Google has announced a change in their search engine ranking parameter.

The company said that they would now rank domains lower which have received a significant number of successful copyright removal notices.

This means that sites popular for hosting pirated digital material are going to take a hit in their search rankings on Google search engines.

Google said:

Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.

Market analysts are calling this a mistake on Google’s part. They believe that Google is giving in to the absurd claims made by media giants around the world.