Is Google Pushing a Republican Agenda and Burying Internet Porn
November 22nd, 2006 by Michael Gray in Google, SEOIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Recently there have been a number of stories alleging that Google is in bed with CIA and feeding them data. Having just returned from an internet conference and speaking with some Goolge Engineers I feel pretty confident that Google’s response that they are not involved with the CIA is true, however there is a growing body of evidence that Google is taking subtle steps make porn on the internet a little bit harder to find.
First up comes a report from the front lines in the adult webmaster community over at SEOBlackhat. In a post entitled Dude, Where’s My Porn? the site owner details how the top 10 results for several keywords and that should be serving up adult content aren’t (screen shots 1,2,3,4,5, 6 NSFW). The results for those searches contain the odd piece of adult content here and there, but generally you have to go to the second of third page to get the relevant results the searcher was probably looking for.
Next up comes the story of Google putting up an interstitial page when people visited the site Pussy.org. While the intermediate page has since been removed the site does seem to be under some sort of rating penalty dropping from the #1 spot it held for several years down to #10 in an oddly coincidental time frame.
Finally comes some first hand experience, over the weekend I decided to try out a new ad the product was a “Girls Gone Wild” DVD. Monday morning I got an email telling me my ad was disapproved, the reason was “teen porn concepts”.
However doing a quick check on Google for [girls gone wild dvd] shows other advertisers selling the exact same product who didn’t get disapproved, is Google grandfathering existing advertisers, and preventing new advertisers from entering the market shrinking the advertiser base for porn related products?
Since we’ve already established that Google isn’t giving the data to the CIA what’s would Google’s motivation be for promoting a republican agenda? The answer is two words user data. Google is currently negotiating putting up free wi-fi in San Francisco. However the details of what’s exactly being done are a bit fuzzy, and even the city official in charge of the plan doesn’t have good handle on the scope of the project. How does giving away free wifi in San Francisco tie in with Internet Porn and User Data?
In the most recent elections Democrats won many races across the country, and they are much more sympathetic to plans like net neutrality and free wifi. This leaves the misguided republicans, some of whom believe the internet is a series of tubes. Google could gain favor with these Republicans by cracking down on issues like internet porn. In 2005 bill 2257 took a huge toll on the online adult industry and the recent passage of the port security bill had anti-online gaming provisions tacked on at the last minute to placate Republicans. So would Google be willing to sacrifice it’s ethics to grow it’s business, I think the example set by how Goolge dealt with China serves as a good example.
Before I go any further I would like to clarify my position, I’ve met a few Google employees over the years. Each and every one of them has been intelligent, highly ethical, very helpful and in many cases going above and beyond the cause trying to do the right thing. However I worked in a corporate environment for over 10 years, and in that time that company made some decisions I thought were bad and in some cases slightly unethical. Sure I could have walked away and quit, but I had a family, mortgage and two kids to support, and I understand sometimes you have to tow the line and suck it up, even though you don’t agree.
So is Google really that interested in user data that they would be willing to give away free wifi in order to get it, I think so. Looking at the Google Patent from 2005 we can see numerous mentions of using actual user data in ranking algorithms
36. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more types of history data includes information relating to user behavior associated with documents; and wherein the generating a score includes: determining user behavior associated with the document, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on the user behavior associated with the document.
37. The method of claim 36, wherein the user behavior relates to at least one of a number of times that the document is selected within a set of search results and an amount of time that one or more users spend accessing the document.
Currently they are getting a lot of user data from the Google Toolbar, SERP click tracking, Google Reader, Google Analytics, Adsense, Adwords, and a few other sources. However getting the full data stream for a large amount of users in a Metropolitan area has got to look very attractive to a company who has a strong desire to data mine at any opportunity it can get. Would they be willing to bury some internet porn to satisfy Republican interests and grease the wheels of progress and get their free wi-fi data mining mission underway? I can’t say for sure but it does look more than a little fishy to me.
Sphere It
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:24 am
Well it is hard to guess what’s going on google’s mind. You can never be sure of their strategies, that’s for sure. They always come up with some new concepts (algorithms) and keep people guessing.
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:00 am
Republican agenda? You’ve got to be kidding me man!
I think it was the luck of the draw for you getting disapproved. Maybe if you try to push “Guys Gone Wild” things would be different.
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:00 am
I’m currently at work so I won’t do any NSFW searches but the article at seoblackhat.com is interesting.
I don’t believe google has any political agenda at all.
It almost sound like they have enabled SafeSearch as a default.
It will be interesting to see if Mr. Cutts chimes in. I seem to remember that he was on the SafeSearch development team.
In the adult world a PR5 was about the best you would see. There is also heavy interlinked with non-trusted sites and bad neighborhoods.
Maybe this is allowing the “trusted sites” to rise to the top.
Adult sites do not rely as heavily on SERPS as mainstream. In adult it’s all about traffic management through blind links, topsites, TGP’s and creating and much garbage as possible to keep submitting to TGP’s and link lists.
I almost can’t wait to get home and do some research with google image search to see how the results look there.(purely as an academic study)
November 22nd, 2006 at 12:08 pm
If you spend any time at some of the conservative blogs, you’d hear how they think GOOG is in bed with the Left.
My guess is they are wise enough not to align themselves too much with either party.
November 22nd, 2006 at 12:24 pm
“There is also heavy interlinked with non-trusted sites and bad neighborhoods.”
That’s it, an algorithmic devaluation. If you want to play in Google you have to play by their rules?
Google does have the power to do all of the above but maintaining their culture is a #1 goal at Google I am pretty sure. If it is not (LISTEN UP GOOGLE to people like graywolf) you are open to corruption that the world has not seen before. Keep an eye in your executives!
Please leave republicans out of it.
Got to go back to hammering a few doors to make sure they are locked, I enjoy people who keep search engines honest, great post dude! ;-o
November 22nd, 2006 at 1:37 pm
SeoRookie, just last week I talked to Michael in person, and he admitted that he didn’t mind hoax marketing (aka lying) in order to slow Google down debunking the false claims. You can read my comment about exactly that (which I did before this post) over here:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/2006-pubcon-in-vegas-wednesday/#comment-89955
Given that Michael just *told me* he would say stuff like this, I don’t want to get baited into responding in more depth to hoax marketing. I’ll just take one example: he mentions that Google showed an interstitial to people going to pussy.org. Is it more likely that that was because of a Republican, anti-porn agenda, or that it was because people visiting pussy.org were getting malware installed on their machines? Given that the interstitial was a malware warning, the correct answer is #2. See
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08/google_to_warn_of_badware_site.html
for more details about how we warn users about sites that may potentially result in malware on their machine.
So yes, I consider this entire theory bogus. No offense meant to Michael, who is just doing what he said he would do when he said he didn’t mind hoax marketing.
November 22nd, 2006 at 2:10 pm
As soon as I saw the title I just about fell out of my chair laughing. The article reads like a segment from the Colbert Report(or diggbait from SEO Blackhat). Pure truthiness. In fact, I agree with Michael. Google is pushing an anti-porn neo-conservative Republican facist dictatorship that is opressing the masses agenda. How do I know this? I asked my gut and my gut says it’s true. If you don’t believe me, then we can weigh Matt Cutts and if he weighs the same as a pile of porn magazines then he is a Google Republican conspirator and we must burn him. We shall use Graywolf’s largest scales!
November 22nd, 2006 at 3:50 pm
Okay, normally when a question is used as a title, it is imperative to make sure that the answer the readers forms in their mind is yes. Get them saying yes, keep them saying yes, and they will say yes when you ask for their credit card.
Google pushing a Republican agenda was just so far-fetched that I had to read more. Good job Michael. As for the veracity of the idea… Well, I’m not buying it.
Here’s hoping some watery tart lugs a scimitar in your general direction. So is Matt’s favorite color blue? No, I mean red…
November 22nd, 2006 at 7:01 pm
>watery tart lugs a scimitar in your general direction
Ah one of my absolute favorite movies!!
November 22nd, 2006 at 8:54 pm
They have had that “Teen Porn Concepts” rule in effect for a while… there are lots of new “rules” they have implemented to eliminate some areas of porn. Usually it takes some extra work and a few emails or phone calls to get your site approved.
Here are some we get all the time
-> Content: At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain “teen porn concepts”, “teen porn concepts”, “teen porn concepts”, “teen porn concepts”. As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site.
-> Content: At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain “non consensual sex acts”, “non consensual sex acts”. As noted in our advertising terms and conditions, we reserve the right to exercise editorial discretion when it comes to the advertising we accept on our site.
In addition to those two I have had to jump through hoops to get a URL with the word “fuck” in it approved. A process that took about 4 days.
The thing I find the strangest is that the 2257 documents on a site should be enough for google to know that when you say “teen” you mean legal 18/19 vs illigal underage… that was the whole purpose of the documents I thought. Now teen and girl are both words we do not use on our sites. Switched to young ladies, or young women… pretty absurd.
My opinion is let them keep booting advertisers, as it leaves more opportunity for us with patience (c:
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:58 pm
It’s clever of you to recognize that if Google is trying to get influence in San Francisco it would be smart for them to get in bed with the Republicans.
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:28 pm
i got one answer to that…
h**p://www.booble.com
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:46 pm
Why doesn’t someone build a better porn engine, then Google can just cut all strings with it.
About the only thing I agree on in this post is the need for Google to keep itself in check.
November 23rd, 2006 at 3:09 am
I also tried promoting that GGW DVD, and my campaign was disapproved. I emailed adwords and he said it was teen porn and that was the end of it. I have been in a similar situation with other campaigns as well, yet I see so many sites literally advertising porn content. Go figure..
November 23rd, 2006 at 4:15 am
Cracking down on porn isn’t an inherent “Republican”, “right-wing”, or “conservative” issue, and vice versa. It’s more an issue of social conservatism, or, in the specific case of the Bush administration and the GOP leadership, those who pander to social conservatives simply to gain political power.
November 23rd, 2006 at 10:51 am
Michael - I do believe you are raising hell for the purpose of linkbaiting…
Nice way of going about it - drag Google, politics and pr0n into the same post, and who could resist? Especially if it is not true, and therefore hotly debatable…
November 30th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Looks like they are a little more friendly to Republicans to me. This article just came out talking about how Eric Schmidt is trying to get them to use the Internet to win the elections next time:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-11-30T045441Z_01_NBT413539_RTRUKOC_0_US-GOOGLE-POLITICS.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2
May 30th, 2007 at 6:22 am
“Monday morning I got an email telling me my ad was disapproved, the reason was “teen porn concepts”.”
Google reviewers, first of all, are inconsistent. One reviewer told me an ad was acceptable. 2 minutes later, some other Googler disapproves the same ad for “teen porn concepts.”
While words like “barely legal” is not acceptable, similar terms that imply the same thing (e.g. “18 legal teen porn”) are acceptable, which doesn’t make sense. One disapproved ad promoting a 19 year old solo girl site can be approved by a different reviewer 2 months later.
Finally, I had a landing page that rotated images of different DVDs on refresh. Another affiliate promoting the same landing page had his ad approved while my ad was approved then disapproved due to teen-related DVDs displaying on refresh. If my landing page is disapproved, then why is the other affiliate’s ad promoting the same landing page still running?
Another ad promoting standard porn was disapproved for promoting “hacking.” I said what? Googler later emailed back to tell me it was a mistake.
Bottom line: Some Googlers disapprove porn ads if the participants look underage. Some Googlers disapprove if the participants are teen (even if they are 18 and over). The reason for Google’s teen porn concept policy is to prevent people from promoting child porn. The fact that Google accepts text like “18 legal teen porn” is an indication of that. But some reviewers who are less versed in the adult industry make the mistake of thinking anything with youngish looking chicks violate Google’s teen porn concept policy.
That basically means inconsistent review results depending on who reviews your ad. And keep in mind, an ad goes through a re-review every time you add a new keyword, add an ad variation, etc. Any time during that process, an ad that was running fine and making money for the last 3 years can suddenly be disapproved.