In a recent blog Google announced proposed changes to its search engine prioritisation routines, that determine the ranking of search results, which will take effect next week.
The number of valid copyright removal notices received for each site is ranked by Google as part of their 'Transparency list'. These statistics will now be taken into consideration when ranking results returned and sites with high levels of valid removal notices will have their results placed further down the list of search results.
Somewhat controversially Google will lower the ranking for all results from a particular site and not just those relating to files they've received copyright removal notices for. In addition files with valid copyright removal notices will be completely removed from search results.
Google's blog entry can be viewed here and the 'Transparency list' statistics showing which sites will be worst affected can be viewed here.
