Google slows crawlers for SOPA blackout

By

No search ranking penalty for protesting anti-piracy legislation.

Google has revealed its engineers have slowed the search engine's web crawlers today to prevent sites that 'black out' to protest anti-piracy legislation from being penalised in search rankings.

Google slows crawlers for SOPA blackout
Greenpeace glows black against SOPA.

Pierre Far, a webmaster trends analyst at Google UK, noted the temporary change on his Google+ account.

Google hopes the slowed crawlers will mean websites that intentionally go offline for up to 24 hours as part of the protest - such as Wikipedia - will not see their search rankings fall as a result.

"We realise many webmasters are concerned about the medium-term effects of today's blackout," Far said.

"As a precaution, the crawl team at Google has configured Googlebot to crawl at a much lower rate for today only so that the Google results of websites participating in the blackout are less likely to be affected."

The move was welcomed by participants in the protest, which is aimed at highlighting controversial laws proposed in the United States aimed at stopping piracy on the internet.

Critics of the SOPA legislation say it compromises the way the internet functions and impacts innovation and free speech.

Major websites participating in the internet blackout include Wikipedia, Reddit, Wordpress, Craigslist and BoingBoing (see gallery).

Changes to the proposed legislation were flagged by the White House yesterday as opposition to the bills gained momentum.

Got a news tip for our journalists? Share it with us anonymously here.
Copyright © iTnews.com.au . All rights reserved.
Tags:

Most Read Articles

NSW Police to embark on $126m IT overhaul

NSW Police to embark on $126m IT overhaul

Analysis: Who really owns Huawei?

Analysis: Who really owns Huawei?

ATO moves to break up $1bn Optus megadeal

ATO moves to break up $1bn Optus megadeal

Woolworths reveals large-scale 'farm to fork' IoT project

Woolworths reveals large-scale 'farm to fork' IoT project

Log In

  |  Forgot your password?