[Eugene Volokh, March 6, 2008 at 11:31pm] Trackbacks
Disappointment:

Seen in our referrer log: http://www.google.com/search?q=women+sexually+touching+each+other&btnG=Search&hl=en

Boy, that visitor didn't get what he wanted.

CDU (mail) (www):
It's hard to believe you're a first page Google result for that particular search.
3.6.2008 11:42pm
Sean O'Hara (mail) (www):
Whoever typed that is horrible at Google-fu, because none of those results are particularly prurient.
3.6.2008 11:48pm
Ari (mail):
Not unless you have some very uptight "community standards", Sean! ;) Ah Miller v. California...
3.6.2008 11:52pm
TerrencePhilip:
What's really disturbing is that even the Google Image Search results aren't very good with safe search off.

Is Google slipping?
3.6.2008 11:59pm
Bad (mail) (www):
The funny thing is that now your ranking for that question is going to shoot up based on the number of people clicking through that link and then coming right back here through the result.
3.7.2008 12:02am
George Bruce (mail):
I was absolutely delighted to see that psychedelic website. I had no idea that such things still existed. What a hoot. Makes me want to take some kind of mushroom.........
3.7.2008 1:13am
Kazinski:
You're going to have to work on that. You don't have to give up all the legal stuff, but adding some eye candy would liven things up immensely, without losing too many existing readers I'm sure.
3.7.2008 1:30am
The General:
He probably did eventually.
3.7.2008 2:00am
LM (mail):
VC might not be exactly what he's looking for, but further down the page are some serious buzz kills.
3.7.2008 2:23am
Roger Schlafly (www):
You rank even higher on a Yahoo search.
3.7.2008 3:07am
Brian K (mail):
I was about to make a joke regarding the word "lesbians" but then i ran that search myself. since when did google make moderate safe searching on by default?

i'm still not going to hold my breath for claims of conservative censorship though.
3.7.2008 3:51am
Daniel Chapman (mail):
"censorship?"
3.7.2008 7:33am
Dr. Weevil (mail) (www):
Aren't you indulging in deplorable stereotyping, perhaps even downright misogynistic and homophobic bigotry, by not writing "Boy, that visitor didn't get what he or she wanted"? (Not that I think the chances of a she having Googled that particular phrase are better than 2%.)
3.7.2008 8:19am
Tom952 (mail):
What else have you been typing into Google lately, Professor?
3.7.2008 9:27am
alias:
Perhaps the Googler was looking for a libertarian blog.
3.7.2008 9:45am
Scott Scheule (mail) (www):
I admit I didn't get exactly what I wanted, but don't worry, the next hit was much more fruitful.
3.7.2008 9:47am
Parker Smith (mail) (www):
They just want to get into your briefs...
3.7.2008 9:57am
Smokey:
After clicking on the link, for those interested in academic reasearch I would suggest clicking on "Images" at the top left of the screen.
3.7.2008 10:03am
Ex-Fed (mail) (www):
You could probably do an entertaining weekly feature on the best items in the search engine portion of the traffic log. It's amazing some of the bizarre things people search for. (For a great example presented for maximum comedic effect, Something Awful analyzed the accidentally released AOL search logs and traced the search patterns of individuals by their ID numbers, revealing some frightening sequences).

The fun part is that it's self-perpetuating -- if you mention the bizarre search string, that triggers more hits based on that search string. In that manner my blog was getting about 50 hits a day for people searching for information about whether Huckabee is a Freemason, not because I had ever discussed Huckabee being a Freemason, but because I had noted that people had reached my blog by searching for whether Huckabee is a Freemason.
3.7.2008 10:21am
Not Surfing for Porn at Work:
For those of you at work: the search string appeared in my google toolbar in my browser after I clicked the link. Anyone looking at my computer would assume I had typed in the search. I deleted it. Just FYI.
3.7.2008 10:37am
rc:
Parker Smith: "They just want to get into your briefs..."

Haha! Parker Smith +1
3.7.2008 10:56am
Hoosier:
Odd.

But my example may be even more surprising. For health reasons, I wanted to look up "mayo" and its ingredients.

If you type "mayonaise" (I spelled it wrong when typing it in) it gives you three pictures, which, left to right, are: A sandwich with mayo; a jar of Hellman's; the naked torso of a young woman.

This last one was, as you can guess, a surprise. The fact that I had Google set to "modertae safe search" made it almost inexplicable.

I then tried spelling "mayonnaise" correctly. Same result.

Is this just a function of their algorithms? And, if so, why the statistical connection between mayo and nude women?

Wait. Nevermind. I bet I don't wanna know.
3.7.2008 11:00am
M. Gross (mail):
That reminds me, I should probably configure Refcontrol to list something appropriately hilarious as my Referrer.
3.7.2008 12:11pm
SuaTremendita (mail):
The post by "Niagra" on what women want was worth a quick read. Posts such as this remind me how lucky my wife is to have me.
3.7.2008 12:13pm
Eric Muller (www):
True, Eugene, true.

On the other hand, the visitor searching for "men+intellectually+touching+themselves" finds here (and, I hasten to add, on my own blog) a virtual cornucopia.
3.7.2008 12:24pm
Clayton E. Cramer (mail) (www):
The evening of 9/11, I noticed that a Google referral string that led to my website included words that suggested that someone was looking to make poisons. That was just too weird, so I forwarded the information to the FBI. (The IP address turned out to be a University of Chicago library computer.)
3.7.2008 12:43pm
Humphrey Bogus (mail):
Huh, I tried accessing volokh.com yesterday from a shared access point (at a restaurant that provides wi-fi through one of those airport-like services), and it was blocked. Now I guess I know why.
3.7.2008 2:21pm
Toby:
Some of you might monder that
1) Google customizes your search returns based upon what you hhave searched and clicked through on in the past.
2) After a dozen searches on a new computer, chances are that Google is beginning to constrain searches based upon who it thinks you may be.
3.7.2008 3:31pm
Hoosier:
Toby--That still doesn't explain the mayonnaise. I'm pretty sure that Google didn't have a list of naughty websites and list of pro-sandwich websites in my history to work from.
3.7.2008 3:48pm
CDU (mail) (www):
Is this just a function of their algorithms? And, if so, why the statistical connection between mayo and nude women?


Google image search doesn't actually look at images, it looks at the surrounding text. Whoever put up that picture tiled it "Mayonaise 2". That's the connection. Google has no idea whether or not the image is a sandwich or a naked woman, they just know it's associated with the word "mayonaise"
3.7.2008 4:20pm
Oren:
Wow, you guys are further out of touch than I imagined. Not for the squeamish/prudish: link .
3.7.2008 6:01pm
Curmudgeonly Ex-Clerk (www):
Though this no doubt does not explain the Google result, your searcher may not have gone away completely disappointed. I note that as I read this post, the ever classy Pajamas Media Network Blogger advertising displayed on the Volokh Conspiracy is for what purports to be the "#1 Site for College Girls" and does in fact feature brief video clips of women sexually touching one another (or on the cusp of doing so).
3.7.2008 6:02pm
Oren:
CeC, good find. I didn't realize that.
3.7.2008 6:11pm
Zubon (mail) (www):
Looking through our search terms is a monthly tradition at our site. The only ones I really count are World of Warcraft-related porn searches. 91 different ones in the last month I checked.
3.7.2008 7:11pm
Mandatory Vacation (mail) (www):
I needed a picture of the Hamburg shopping district for a German class report, so I did a google image search for "hamburg einkaufen" (shopping). The third image up was this (NSFW, disturbing on its own merits).
3.8.2008 12:14am
Mandatory Vacation (mail) (www):
Damn, looks like the picture only exists in google cache now. Ignore that link and look at this.
3.8.2008 12:17am