Last year, Google released its Transparency Report revealing takedown requests and the removal of infringing links. Today, the RIAA is still unhappy with the company and keeps blaming it for doing a bad job.

The Recording Industry Association of America admits they recognize and appreciate that the search giant has undertaken some steps to remove links to unauthorized music on its network. However, the outfit’s initial analysis concludes that so far Google’s pledge 6 months ago to remove links to pirate websites remained unfulfilled. The RIAA found out that searches for popular music still result in links to illegal websites at the expense of legal portals, which are usually relegated to later pages. Moreover, Google’s Autocomplete feature still suggests users those illegal sites.

The anti-piracy outfit’s study had apparently put to good use the search giant’s Transparency Report, emphasizing pirate websites which still show on Google’s first page. The creative industry pin-pointed the portals that were marked as “serial infringers” and stressed the fact that such websites still show up on the engine’s first page of results 98% of the time. In addition, the RIAA pointed out that the Autocomplete function continues to suggest results leading to infringing content. It turned out that well-known and legitimate websites, including iTunes, Amazon and eMusic, can only be seen in the top 10 results for a little more than half of the searches.

In response, Google claimed that it had invested heavily in copyright tools for copyright holders and processed takedown notices faster than ever. For example, within the last month the company received over 14 million copyright removal requests for Google Search, and managed to quickly remove over 97% from search results. Moreover, the company claimed that Google’s growing partnerships and distribution deals with the creative industry would benefit both copyright owners and users, while generating hundreds of millions of dollars for the industry each year.

Everyone understands that this game of cat catching mouse won’t be over soon, but maybe the Recording Industry Association of America should come up with another method of blocking “notorious” portals from the engine’s search results or simply stop doing it at all.