Grooveshark provides on-demand advert-free track playback of more than 15 million songs on its website, through mobile apps and via streaming embeds. However, it is not currently licensed for its use of copyright-protected music, and Universal Music Group filed a lawsuit against the company in 2011.
Searchers can still google ‘Grooveshark’ directly and get relevant results, but its removal from Google's search suggestions will mean it will get less traffic overall and fewer new users discovering the service.
Google has been filtering piracy-related websites from its instant search and autocomplete functions since 2011, which has impacted traffic to sites including Sweden’s infamous filesharing platform The Pirate Bay.
Last year, the digital goliath also announced that it would start to include details of US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) copyright removal notices in its search rankings.
Previously Google did not penalise those websites incurring DMCA notices. However, with the change to it's search algorithms last August, the search engine now penalises such websites by pushing them further down the search results page.
For more on streaming, read Helienne Lindvall's article for M magazine which explores the digital landscape to discover how 2013 could be a watershed year for the industry.
Searchers can still google ‘Grooveshark’ directly and get relevant results, but its removal from Google's search suggestions will mean it will get less traffic overall and fewer new users discovering the service.
Google has been filtering piracy-related websites from its instant search and autocomplete functions since 2011, which has impacted traffic to sites including Sweden’s infamous filesharing platform The Pirate Bay.
Last year, the digital goliath also announced that it would start to include details of US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) copyright removal notices in its search rankings.
Previously Google did not penalise those websites incurring DMCA notices. However, with the change to it's search algorithms last August, the search engine now penalises such websites by pushing them further down the search results page.
For more on streaming, read Helienne Lindvall's article for M magazine which explores the digital landscape to discover how 2013 could be a watershed year for the industry.
