Websites removed from Google’s index due to copyright requests has now reached 1.75 billion at the time of this writing. That number can be confirmed by the counter on the copyright section of Google’s transparency report.
For comparison’s sake, the amount of copyright takedown requests that are rejected are mere 39 million. Year over year the overall amount of copyright requests has seen a 53% increase.
Within the report you can also track the amount of takedown requests Google has received over time. You can also track pending URLs, invalid URLs, duplicated URLs, and more. Google is apparently quick at responding to requests, as there are absolutely zero pending requests at the moment.
Process of Submitting a Copyright Request
Copyright takedown requests have to be sent in by the owner of the copyrighted content. Google isn’t scouring the web all day looking for copyright infringements, it’s up to the owner to make Google aware of it. Once the request has been sent in, Google’s team begins the review process.
If the copyright takedown request is complete and accurate, the offending URL will be removed from search results. In typical Google fashion, the owner of the website will be notified through Search Console.
This doesn’t always happen, but the admin of the affected site might decide to retaliate in the form of a counter notification. When Google receives a counter notification, it once again considers whether or not the content should be indexed in search results.
To date, over 20 million requests have been submitted, leading to the removal of 1.75 billion URLs from 888 thousand domains.
