
Google Downranks 65,000 Pirate Sites in Search Results - Jerry2
https://torrentfreak.com/google-downranks-65000-pirate-sites-in-search-results-180629/
======
shiado
I remember I used to do filetype searches for mp3, mp4, flac, etc... and get
all sorts of good stuff. I would find ftp servers with thousands of songs and
just download anything interesting. I feel like the Google search algorithm
peaked many years ago and has gradually been neutered by all sorts of special
interest groups who have no doubt harassed Google with legal threats. Google
probably doesn't want to censor results the way they have been forced to. Even
pdf filetype searches got ruined too because Elsevier and JSTOR probably
harassed Google as well. The recent change to Google images where they removed
links to images made me switch to Bing.

~~~
iaml
It would be funny to see bing finally reach google search quality not because
it got better, but because google got worse.

~~~
clarry
I just used Google Image search and in frustration switched to DDG because I
have no idea how to get direct links to the images that Google presents. I
don't think it was always this hard? Or maybe I've grown dumber.

EDIT: Evidently you can right-click and view image. I thought that wouldn't
get me to the original image since the image as presented in search is smaller
in resolution than what Google says the image really is. Either way, in DDG
the image actually links to the damn image and not to the site where the image
supposedly maybe appears on.

~~~
RestlessMind
You know what DDG is doing is illegal, right? Google Images used to link to
direct images as well. But then there were lawsuit threats and a settlement
with Getty, which forced them to stop linking directly.

If DDG / Bing become big enough, they too will be forced to stop their
practice.

~~~
skellera
It's not illegal. They were sued then Getty dropped the suit when Google
agreed to partner with them and remove the links.

[https://9to5google.com/2018/02/09/google-images-features-
get...](https://9to5google.com/2018/02/09/google-images-features-getty-deal/)

------
abhiminator
As much as I despise multi-billion dollar 'copyright holding' corporations, I
feel this is a strategic move by Google to thrust more legitimate channels of
media consumption (Netflix, Prime Video, Et al) to the top of the search
results page.

Having said that, people who _actually_ use torrents regularly _know_ their
way around Google and other web-based search engines, and this move,
therefore, should have little or no effect on that particular demographic.

~~~
chongli
Forget pirate sites, Google is doing this for everything. I'm shocked at how
often a search for some generic word or animal name brings up some company
I've never heard of, with the Wikipedia page for that generic word buried at
the bottom of the first page (sometimes pushed to the second page).

~~~
digi_owl
Really glad i switched to DDG for my random searches (i can always do a !g if
i feel that the results are meaningless).

~~~
Naga
I switched to DDG permanently because of their other bangs. I am a baseball
fan and regularly use FanGraphs to look at stats. If I google a baseball
player, FanGraphs isn't even on the front page. Instead, I have news articles
about him, tweets from him, and a bunch of other sites. With DDG, I can simply
go "!fg jose bautista" and get exactly what I want. It really has saved me a
lot of time and effort. Same thing with !w for wikipedia.

~~~
kalleboo
Do other browsers not have site search in the address bar? In Safari, after
visiting "fangraphs.com" once, I can just type "fang Some Name", press the
down arrow to select the first suggestion, hit enter, and it searches that
site.

------
terminalcommand
I seriously think we need torrent trackers solely residing on ipfs.

The popular trackers (such as ptb) remove content very easily. It is getting
really hard to find tv shows on the net.

What we need is a completely anonymous distributed solution.

We won't need google then.

~~~
icebraining
[https://www.tribler.org/](https://www.tribler.org/), which is developed by a
not-for-profit research group supported by EU and Dutch research funding, does
distributed torrent search without any central server. It's been around for
almost a decade now.

~~~
terminalcommand
Thanks a lot for the heads up. This seems to be _exactly_ the thing I was
dreaming of.

If anyone is interested
[https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki](https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki)
link contains more information.

I'm surprised I didn't hear of this project before.

~~~
dcbadacd
It's not like the "Big Media" wants you to know about it.

------
codedokode
I would prefer that Google would add labels like "pirate site" or "legitimate
copy". How can a normal user understand what kind of site they are visiting
and whether the site has a legal copy of a movie? The copyright agreements are
not public.

For example, there is a website that allows to watch Japanese TV from abroad
(quite expensive by the way). How one can be sure that they are not paying to
scammers?

~~~
otalp
How can Google be sure? They can't, so they can't do it

~~~
codedokode
If they cannot determine which site is legal then they should not be playing
with sites' ranks.

~~~
arcticfox
They are the owners of the ranking algorithm, they should do whatever they
want that's not in itself illegal.

~~~
acct1771
Libel laws.

------
scarface74
If content owners want to fight piracy, make content easier to get at a price
people are willing to pay. There will always be a certain contingent of people
that will never pay for content and will always choose piracy.

I personally stopped pirating music when iTunes Music came online. It was much
easier to pay $0.99 for a song than to scour Napster,Kazaa, Limewire, and the
rest of the p2p software. Now with Apple Music, Spotify, etc. why bother
pirating music?

I subscribe to Netflix,Hulu with no commercials, DirectvNow and Amazon Prime.
I could find most of the content on pirate sites, but why would I bother? I
would much rather just pay $65 a month (well actually I get Netflix free via
T-mobile so $55/month).

Movie Pass was too restrictive and too much of a hassle to bother with, but I
have no reason to pirate new releases anymore now that AMC has AMC Stubs A+. I
signed myself and my wife up for the subscription the day it became available.
A movie is now a cheap date night when we just want to get out of the house
and do something.

~~~
jacekm
55$ is still quite a lot of money in majority of the world. Plus some content
is not available in some regions. I pay for Spotify but for movies (anime in
particular) I still need to resort to torrents sometimes. I'd much more prefer
to simply pay and avoid the hassle if only I had such opportunity.

~~~
scarface74
Of course you have to cater to the local market realities. Doesn’t
Chrunchyroll cater to anime fans? If you have to resort to piracy because
their is no legal alternative but you would pay for one if it existed, it kind
of proves my point.

~~~
jacekm
Yes I agree with you. I've actually had Crunchyroll in mind when writing my
post - many titles are not licensed for my country.

------
AngryData
Google has been trash for pirate content for awhile now. 9/10 sites it does
show are fake and straight up malicious with like 50 different things trying
to hijack your browser and make you install shit. Not that real pirate sites
are exactly safe, but at least they actually provide what people are looking
for.

~~~
ItsMe000001
I run all such queries in a dedicated Linux VM so that I visit any "strange"
websites only in that VM. I use a browser not connected to my (sync) account
and don't login to any of my usual websites. uBlock Origin with all kinds of
lists enabled is on, uMatrix is installed but it was too much of a hassle so
it remains disabled.

I hope my feeling of relative safety is justified, but I'm not a security
expert(?).

PS: Before anyone gets upset that I use such services, I'm not a heavy
"pirate" by any measure. When I needed it I purchased software like Adobe
Creative Suite or Jetbrain IDE licenses without hesitation. I only use it for
things I don't really need and only use once, such as checking out a TV series
(I very, very rarely watch anything, relying on specific Youtube and Twitch
content instead, leaving two - one came with the apartment rent, one with the
Internet - cable TV subscriptions unused).

~~~
zawerf
I wonder if I am doing too little in comparison?

I just use incognito and adblock. My impression is that whenever there's a
remote code execution bug in chrome it becomes big news (ex: Meltdown/Spectre)
so usually I can just trust the browser sandbox. Surely anyone with an exploit
that can break the sandbox would use it on high value target rather than
wasting it on the mass and having it get patched quickly?

I think I've become complacent since it's been more than a decade since I've
gotten a virus/malware just from clicking a link.

~~~
ItsMe000001
> _it 's been more than a decade since I've gotten a virus/malware just from
> clicking a link_

I'm worried that I probably would not even know when/if I have any malware
unless the malware detection actually manages to detect it. I think lots of
malware tries to remain inconspicuous and not draw attention to itself, only
using your machine as a gateway or data source. Even though I know TCP/IP
inside out and could inspect my network traffic, there is soooo much stuff
going on in today's PCs that I have no intention of even trying.

I would not even know where to start if I had to inspect my operating system.
I remember many years ago when a friend's laptop was always buys and created
lots of network activity, it was obvious and easily confirmed that it had
become a source of spam emails. I think a lot of malicious code is quite a bit
more sophisticated and careful now, plus, the much increased bandwidth and raw
PC power most people have available lets the same activity go unnoticed that
10 years ago might have had noticeable effects.

That means I think that not noticing any malware nowadays is not proof of
absence of malware when the base rate is included, i.e. if we assume a low
number of infections assuming no malware gets it mostly right only because of
the that, not because we have a reliable way to detect it. If the base rate
changes and our assumptions about infections don't change that would be a sign
that our own ability to detect infection does not play a role in how we get to
our assumption. It would be an interesting study to compare measured infection
rates with how safe users felt (if it is the same user population for both).
AV vendors and Microsoft might be able to do that.

------
jstalin
If only they would downrank sites that exist purely to defame: ripoffreport,
stdreport, blacklistreport, etc.

~~~
briandear
I would add sites that exist to extort in that same category. (i.e mugshot
sites, and those “claim your business support site” sites.)

------
panoply
The onion network is fast becoming the only network.

------
znpy
Remember that DuckDuckGo exists and its search results are pretty good.

~~~
richjdsmith
I've been using DDG since around January this year and am continually blown
away by how infrequently I need to turn to "The Big Guys" (Google, Bing) to
find something I didn't find on DDG. It's been maybe half-a-dozen times
relating to forums on some obscure software package?

That combined with DDG showing the top StackOverflow result inline on my
search has kept me a very happy DDG user.

------
josefresco
I searched for "nba finals game 1 replay" and the like during the finals and
was _only_ presented with pirate options. There was no legal/legit way to view
or purchase these games - and Google was ranking pirate sites all over the
first page. I wonder if this has changed.

------
navs
I have noticed a decrease in my Pirate related searches. Hopefully they fix
this before Halloween.

~~~
KMag
Google also seems to have done this with little regard for its effects on the
balance of power in the eternal struggle between pirates and ninjas.

------
pessimizer
Good start, now if they would just downrank sites that were trying to sell me
things or were using identical copy, maybe if I search for subject X, I might
be able to find websites with people discussing or explaining subject X.

Generally, when I search for a movie or a book on a search engine, I'm not
trying to buy, pirate, or read the wikipedia article about it (or I would have
just searched wikipedia.)

------
novaRom
On any new device I normally do the same thing each time:

1) Install Firefox Nightly

2) Install uBlock Origin add-on

3) Enable Duck Duck Go as default search engine

4) Enjoy

I am still looking for a good replacement for Gmail.

~~~
atacama
gmail has been easy for me. Do you absolutely need the (nice I admit) web ui?
I thought I did until I completely switch to using mails clients (mail on
macOS and iPhone). I don't miss gmail at all! I realise how long it took to
check my email before. I'm using Mailbox.org btw. Cheap, lots of aliases,
exchange server etc ... I switched 10 months ago and I don't regret.

~~~
josefresco
I use GMail for the stability, longevity and ubiquitous access.

~~~
nasredin
Until they lock your account even if you know the password...

Some people are OK with giving their PII like phone numbers to them, then
Google is a good choice for them.

For me, it is not. Their schizophrenic registration system that SOMETIMES
demands your phone number was the last straw.

~~~
josefresco
Free Gmail or paid? I use both, the paid for important things.

------
unstatusthequo
Duck, duck, SearX

------
duxup
How often are pirates just starting with google anyway?

I suspect most folks searching really do want a legit copy.

~~~
clarry
I'm not a regular pirate so I have no idea where to look. Search engines have
been useful in the past.

------
paulie_a
Nzbget + Kodi is actually better then browsing multiple services legal or not.

~~~
chrisper
Also sonarr

------
lunulata
This downrank is an ineffective farce. Search google for any show/movie with
free and online attached to it and I still reliably get a result on the first
page to stream pirated content from.

------
nafizh
That is why if I need to download anything, I search with duckduckgo now.

------
djhaskin987
Is the 65k number an implementation detail? Like because of 16 bits or
something?

~~~
EpicEng
Doubtful...

------
mrhappyunhappy
I do all of my searching with + Reddit appended. Get way better curated
results.

------
phobosdeimos
torrentz2.eu is a good way to search for torrents. DMCA compliant, at least on
paper so mileage may vary. But it has helped me out many times.

Google isn't the internet. Eerily close but not 100%.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I thought it was taken down by "the feds", I assume it's being run by some
government agency under direction of media rights holders now? These sites
seem to survive for some time playing whackamole, but AFAICT law enforcement
got all the long running big sites.

It's curious that, again from what I can tell, such sites often get taken over
(not the actual sites but copycat domains that Google serve) as copycats in
order to serve malware. But somehow that's preferable (for the government
agencies) to hosting inert torrent links.

------
kragen
I often find that Google sends me to scam sites like Elsevier instead of
Library Genesis or TPB when what I am searching for can be found there. Is
there a better search engine out there that solves this problem?

~~~
cup-of-tea
Make DuckDuckGo your default search engine now. Just do it. You won't miss
Google.

~~~
pcr0
As much as I'd like that to be true, I end up having to use !g in half my
searches. It does okay at keyword matching, but can't infer what I'm actually
looking for, falls short at finding obscure/niche topics and its pageload
speeds are frustrating compared to Google.

~~~
raverbashing
Weird things that DDG does:

\- No geo prioritization. If I'm searching for things in (city I'm current in)
I don't care for sites from companies located in (city in the US/Canada with
the same name).

\- You write "X in Y" (generic example) and autocomplete tries to "fix it with
"Z in Y" thanks but I really mean "X in Y". Or sometimes it tries to fix it
with even more unrelated things (though sometimes it makes sense).

~~~
vasco
Google does the same. Search for Warsaw while in Poland, yet use english
search words. Most results will come up for things in Warsaw, Indiana.
Including pages which google has tagged with "Warsaw, Indiana" so they clearly
know that's where the results are coming from.

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Same in Sweden. If you want to know what channels football matches are airing
on here the following searches yield entirely different results:

Fotbolls vm

Football World Cup

The former gives you the correct site with the channels listed as the first
answer but the second one doesn’t even have the channels on the first page.

~~~
dantheman0207
I live in the Netherlands but grew up in the U.S. and I often go back and
forth between Dutch and English when searching(depending mostly on context). I
have also used my google account while living in the U.S. and later in the
Netherlands (this used to _really_ mess up google calendar). I’ve been
searching for “World Cup” (English) on google.com. I get results in English,
but they are parsed from the national Dutch news channel and they link
directly to highlight clips on their YouTube channel. Seems like there is a
probably a lot of complex integration between Google and local broadcasters to
pull that off, and it might work just for me because I spent a lot of time
setting language and locale settings to try and accommodate my unique use
case.

------
tiatia123
All medium traffic sites depend on google. We had a good running shop. We
changed some things.

Nearly one week site down due to server crash (don't ask!). No problem.

New server, new IP. No problem.

Force always SSL. No problem.

But then we switched the shopping cart. This killed us. Traffic down 70%

~~~
hartator
Switched the shopping cart? It shouldn’t affect SEO.

~~~
tiatia123
New URLS?

After 4 months we have not recovered from this.

~~~
GijsjanB
301s were not an option?

~~~
tiatia123
we did this 1 month later. No effect.

We did a general 301. Not a product specific 301. Mistake?

~~~
hartator
301 redirects by page for sure 1:1.

Plus, How is this linked to shopping carts?

~~~
tiatia123
well, website.com/product=11 became website.com/myfavoritejeans

~~~
hartator
This is called product pages, cart will be website.com/my-cart or something in
the like.

~~~
tiatia123
so, should we have done a 301 for every product?

Seems to late now.

~~~
hartator
Yes 301s for each products to new page is ideal.

I don’t do SEO for other companies, but I can take a look at your analytics
data, and make a couple of suggestions if that can help. PM me.

------
qop
I switched to Bing two years ago and I'm pretty pleased with how well it
works.

Insane how people are coming to grips NOW that Google is an advertising
company instead of ten years ago.

------
hungerstrike
Are there any apps that perform searches on multiple search engines and
combine the results?

~~~
klez
You mean a meta-engine? Like Duckduckgo? Or you actually mean an app you can
install?

~~~
hungerstrike
Does ddg use google results? I have read that they do not.

~~~
bhhaskin
They use Google's index I believe, but that is not the same as using Google's
results.

------
waterphone
They're doing this sort of thing a lot more often, it seems like, whether
through manual actions targeting specific sites or algorithm changes that
suddenly take a high quality top ranked page and disappear it from results
entirely. It's happened to me where I had the most relevant result for a
search term (in fact, it's the website that _popularized_ that term) and now
it's gone from all Google results. It's still the top result on every other
search engine, but I've been unable to get it back at all on Google.

------
rawoke083600
Did google search every worked well for pirated content ? Always got to
boobies and Viagra with Rolex's first before the latest Marvel or Autodesk
software ;)

------
pwaai
I'm actually pirating a lot less. I started to buy / rent movies on Youtube.
Youtube Premium also lets me watch everything with zero ads. Netflix is a
major staple.

The fact of the matter is, the "Steamification" of mainstream media is almost
complete. iTunes, Steam, Youtube Music, Spotify, Netflix, Prime.

In the future we will be able to stream new movies, possibly infinite
variations created on the fly by AI.

Imagine an AI that has watched every possible recorded moving pictures and is
able to conjure up entire new story plots, characters, and visuals on their
own that caters exactly to the viewer.

Also its harder to download torrents now so I naturally just pay for it if I
really need it. The only way I would torrent something is if it was not
available for purchase.

