On 17 October, Google announced that it would do what it had previously claimed that it is already doing – demoting search results for entire domains in relation to which “substantial” numbers of complaints had been received under US law. They also promised not to use auto-complete of search terms in situations where those searches would have produced searches that had been accused of being in breach of US law.

The UK newspaper The Guardian also reported that UK rightsholder organisation, the British Phonograpic Industry wants Google to “remove” entire domains. So, if, for example, Tumblr or Wordpress were subject to a large number of complaints, instead of de-indexing the specific Tumblr or Wordpress sites that were accused of breaking US law, Google would simply make Tumblr.com or Wordpress.com unfindable.

Demotion of search results – Correspondence between state attorneys general (10.12.2013) http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1109251/correspondence-between-state-attorneys-general.pdf  Google to state AG’s: We’ve blocked over 3 million bad ads from “rogue online pharmacies” (20.06.2013) http://searchengineland.com/google-response-to-mississipi-subpeona-weve-blocked-over-3-million-ads-from-rogue-pharmacies-164054  Call for an investigation of John Horton, President of LegitScript, for possible government ethics violations http://pharmacycheckerblog.com/call-for-congressional-investigation-into-government-ethics-violations-by-john-horton-president-of-legitscript-com  Google says latest search changes will 'visibly affect' piracy site rankings (20.10.2014) http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/20/google-search-changes-piracy-rankings