Pirate update (2012): what it changed and what it means now

What Google changed#

Google announced the change on 10 August 2012 in an Inside Search post by Amit Singhal. It would begin “taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site.” Sites with high numbers of removal notices “may appear lower in our results.”

Google said it had the data to do this because it was processing more copyright removal notices every day than in all of 2009. It stressed that only courts can decide infringement, and that it would not remove pages from results without a valid notice from the rights owner. Its counter-notice tools stayed in place.

When it rolled out#

Google’s post said the change would start “next week.” It gave no exact day and no completion date. This page dates it to Monday 13 August 2012, the first day of that week, so the exact day is approximate.

Google never named it. On the day of the announcement, Search Engine Land wrote that it was dubbing it the Pirate update “as it’s aimed at copyright piracy.” It had first called it the Emanuel update, after Hollywood executive Ari Emanuel, then switched to the clearer name.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no figure for how many sites or queries the demotion affected. The one number in its post is about input, not impact: more than 4.3 million URLs in copyright removal notices in the previous 30 days. Treat any traffic loss percentage attributed to this update as a third-party estimate unless Google published it.

What site owners should do#

The signal is still live. Google’s ranking systems guide describes it under removal-based demotion systems: after “a significant volume of valid copyright removal requests involving a given site,” Google can demote other content from that site. Its spam policies repeat this under legal removals. In practice:

• Publish only content you own or are licensed to use.
• Act on valid removal notices quickly, and remove infringing material at the source.
• Use the counter-notice process if a notice against your content is wrong.
• Know that Google applies similar demotions for defamation, counterfeit goods and court-ordered removals.

How to check whether it affected you#

This is historical: Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so it cannot show August 2012. If you kept analytics from then, compare organic Google traffic for a week before 13 August 2012 with a week in late August. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists the other updates of 2012, so you can rule them out first.

Later refreshes#

• Pirate 2 (week of 20 October 2014): Google said on 17 October that a refined DMCA demotion signal would “roll out globally starting next week.”

Related updates#

• The Penguin update was the spam-focused change before it in 2012.
• The exact match domain update followed in September 2012.