During the last month, Google has received double the amount of requests to have web content taken down by copyright holders. The requests for removal have increased to 1.5 million a week. Copyright holders can now request removal of links to content on websites which are considered an infringement of their rights. Although the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been welcomed, it could make some SEO jobs more complex.
As requests for content removal steadily increase, the main recipient is Google, which handled almost 5.7 million requests for content removal in the past month from anti-piracy bodies and copyright holders, according to the latest transparency report released by the search giant. During the last year, the number of requests to remove sites which have infringed copyrights from search results has increased over 11 times. During the same period in 2011, the number of requests was 131,577 a week. Search engine optimisation will be affected by the copyright act, increasing the requirement for original content provision.
The transparency report released by Google also indicates that the number of requests made by the UK government to obtain access to private data of users had increased by a quarter during the last 12 months. According to Google, it had been compliant with 64 per cent of requests for access to data. The US government made 37 per cent more requests during the same period, increasing to 6,321. Google complied with 93 per cent, either partially or fully. The copyright act could affect businesses in all areas of the UK, including Liverpool and other large cities.
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