Google blocks BitTorrent from search suggestions

Google has added the word "Bittorrent" to a list of terms regarded as on the nose to the search engine's auto-complete service, along with related terms like utorrent and rapidshare.

Start typing the word "bittorrent" in Google's search bar, and by the time you get to "bitt", the list of results goes blank.

Search results aren't blocked and still appear when a user presses enter, and the BitTorrent site still comes in as the number one listing.

Google has instead only stopped suggesting the word BitTorrent as part of its 'auto-complete' service. It prevents the word appearing as users start typing "bitt…", and prevents search results from automatically appearing before the user clicks the 'Search' icon or presses 'Enter' on the keyboard.

There is a long list of words Google officially won't suggest when users search. many of which are discussed here.

"We will prevent terms that are closely associated with piracy from appearing in Autocomplete," the search engine explained in a December 2010 statement. "While it’s hard to know for sure when search terms are being used to find infringing content, we’ll do our best to prevent Autocomplete from displaying the terms most frequently used for that purpose."