[lbo-talk] Google gets evil

[ravi]

At around 28/12/06 10:13 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
> <http://www.fleshbot.com/sex/google/google-spanks-the-little-guys-224675.php>
> 
> 
> Google Spanks The Little Guys
> 
> Dude, where's our porn? Or our sex blogs? It used to be that if we
> searched for sites like Eros Blog, Pretty Dumb Things, Good Vibes,
> Comstock Films, and (our own) Tiny Nibbles and Violet Blue, we'd get
> each of these sites in the top rankings or on the first page of results
> (SafeSearch off, natural results). But no more: apparently Google has
> been changing its search algorithms over the past few weeks, dropping
> many popular sex blogs and independent adult sites in the process. It
> seems to have coincided with certain changes they made relating to their
> keyword ad program AdSense, though the website for respected sex toy
> retailer Babeland was dropped first (and hard) before the holidays.
> Interestingly, searches for more "mainstream" (and big-business) sex and
> porn-related sites like Adam and Eve or Vivid (and Fleshbot, for that
> matter) turns up the expected results—but now all we get are secondary
> links and spam (splog) results when we search for the indie players on
> the sex blog scene, a development that cuts into their traffic and
> revenue. We just have to wonder, is this all part of Google's new
> abstinence-only program? -V. Blue
>

Sounds very much like the sort of stuff that you (Doug) like to call
"conspiracy theory". ;-) (one of the blackhat type sites had a more
serious analysis, but for now I will go with Google's version of FWIW do
no evil).

	--ravi