Did Yahoo Delete The Pirate Bay From Search Results?

from the making-friends?--or-enemies? dept

Mon, Feb 18th 2008 2:46pm — Mike Masnick

There's a lot of buzz going around concerning reports that Yahoo has deleted The Pirate Bay from its search index, though it appears not everyone is seeing it. There hasn't been an official explanation just yet -- and it could be an accidental move or simply a hiccup, but it raises some questions about Yahoo's search index when such a site disappears. This is especially true given the controversial (deserved or not) nature of The Pirate Bay, and the efforts by the entertainment industry to shut the site down. Initially, we're willing to give Yahoo the benefit of the doubt, but a full explanation of what happened would be useful at this point.

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Filed Under: missing sites, pirate bay, search index
Companies: pirate bay, yahoo

42 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2008 @ 3:44pm

I don't use Yahoo much except for my throw-away email for junk mail, and the occasional instant messenger use -- but if this is true I think I'll be avoiding them completely.
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just over here, 18 Feb 2008 @ 3:54pm

pirate bay
i entered it just now,, went right to it,,, dont see a problem
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just over here, 18 Feb 2008 @ 3:54pm

pirate bay
i entered it just now,, went right to it,,, dont see a problem
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
just over here, 18 Feb 2008 @ 3:54pm

pirate bay
i entered it just now,, went right to it,,, dont see a problem
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
TriZz, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:00pm

TPB
I don't think this will have much of an impact. Honestly, I don't use Google or Yahoo if I'm searching for a specific torrent, I go to a torrent site to find those. I think most people do too...
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:13pm

wow... i just went to yahoo, did a search for both "pirate bay" and "piratebay.org" and the only thing that popped up was the wikipedia article on the pirate bay...

i've never used yahoo for anything before, and now i have a good reason for that...
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- Anonymous Coward, 19 Feb 2008 @ 8:29am
  
  Re: Noob
  by Anonymous Coward on Feb 18th, 2008 @ 4:13pm
  
  "i've never used yahoo for anything before, and now i have a good reason for that..."
  
  Wow, you must be new to the internets, to have never done the yahoo.
  
  Obvious, noob is obvious
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Mike, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:15pm

I just searched "pirate bay" in yahoo and the link to the official site was no where to be found. When I type "piratebay" a drop box of suggestions comes down with stuff like "torrents, Sweden, etc.." and nothing will show piratebay's site in the reults. WTF, thats crap, will never use yahoo for anything now, have lost 100% trust.
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Steve, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:21pm

Me Too
searched "thepiratebay" and "thepiratebay.org" Got the wiki article first and on my second search got a bunch of user profiles. Never going to use yahoo again
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Gwen, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:28pm

Does anyone really care? I mean, Yahoo! is soon to be a Microsoft property soon anyways.
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Robert, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:29pm

pirate bay
# 13 on yahoo search for pirate bay
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:55pm
  
  Re: pirate bay
  # 13 on yahoo search for pirate bay
  
  You do realize that piratebay.com isn't the same thing as thepiratebay.org don't you?
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Gwen, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:31pm

Does it really matter at this point? I mean Yahoo! will soon be another Microsoft product anyway.
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urza, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:39pm

Yup.
Not in the results for me either. I went so far as to search 'inurl:thepiratebay.org', and still got nothing.
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john, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:42pm

hi
i just want to post and then post the same thing 2 or 3 more times because i feel i am so important that my point must be made! i also don't understand technology and don't understand why things aren't instant.

morons.
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:51pm
  
  Re: hi
  I highly doubt it has anything to do with wanting to feel important. The timestamps are all the same time so it's quite possible it was something else. Double posts happen and it's probably not necessary for you to show off your the size of your ePenis in this particular case. So, how about you shut the fuck up?
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  - JtB, 18 Feb 2008 @ 8:26pm
    
    Re: Re: hi
    LMFAO ROFL
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    - Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2008 @ 9:28pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: hi
      LMFAO ROFL
      You forgot LOL
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Jemima, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:52pm

Same results here
Interesting. Google (my standard search engine) brought up the pirate bay site with no problem, but a search of Yahoo brought only the Wikipedia links. Interesting.
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Drew, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:53pm

Yahoo (Pirate Bay)
Download music, movies, games, software! The Pirate Bay - The world's ...
Download music, movies, games, software and much more. The Pirate Bay is the world's largest bittorrent tracker.
72 people bookmarked this page under: torrents - bittorrent - download
www.piratebay.org - 10k - Cached

Yahoo's search results 02/18/2008. Where's the issue?
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Jemima, 18 Feb 2008 @ 4:53pm

Same results here
Interesting. Google (my standard search engine) brought up the pirate bay site with no problem, but a search of Yahoo brought only the Wikipedia links.
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csin, 18 Feb 2008 @ 5:05pm

Its still there...
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/search?p=http%3A%2F%2Fthepiratebay.com&bwm=p&bwms=p& ;fr2=seo-rd-se

8 Results... if they planned on removing it from their index, they should have done a better job.
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- Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2008 @ 5:20pm
  
  Re: Its still there...
  Results... if they planned on removing it from their index, they should have done a better job.
  
  Yeah, that's kind of sloppy. Not surprising though.
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- Captain Obvious, 18 Feb 2008 @ 5:59pm
  
  Re: Its still there...
  the site in question is thepiratebay.ORG, not thepiratebay.COM
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- Captain Obvious, 18 Feb 2008 @ 6:01pm
  
  Re: Its still there...
  the site in question is thepiratebay.org, not thepiratebay.com
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  - Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2008 @ 6:10pm
    
    Re: Re: Its still there...
    the site in question is thepiratebay.org, not thepiratebay.com
    
    thepiratebay.com redirects to thepiratebay.org.
    piratebay.com is different though.
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csin, 18 Feb 2008 @ 5:12pm

Deffinetly not removed...
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?ei=UTF-8&p=http%3A%2F%2Fthepiratebay.org

This one returns 513,591 results.
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ScaredOfTheMan, 18 Feb 2008 @ 5:13pm

BOOOOOOOOOO YAhooooo
No its not... http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=the+pirate+bay
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ScaredOfTheMan, 18 Feb 2008 @ 5:13pm

BOOOOOOOOOO YAhooooo
No its not... http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=the+pirate+bay
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Feb 2008 @ 5:18pm

mpaa.org
I just searched on Yahoo for The Pirate Bay. thepiratebay.org didn't come up but a press release from mpaa.org did. Gee, I wonder who could be behind that?

Don't forget that Yahoo is the kind of company that is only all too eager to help totalitarian governments suppress dissent too. So should this come as any surprise?
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Don Zapper, 18 Feb 2008 @ 5:52pm

thepiratebay.org
Yahoo is a rat fink company really to sell you out. Look up Yahoo on Wikipedia.

"On August 28, 2007, the World Organization for Human Rights sued Yahoo for allegedly passing information (email and IP address) with the Chinese government that caused the arrests of writers and dissidents. The suit was filed in San Francisco for journalists, Shi Tao, and Wang Xiaoning."
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Known Coward, 18 Feb 2008 @ 9:23pm

Did Yahoo Delete The Pirate Bay
Yes they did. Piratebay.org is nowhere in my Yahoo search results, but number one at Google. Fuck Yahoo, bunch of lame losers.
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matt, 18 Feb 2008 @ 9:27pm

yep removed
yes, piratebay.org is not showing in any links.

sneaky attempt by yahoo, no doubt.
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Rose M. Welch, 18 Feb 2008 @ 10:17pm

I wonder what...
...the settings were on everyone's pages before they searched. Maybe people who were on SafeSearch couldn't pull a up site that helps you download things that are sometimes illegal? Just an idea... Yahoo is automatically set to SafeSearch and I noticed that alot of the people who couldn't find the links to Pirate bay were not regular users of Yahoo!, so it's probable that they didn't go through the three page rigamarole of I Am Eighteen Or Over And Can Use A Non-Filtered Search... Going to give it a try, guess I'll comment again later.
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- Sean T., 18 Feb 2008 @ 11:51pm
  
  Re: I wonder what...
  I just performed the same test search and only got the (wrong) Piratebay.com site to show along with a slew of 'related' articles.
  
  I checked and changed my search prefs as well, but it still did not return the correct Piratebay.org result.
  
  I agree with the others that this is shady work on the part of Yahoo! and they have lost my trust completely. Good thing I don't rely on them for a damn thing.
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Rose M. Welch, 18 Feb 2008 @ 10:24pm

Okay, so...
...I tried 'the pirate bay', 'pirate bay org', and a slew of others and I couldn't find it unless I actually typed in 'thepiratebay.org' and then it didn't even take me to the home page.

This really pisses me off because I use Yahoo! all the time. I even purchase web space from them. They're getting a nasty damn letter from me tonight.
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Chronno S. Trigger, 19 Feb 2008 @ 6:36am

TPB
Just did the yahoo search and www.thepiratebay.org cannot be found. They have torrents.thepiratebay.org and a lot of users but still not the home page. This may still be a mistake since not all references to TPB were removed. I'd think they would remove all references to (anything).thepiratebay.org instead of just the main page.

Why do you need to search for it? It's all over the news. Everyone already knows about it.
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mike allen, 19 Feb 2008 @ 6:41am

just tried it from UK
same thing pirate bay dot com (whoever they are ) top of list nothing of pirate bay dot org censorship of a search engine. anyone tried this in microsoft if the same then we know who is pulling the strings.
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Jeff, 19 Feb 2008 @ 6:41am

what a bunch of crap I'm glad i switched to Google a few years back i know they are not censoring my searches because some a**hole wants them to. its no wander there losing all there money and selling out to M$ i have a junk e-mail with them but never use it so I'm going to delete it. i wonder if some lawyer could sue the for censorship i don't think they could but that would be cool as hell to read about.
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Fushta, 19 Feb 2008 @ 7:40am

Can you say "Steissand Effect?"
Mike,

Thanks for promoting Yahoo! search engine to drive up traffice and potential value.

Yours,
Bill Gates
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Improbus, 19 Feb 2008 @ 8:59am

Yahoo?
People actually use Yahoo! for searching? Why?
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illegalprelude, 19 Feb 2008 @ 12:28pm

wow. I just did a search and yup. No sign of the pirate bay. Thats disgusting Yahoo.
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