Do People Seriously Use Google to Find Porn?
by
on June 24, 2008,
Europeans, who seem to find many of the American idiosyncrasies when it comes to issues about pornography downright antediluvian, can tune out right now unless they'd like a giggle, or to weigh in on how silly Americans can be about things like naked adults.
Here in the States, it's fairly amazing that adult films do such incredible business, considering that few people will admit to ever watching them. There is a booming business that's done under cover of online purchases, black-plastic-wrapped mailings, and anonymity. But Florida, so often the state that makes headlines, is at it again with a trial currently underway over materials that Ray Guhn posted on his web site. The determining factor for declaring the materials obscene? The "contemporary community standards" test, whereby something that's not a problem in one community may be considered obscene in another.
The defense has decided to use Google Trends to prove that what a community says in public isn't what they are clicking on with the shades drawn. While contemporary community standards are often described as "I'll know it when I see it," John Murrell at Good Morning Silicon Valley relabels it for the Web 2.0 era: "Obscenity? I know it when I see it Googled."
Of course, some people online are using this as another example of how our Google searches are being preserved and sorted and compiled in all sorts of ways, even to use in defending an accused pervert. And I've mentioned before that many of us search without ever thinking about our search terms and the picture they paint of us.
Mostly, however, I was amazed that the defense is using Google, of all things, to determine the amount of porn that Pensacola (the closest city they have data for) consumes. How quaint! The judge and jury may or not be swayed by the defense's arguments, but if I were a consultant for the defense, I'd point out that they are going about it all wrong. The search data is just a tiny tip of the iceberg for what the true community standards are.
The prosecution will argue that the number of searches is impossible to reconcile, since one individual may complete hundreds of searches on a topic. What they will fail to take into account, however, is that only the most amateur of porn aficionados will search for their favorite form of online entertainment through a pedestrian site like Google, much less do it through their own IP address. The savvy and experienced connoisseurs will be using anonymizers, sending their searches through a string of servers until they end up in some other country. They also won't use Google to search, relying on known link sites to find what they are looking for, or returning to favorites without even needing to search.
Looking beyond the missing data, however, is the idea that a web site exists in a given community. A web site exists in the larger global community. U.S. residents get up in arms when a country with stricter guidelines of obscenity calls for content removal or blocks a site, but we'll allow community standards to define obscenity depending on the local town ordinances.
U.S. laws (and I would assume many other countries as well) are too far behind the global community that the Internet has created. Both prosecution and defense are relying on outdated methods of determining how people should go about their business. And until the courts catch up with the Web, we'll see more cases based on these assumptions.
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Absolutely they do, but those looking are more likely to be non-US visitors than standard visitors. Here’s one cut from my blog stats showing Google porn seekers: http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s15lgraycom&r=55
“Organizing the world’s information” … all the information.
Absolutely, people use Google to find porn.
Here’s a page from my blog stats, showing a lot of traffic for “porn themes” searches via Google, among other X-rated topics.
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s15lgraycom&r=55
It’s been this way for a few years. However, the geographic split of porn searching via Google is not proportional to site visitors. Scandalously enough, arguably 90+% of my traffic from Middle Eastern countries is via porn-seekers.
Unfortunately, p0rn makes a lot of online money. I’m sure Google “accidentally” makes a killing in p0rn ads…
it doesn’t have to be a porn-like word. just enter any female name and there it is.
Google is the leading search engine for all kind of information.. Don’t you think?
if so, it was funny.
Why do you think I turned off my Google search history? MUA-HA-HA
porn-like word…hrmm..okay..::types in pr0n::…::shock::
I don’t understand why, but having said that turn the safe filter off on Google Image search and type in a porn-like word. You’ll be surprised..and even perhaps shocked.
Was that a j/k Duncan?
Louis, that’s amazing! Honestly, I have never seen (or maybe noticed) any “hot girls” in the search key words for Profy. Maybe that’s because our bloggers do not tag images with such phrases. And maybe that’s the key to quick success in blogging I’m somehow missing?
Most definitely
I see it from both sides.
On stats from websites I look after. “Black Chicks” is no longer one the top 10 search terms on Google directing traffic to the State Library website. After the article regarding the 2003 stage production “Black Chicks Talking” dropped to 15th in the Google search results for that term.
The library has some 80 public access terminals and uses a proxy and a black list to block access to porn sites. During a discussion on libraries and censorship, we had a quick look at the proxy logs. Almost every site blocked was trying to follow the results of search (Google, Google images, yahoo etc.). People are persistent, if you don’t succeed on the 1st 20 attempts, try again. And it was happening way to frequently, multiple times a day from computers in very public area.
@louisgray ahem… so “used ipod” and “redmond, start your copiers” are lexikon of pr0n? :)))
@J.Phil LOL
Sadly,porn is banned by our government system（GFW） .of couse peoples who baned it must be offen use google to fin porn.
Matthew, simply making the point that Google Image Search is a great porn repository….so I’m told
What’s depressing is that some of you SFW blogs probably have more pr0n hits than my NSFW blog.
ahah,tech block is not problem for me,but I am not interested in it now.To find porn in SE,I think Altavista is better than google.
I see search terms for pr0n-like stuff (BTW, does ANYONE have ANY idea how hard it was to type that post and not type pr0n every time?), but obviously, if they are getting to any blog I’M writing, they are way off base.
There are tons and TONS of pr0n search engines, link sites, etc. that I guess I assume only the amateurs are searching on Google. @Chris, try Tor. 
I double-checked with the husband, who agreed that the only thing it was really good for was locating celebrity sex tapes.
My neglected personal blog, Sharp Skirts, gets some very creepy search terms in it. Very creepy. And yes, most are through Google.
try having ’sexy’ in combination with ‘books’ in your blog title. add references to scandinavia (mainly sweden) and you get some rather disturbing searches, nearly all via google (also some highly amusing ones). naive me didn’t think about such things when deciding what to call it.
Cyndy, a good way to find out what they are finding out… is to go to your referral logs. Find a “R or X Rated” search and usually those terms are clickable. If you click it, you’ll see what they see from google.com or images.google.com or whatever. You can do it in the name of research for your blog.
I wonder if they actually find any pr0n that way. We may see the search terms, but obviously they aren’t finding what they are looking for, right? Unless there’s something some of you aren’t telling me.
Cyndy, There’s Youtube for Porn.. infact there’s a lot of them and finding them is not that difficult. Anyone accessing Internet can do that.
Yes people absolutley search google for porn. I have talked to many bloggers who have used words like porn, boobs, and nudity in blog posts just to get their blog post more hits.
ha, cyndy. defending your pr0n search skills.
Cyndy: I’m #2 overall for “porn themes” and #4 for “soft sex video”. That’s what I get for writing about smut in Google Video.
Now Muthu, I didn’t say I didn’t know how to FIND pr0n. I was just saying I couldn’t believe n00bs use Google to try to find it.
@Louis, I’m thinking that if they are far enough down in the results to get anything *I* may have written, they aren’t finding much of interest. 
You know, I thought Louis was joking, but on a lark I tried those searches and lo and behold … he’s serious. I still get some traffic on my Augusten Burroughs review where I mentioned a chapter titled ‘Holy Blow Job’ *shakes head*
I see Google as the good guy, who refused to hand over data to some government organization that one time - surely your searches are guaranteed to be safe from peering eyes with the safety of Google, regardless of how obscene it would be?
As far as blogging is concerned, I’m quite a beginner, but i think i get the gist of it, i wouldn’t resort to using obscene tags just to get page views, I’m more interested in making friends with similar views and hobbies, and seeing people express their opinions about what i say.
In response to the title question, he obvious answer would be affirmative: perhaps the majority of internet users see Google as the internet access portal, and most of the porn websites out there most likely have advertising campaigns through Google, and not for no good reason! If you check out http://www.google.com/trends you can see trends for any keywords, including but not limited to porn!
I want you to have a look at this video..
http://www.meroguff.com/2008/04/internet-is-for-porn.html
You’ll get an idea
1) They could use Alexa and/or Compete and or Google Trends for Websites to show how popular porn is.
2) There’s actually a huge volume of people who search for porn through Google, and the variations are endless. It’s big business that’s constantly growing ;).
You bet they do. Even I do it sometimes just to see whats out there. They even have youtubes for porn like pornhub, redtube, passionpluspleasure.com, etc.
I cannot tell if this blog is meant as a joke. I love how you have built this horribly naive portrait of your average Joe six pack porn viewer who foolishly and clumsily searches for porn on something as pedestrian as Google contra the cloak and dagger world of the professional smut peddler who hides behind anonymous browsing utilities and proxies. How ridiculous. People are jerking off and they want their pornography to be on their monitor in the quickest manner possible. I highly doubt that someone would be willing to “step” behind anonymous browsing utilities and proxies and indulge to view illicit material just to please your little mass media fantasy you’ve bought into solely so they may get a few minutes of pleasure. Have you ever surfed behind a proxy? It can be slow. The mass of slobbering horny people who are not internet savvy far outweigh the this convoluted fantasy of some sophisticated back alley cloak and dagger porn ring. You are just as bad as the mass media.