Challenges and good practices from online search engines to limit search traffic towards intellectual property infringing content and services : search engines

Search engines play a central role in online content discoverability, acting as a major gateway for users to access online information. As part of their activities, they may drive traffic towards websites that offer illegal goods and services, such as counterfeit products or pirated content. When providing results to a given user's search query, search engines typically combine 'organic' search results with 'paid for' search results and ads. This paper covers these two distinct technical functionalities, which are combined to make up the user's search experience but are subject to different legal obligations.