In 2020, the traffic of pirate sites dropped sharply due to the new Google algorithm

In the past year, the traffic of pirate sites has dropped sharply, writes TorrentFreak. A detailed analysis shows that the number of transitions to these sites from search engines has decreased by about a third. The biggest damage to traffic was caused by the update of Google algorithms.

The change in policies has pushed copyright owners to illegally posted content. They have repeatedly asked search engines to ban pirated sites. Although in fact this did not happen, the updated issuance algorithms help to reduce traffic.

Google, for example, is actively downgrading sites that receive a large number of delete requests. This negatively affected the traffic of pirate sites, especially in 2020.

Piracy tracking company MUSO has provided detailed information on the traffic of pirated sites from search engines. These data show that the number of visits has decreased.

Below is a graph of all visits to public torrent sites between December 2019 and November 2020, excluding search engine traffic. A gradual decrease of about 10% is seen. This trend is roughly the same as in previous years. The data also shows a temporary spike in visits during the coronavirus outbreak in March and April.

However, traffic graphs from search engines alone show a much stronger top-down effect. So, from December 2019 to November 2020, search traffic fell by about a third. The downward trend started in mid-January. This was followed by a second sharp drop in early May.

These time intervals are not accidental. In fact, they correspond to the first two major algorithm updates that Google announced last year. The first started on January 13, the second on May 4. During the second period, the search traffic of pirate sites fell by more than 20%.

The operator of one of the largest torrent sites reported a 35% drop in traffic from Google search over the past year.