JustWatch Claims Google’s Anti-Piracy Efforts Haven’t Hurt Streaming Sites

Remember when Google said that they were going to deal with illegal video streaming sites back in 2012?  It looks like, according to JustWatch, a search engine for legal video streams based in Berlin, has said in a published report that Google’s promise to come down on illegal sites hasn’t really been holding up.

Back in August of 2012, Google announced the “Pirate Update,” that promised to cut down on the visibility of sites sharing illegal content.  Then, in October 2014, Google pushed an update to their algorithm.

According to a study done by JustWatch, this is true for only one type of site, the torrent sites offering files for download.  Following is a shot from the report that shows the drop in those sites in Google’s index after updating their Pirate algorithm:

But when it comes to streaming sites, JustWatch says that there hasn’t been any impact based on visibility data they gathered for 20 sites.  In fact, there is a 1,500-percent increase in these illegal streaming sites found in Google since the update in October 2014:

It looks like Google has quite the task in front of them if they want to combat these illegal video sites.

Original Source by Barry Schwartz