New study from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) concerning search engines entitled “Search Engines: challenges and good practices for limiting search traffic to content and services that infringe intellectual property”.
Search engines play a central role in the discovery of online content and act as an important gateway for users to access online information. As part of their activities, they may direct traffic to sites offering illegal goods and services, such as counterfeit goods or pirated content. When providing results to a particular user’s search query, search engines usually combine ‘organic’ search results with ‘paid’ search results and advertisements.
The study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the interaction between the search engine, the user and website owners in relation to the two different technical functions of search engines mentioned above, those relating to ‘organic’ and ‘paid’ search results.
In addition, the study identifies the challenges and subsequent good practices for addressing search engine abuses through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) techniques.
View the study here.