I knew this already but BoingBoing has a good page on it. From BoingBoing: A number of bloggers who cover topics related to human sexuality say they’ve suddenly disappeared (or at least been deeply demoted) in Google search results. Popular “indie” blogs that deal with nonfiction sex ed or indie alt-erotica fare (Tiny Nibbles, Comstock […]
I knew this already but BoingBoing has a good page on it.
From BoingBoing:
A number of bloggers who cover topics related to human sexuality say they’ve suddenly disappeared (or at least been deeply demoted) in Google search results. Popular “indie” blogs that deal with nonfiction sex ed or indie alt-erotica fare (Tiny Nibbles, Comstock Films, ErosBlog, and others) have suddenly vanished to much lower ranking in relevant search results — even when you have Google’s adult filter turned off. And in practical effect, being buried is just as bad as being filtered out entirely.
The apparent drop appears to coincide with changes Google recently made to their keyword ad program, AdSense.
I saw this sort of thing a couple years ago – google made a change like this and suddenly legitimate sex-related businesses like my friend Doxy’s Phone Slut Diary vanished from the google rankings while sites that spammed and used all sorts of keyword chicanery were still at the top of the charts.
It was fucked up then and it’s fucked up now; they punish the real, valuable sites and do nothing to slow down the cheaters. Our own Chelsea Girl is one of the blogs axed by google, along with Bacchus hisownself, and my man Tony Comstock and a lot of high-profile sex bloggers.
I’m not sure what to do about it; if the team at BoingBoing are head-scratching, i’m pretty well stumped as well. But dammit, it’s yet another reason google are getting up there in competition with m’soft for the title of great satan. Fuck ’em
Update: Xeni at BoingBoing is saying this is fixed, and it may be for high-profile sex blogs, but google hasn’t fixed the root cause; Chelsea’s, for example, is still google-censored.
We’ve noticed a demotion too, but only in the US. Lee2 comes up high on worldwide Google searches. In Chile we come up on page 1, third listing, for Erotica, out of 30 million. Same for Australia, Israel, China. It’s just the US searches that have died.
The odd thing about this new google gap is that it seems to have no rhyme or reason. I’m affected, but Jefferson of One Life, Take Two isn’t. Eros, Logos is partially affected, but Always Aroused Girl isn’t at all. Rachel Kramer Bussel, Eddie Izzard and Violet Blue are, but Susie Bright isn’t.
It’s some bad math, some very, very bad math indeed.
kissykiss,
chelsea girl
This is going to be a minority, unpopular opinion, but I wish Google would disappear my old blog.
I was going to post a very lengthy reply here, but I’ve tucked it onto my own website instead: [link]
Just goes to prove money talks and there is a reason why Google is a hot stock option right now.
Grrrrrr.
Odder yet…
Marcus at Welcome to the Fuck House is still right up there.
Yeah, mine is the top four searches for “sexeteria” (old and new blog). Not that my blog is so raunchy these days, but the name itself would, I think, arouse more immediate censorship suspicion than “pretty dumb things,” if they were going just by name alone and not looking at content. I wonder if it’s not just some odd programming fluke or something.
I hope enough time has passed that I can LOL at Hiromi’s comment without stirring up any bad feeling. Because I did LOL.
I have a theory that Google threw a whole boatload of sites over the side and relies on its “click tracking” technology to slooowly slooowly resurrect the ones people actually click on, way down there in the Google outcast results basement. I base this theory on the fact that affected sites of mine have slowly worked their way back up the listings.
Of course this approach favors the better established sites, the ones folks are actively looking for because they already know about them.
Now I have to look for an alternative