Reports: Google Pirate Update Has Rolled Out This Week

Last week, we reported that Google will be pushing out an update to the Google Pirate Update in the upcoming weeks. It looks like Google pushed that update out a few days ago.

Torrentfreak reports the update has impacted many torrent sites.

Here is a screen shot of the SEO visibility for the site torrentz.eu according to SearchMetrics:

As you can see, SearchMetrics is reporting a keyword drop of about 68% for the popular European torrent site.

The owner of Isohunt.to told Torrentfreak, “earlier this week all search traffic dropped in half.” He shared this traffic graph, showing the decline in traffic over time to his site from Google:

There are many more examples of torrent sites being hit with screen shots of before and after Google search results as Torrentfreak. It does seem like the revised algorithm has run earlier than expected. The big question is, is it complete or will more sites be hit in the upcoming week?

Postscript: Marcus Tober from SearchMetrics has provided the biggest loser list for the Pirate update including free-tv-video-online.me, movie4k.to and mp3skull.com as the top three losers.

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About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here.

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