Google has added information on the copyright removal requests it receives to remove search results that link to sites allegedly infringing copyrights. In previously announced transparency reports, Google provides information about international traffic to their services and governmental requests for information about users. A new aspect of the transparency report slices and dices the information Google receives through its removal request process.
The tables show the information on which copyright owners are finding their rights infringed, the reporting organizations, which domains are targeted. The data goes back to July 2011. Google receives over 1.25 million URLs that are requested to be removed each month. The report only shows removal requests regarding Google search results, not other Google products like YouTube or Blogger.
Google discusses the topic in the blog post announcing the new report.
At the same time, we try to catch erroneous or abusive removal requests. For example, we recently rejected two requests from an organization representing a major entertainment company, asking us to remove a search result that linked to a major newspaper’s review of a TV show. The requests mistakenly claimed copyright violations of the show, even though there was no infringing content. We’ve also seen baseless copyright removal requests being used for anticompetitive purposes, or to remove content unfavorable to a particular person or company from our search results. We try to catch these ourselves, but we also notify webmasters in our Webmaster Tools when pages on their website have been targeted by a copyright removal request, so that they can submit a counter-notice if they believe the removal request was inaccurate.
You can dive into the data at Google’s Transparency Report – Removal Requests and find out the specifics of the data from the report’s FAQ section.