Google Loves Bondage Porn
 

In an attempt to find excuses not to work a day or two back, I followed Faxxaff's sig to his webmaster's blog. He has a post claiming that Google is filtering porn image searches, and gives the example "Try to search anal sex for example. It shows almost no explicit photos of sex acts."

I use Google's image search all the time for source material when drawing illustrations for my websites. By coincidence I had, a couple of days previously, done an "anal sex in bondage" drawing and used Google's image search for that, and found plenty of explicit photos of anal sex. So when I read Faxxaff's article I thought "the idiot has probably left 'safe search' switched on!"

However, for no reason at all, I was thinking about it this morning and decided that it was a bit unfair on Faxxaff to assume he was an idiot without testing his statement. So I went to Google and did an image search for "anal sex" and, as Faxxaff had predicted, I got no explicit photos. This confused me, I know I got plenty of explicit photos a few days ago and, from the fact that Faxxaff's post was an old one, his test was probably before that.

Then it hit me, I hadn't searched for "anal sex". My search had been "anal sex bondage". Simply adding the word "bondage" convinces Google to give you hardcore images.

The same thing works with some other compound searches. For example "oral sex" gives no porn images, but "oral sex bondage" gives plenty!

Do you think the people at Google think sex is only "proper" if the woman is tied up?

The more long tail and explicit your search the higher your probability for sex images becomes. Broad searches will not show nudity, normally.

I.e. try entering a name for a famous adult actress into Google's image search. One that has been around for a couple of years like Tera Patrick or Amber Lynn. Most likely all you get are portrait or bikini photos. Only when you narrow your search to "Tera Patrick boobs" or "Amber Lynn sex" you will receive nudity.

Notice how well "Tera Patrick boobs" displays boob pictures, only. On the contrary less explicit searches like "tera patrick ass" or "tera patrick gay" don't reveal any explicit shots again. It seems Google puts a lot of effort into being exact where it wants to show nudity, but turning away from skin when searches are broad.

BTW, here is my original post:
http://www.megamasters.com/google-im...rch-censorship

After I wrote this article I did receive a little bit of image search traffic for "anal sex", indeed.