How to Get a Pirate Link Removed From Google: A Practical Guide

You type the title of your work into Google, and a pirate site comes up before your own page. That is often how a creator discovers the problem. The good news: Google agrees to remove these links from its results, and the process is free. The less good news: it has limits that are worth knowing before you start.

Here is how to proceed, step by step.

What Google Does, and What It Does Not Do

When Google accepts your request, it removes the page from its search results. This is called delisting. The page itself stays online on the pirate site: anyone who knows its address can still reach it.

AgencePDN gets this kind of content removed: see our Fraudulent ads service.

That still matters. Most people who pirate do it out of convenience, by searching for a title in a search engine. If the link no longer appears, a good share of them move on, or end up paying.

To make the file itself disappear, you have to go to the site or its host. The two approaches complement each other.

Who Can Make the Request

Only the rights holder, or a person authorized to act on their behalf, can file a request. A reader or a fan who comes across a pirated copy cannot do it for you.

The request engages your responsibility. Google says so in its form: a person who falsely states that content infringes their rights is liable for damages. Report only what belongs to you, and only pages you have checked.

What to Prepare

Gather these items before opening the form:

• Your contact details: name, company, country, email address.
• A description of the work: title, author or producer, year. Be precise: “The Crossing, season 2, episode 4” is better than “my series”.
• The address of the original work: the page where it can be legally watched or bought. This is what Google compares against.
• The exact address of each pirate page. This is where most requests fail: you need the address of the page that contains your work, not the site's home page.

The Steps

1. Open Google's legal help and choose to report content for copyright infringement. The form is called Report alleged copyright infringement.
2. Choose the product concerned: Web Search for a search result.
3. Enter your contact details.
4. Describe the work and give the address of the original.
5. Paste the addresses of the pirate pages, one per line.
6. Tick the sworn statements and sign with your name.
7. Send. You receive an acknowledgement by email.

If you have several works, group in the same block the pages that concern the same work.

What Happens Next

Google reviews the request. If it accepts it, the page disappears from its results and a message tells users that a result was removed following a complaint.

Two things to know:

• Your request becomes public. Google forwards its content to Lumen, a database run by a nonprofit organization, which publishes it after removing certain personal information.
• The site can object. The operator of the page can send a counter-notice if they believe the removal is a mistake.

Google guarantees no timeline. Allow from a few hours to several days, depending on the volume and clarity of the request.

The Most Common Mistakes

• Giving the site's home page instead of the specific page. Google does not remove an entire site on a request of this kind.
• Reporting a link that is already dead. Check that the page still loads.
• Mistaking a homonym for your work. A film and a series can share the same title.
• Reporting a legal platform. A clip on your distributor's site is not a pirated copy.
• Forgetting other search engines. Bing has its own form.

Why It Is Not Always Enough

One request removes one address. A pirate site has thousands, and publishes new ones every day. It also changes domain names: the same site can live under ten mirror addresses, and each one needs its own reports.

There is still a long-term effect. Google takes into account the number of valid requests received against a site in its ranking: a heavily reported site moves down in the results. Reporting consistently does end up counting, but only if it is kept up over time.

When to Hand the Work to an Agency

For one work and a few links, the form is enough. Beyond that, the work becomes repetitive: finding the new copies, checking each page, filling in the requests, starting again the following week.

This has been our trade since 2013. AgencePDN has been a member of Google's Trusted Copyright Removal Program since 2023, which lets us submit large volumes of links. Our monitoring searches for your titles every night, a check sets aside homonyms and legal pages, and the takedown notices go to Google, but also to the sites and their hosts, so that the file disappears and not just the link.

Want to know where you stand first? Our free scan queries some forty known pirate sites and gives you a first picture.

In Short

• Google removes a link from its results, not the file from the site.
• Only the rights holder or their representative can make the request.
• You need the exact address of each pirate page.
• The request is published in the Lumen database.
• For a catalogue or a site that keeps coming back, you need continuous monitoring.