Google has removed the carousel of pirate sites that used to appear when the term “best torrent sites” was searched.
As you may know, the contents within search result carousels are not manually curated by Google.
Reports indicate that Google conducted an investigation into what was appearing for the “best torrent sites” query and ultimately decided to remove the carousel.
However, one must question whether this makes any difference compared to what is showing up instead.
Currently, when “best torrent sites” is searched for, it returns a featured snippet box that pulls in content listing the best torrent sites. So, in a way, searchers are still being directed to illegal torrent sites.
A Google spokesperson stated:
“We have investigated this particular issue and determined that this results carousel wasn’t working in the intended manner, and we have now fixed the issue.”
Google’s “intended manner” likely didn’t involve a carousel of torrent sites, so the issue has been “fixed” by removing the carousel.
Perhaps Google will consider investigating the issue further, because it’s still relatively easy to access the torrent sites that were featured in the carousel.
