The sex blogging blogosphere is in a swirl because that darn Google algo’s recalibrated something–and it looks like a batch of sex-positive blogs are suddenly missing in action;
Some of the coverage:
- Google “disappears” sex blogs? Something’s broken. (Boingboing)
- Will Google Kill Comstock Films? (Tony Comstock’s Blog)
- google is broken (violet blue)
- Chronicle Write disappears in porn clampdown (Valleywag)
- some thing less pretty and more dumb (pretty dumb things)
I checked this out myself and what’s happening is odd–Pretty dumb things doesn’t come up on page 1 of the (non-safe) search, but lots of sites that reference it do, and when I turned on the safe search filter, PDT didn’t come up at all. Tony Comstock says that Google has dropped the most basic referrals, like comstock films?, www.comstockfilms.com, and “tony comstock”.
Update: I just checked and the Comstock problem seems to no longer be valid–and violet blue comes right up at the top of her Google search, but Chelsea Girl is still MIA.–And some folks say this is part of some deep parsing of data Google has going on, to what end, unknown.
Hello Susan!
Thankfully we have our name back, which is especially important because some of our rest martketing comes from mentions in magazines that often don’t even print our website address.
But my deep suspicion is that google is ranking colloquial sex language very high in a spam-blog penalty scheme. That’s the only way I can think of that blogs like mine or PTD could ever be mistake for spam-blogs.
If true, that’s going to make writing about sex the way that people actually have it, using the language that people actually use to talk about it very hard.
Hi there –
As of early this morning, PDT is back. Thank you for helping get the word out. All the best for the New Year!
xoxo
Viviane
Tony, see my blog post on
“Google, Sex, Blogs, and really determining Pornography vs. Erotica”
for my theory.
Susan,
Thanks so much for posting on this issue. Fortunately, because of people like you, my pretty dumb things are now fully googleable again.
kissykiss,
chelsea girl