Don’t be a pirate – Google will punish you

Google regularly makes changes to its algorithm in order to shake up which sites are getting sent to the top of search results. And it’s just made a big one.

The internet giant will now take into account the number of copyright infringement notices a site has received when calculating where it should sit on the search results page. The more notices the site has received, the likelier it is to appear lower down in the results.

Obviously, any type of movement within the Google algorithm is something businesses should pay attention to. But this time, it may not be as important.

For many businesses this won’t affect them because they’re not producing any type of material that would warrant taking copyrighted material. The only likely element that could fall into this territory is YouTube videos – and Google says they’ll probably be exempted.

If you’ve heard something about Google attacking pirates, don’t worry. Just make sure you’re not using any copyrighted material, especially copyrighted material that’s likely to get a notice slapped on your door, and you should be fine.

This article first appeared at SmartCompany.