Strange

BoingBoing: Google "disappears" sex blogs?

by BettyP | December 29, 2006 at 11:49 am

5080 views | 5 Recommendations | 3 comments

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 drop appears to coincide with changes Google recently made to their keyword ad program, AdSense.

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Victoria Revay

at 12:03 on December 29th, 2006

UPDATE ON BOING BOING: Readers have been writing in to
say that whatever happened here, the issue appears to be resolved for
now -- at least for the specific sex blogs cited in this post. I
haven't verified this, but if it's true, great. Still, the bloggers'
concerns still remain: we don't know exactly what happened or how or
why, or who or what "fixed" it, or how or why. When all of us rely on
one single service to access so much of the information we need each
day, and the company behind that service doesn't have to be transparent
to its users, problems like this are inevitable. And they can have
real-world consequences for "little guy" businesses on the 'net, and
for anyone seeking information online.

Victoria Revay

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 12:08 on December 29th, 2006

At NowPublic, this is high praise from NowPublic editors! Your story is now on the home page for awhile, and everywhere else the “good stuff” box shows up. Many thanks for your great work.

Hi BettyP,

This is a good article..I think it' be great if you contextualized a bit. But really good, thanks!