Google is not doing enough to stop online piracy, JustWatch research suggests

Google is not doing enough to meet its commitment to block online piracy, according to Berlin-headquartered start-up JustWatch.

JustWatch, which operates a streaming video service search engine, has released research indicating that the online marketing giant has contradicted its public stance on online piracy and continued to direct internet users to illicit movie services.

JustWatch chief executive David Croyé said that the company's research indicated that while Google has publicly lent its support to promoting legal online entertainment its search engine was still giving illicit sites a high ranking.

"Google last year did a big [public relations] splash to announce that they're doing this and now we think the best way to show them is back via PR that they're not doing anything," Mr Croyé said.

Mr Croyé was referring to Google's "pirate update" announced in October last year which purported to penalise websites and online services alleged to be engaged in or promoting copyright breaches.

The update was a response to pressure from the global entertainment lobby.

At the time, Google released a refreshed version of its report titled "How Google Fights Piracy", which made frequent reference to the US government's main legal spear against online piracy, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

In the report, Google outlined a wide range of measures to combat piracy including down-ranking sites that were frequently the subject of complaint under the DMCA notification and takedown scheme.

It also revealed that Google had taken steps to harden its search engine algorithm against piracy. For instance, it took steps to block terms "closely associated with piracy" from its autocomplete and related search features of its search engine.

It also indicated it would promote legal content sources.

JustWatch's research found that, a year on, the top 20 torrent web sites across the US, Britain, Germany, Poland, Brazil and Russia became less visible in search results, causing internet traffic to them to dive.

However, it found that illicit streaming sites were still enjoying a high ranking in Google's search results.

JustWatch examined about 20 illicit streaming websites across Europe, the US and South America and found that traffic search engines directed to them was growing exponentially.

"Many torrent sites lost a lot of traffic or got crushed completely, which may indicate that the industry won a partial victory. However, appearances are deceiving.

In fact, Google did not penalise illegal streaming sites at all. While the search engine traffic of illegal torrent sites decreased, the search engine traffic of illegal streaming sites increased significantly.

"Furthermore, the search engine visibility of illegal movie streaming sites is 15 times larger than the search engine visibility of illegal torrent sites," JustWatch wrote in its report.

Overall search results still accounted for 35 per cent of visits to illicit sites with Google the dominant player in the space.

"In conclusion, it can be stated that the Google pirate update did not prevent illegal movie streaming sites from ranking well in Google's search results.

This implies, that Google's search engine results are still a huge driver to discover illegal movie sites," JustWatch's wrote in its report.

Mr Croyé said he suspected Google was using a simple set of manual efforts to block illicit sites rather than making more sophisticated efforts to block illegal sites from its search algorithm.

Google has publicly said that it won't engage in domain blocking as it's too easy for illicit site operators to circumvent such measures.

"If they would just use a whole keyword set of movie titles and stream, and so on, they would have the other sites too," he said.

Google had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.