an enormous 4 Million URL removal requests and on an average, a domain had received around 150 page URLs copyright claims in a single month. Also, there has been a staggering increase of around 1500% from the beginning of year 2012 and around 1400% increase just after Google Penguin Update was announced in April 2012; this has been very clear shown in the graph represented below. Considering the rising number of DMCA requests, Google believes that such an algorithm update would further help it to achieve its topmost priority to improve the rankings of high quality sites.
Since 2011, Google has been continuously evolving and changing its elementary algorithm to purposefully exclude and somewhat ostracize ‘bad’ sites from top results. And finally in the new and latest Google algorithm update, it has implemented its mission to clean up search results giving ground to the quality site owners; now copyright violators, spam sites which are designed to deceive users into clicking on them, and content farms with the single purpose of bringing in traffic for ads, had better watch out! As per Google SVP, Engineering, Amit Singhal “Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results which in turn will help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily”.
As soon as Google announced the algorithm change, it immediately sparked a great deal of criticism from bloggers and webmasters and concern from consumer groups. Though, it has raised immediate concerns in the SEO Industry because of possibility of false claims by spammers, Google has reiterated that it will continue to provide Counter Notice tools to the webmasters so that they may feel that their content has been wrongly removed. Till around mid 2012, just before and after the Google Panda and Penguin Update, webmasters were battling only how to deal with ranking drops, but now after this ranking signal finally goes live, they would also have to deal with false copyright claims made by spammers that would in return affect their visibility in Google.
With this update, Google re-emphasizes the importance of quality content as one of the most imperative ranking signals that it considers. One thing that needs to be kept in mind is, after the Penguin Update, news about Negative SEO came into limelight and finally Google realized the importance of a tool that would allow webmasters to disavow links and protect their rankings from spammers. It would be quite interesting to see how Google’s new algorithm signals deals with false copyright claims.