Image by Oleg Kosirev, via The Sex Carnival.
Bacchus, j’adore — has been taunting the Google Suggest function because no matter how you have your settings, as adult as you like, it’ll still treat you like a baby. Le sigh. Oh, Google. To wit, a snip:
Google, as all sex blog readers probably know, filters porn (they call it “explicit sexual content”) out of your search results by default. They call this “Safe Search”, and you can turn if off by letting Google set a cookie in your browser. (Most ErosBlog readers have, presumably, done this.) No worries, it’s been like this for years. We’re used to it, and in many contexts it’s useful to have the filtered option.
Recently, however, Google introduced a dynamic on-the-fly search suggestion feature called Google Suggest. When you type Britney Spears into the search box, a drop-down appears with what Google calls “relevant suggested search terms” in real time: (image)
Nerd response: Cool!
Sex blogger response: Hey, wait a minute! Isn’t something missing from that search box? Wouldn’t you expect to see “Britney Spears nude” on that list?
Let’s check. The list changes with every character you type, so let’s go “britney spears nu” and see if it fills in the suggestion: (image)
Suspicious, but maybe all those “number one” sites are just crowding it out? Let’s make this impossible to miss, let’s try “britney spears nud”: (image)
Whoa! Is that the sound of crickets I’m hearing? “Mom, Google Suggest won’t come out and play with me any more!”
At this point I hit the “Preferences” link and went to check my Safe Search setting; it forgets the “Do not filter my search results” setting every time I clean out all my cookies, and resetting it is the first thing I do after that. Nope, “Do not filter my search results” is checked! That’s not the problem.
And make no mistake, this is a problem, and not just for feelthy perverts like me. This is the sort of thing that sets mild-mannered eyeglasses-wearing librarians sputtering with rage, because once you start filtering out words, like “nude”, that do double duty as erotic signifiers and, you know, plain old information tags, you begin to muck up basic research of the sort that any high school civics class might legitimately be doing. Allow me to illustrate. (…read more!)
I must admit I’m *really* impressed with the pic. I’m now using the copy from this page as my wallpaper and luvin’ it.
I can’t make any sense of the photographer’s website as its in Russian (?). Is there any way I can throw him or her ten bucks through PayPal?
That image is startlingly beautiful. Thanks for posting it.
That is the best picture I’ve seen this week, thank you for sharing in this post!
Oooh! Love the pic! But I can’t say I liked anything else at the photographer’s web site. You have great taste to pick this one.
I also agree about Google apps. :)
afaik there’s a certain amount of sponsorship on some parts of google suggest. Doesn’t account for all of the filtering though!
The really sad part is that the anatomical names of genitals (eg penis and vagina) aren’t included in the suggestions. They are simple, medical anatomical terms! Indeed, if you type “vagin” into Google, the search suggestions are “vaginitis,” “vaginismus,” and “vaginosis.” Instead of vaginas, we get vaginal diseases. Type “vulv” in and there’s just more of the same.
Not to mention that the search results for “vagina” are abysmal if any real information is desired.