By: Rebecca Kelley
Overture Data Filtering
Analytics
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
While working on a project, I came across some interesting data (or, quite frankly, lack of). Overture comes up with no search numbers for rape; instead, a lonely-looking "No suggestions for rape" message is all that appears. I tried getting search numbers for statutory rape and date rape, but the same message popped up. What's the deal, Overture? Am I to believe that nobody searches for information on that sort of thing nowadays? Is there some sort of conspiracy cover up afoot here?
It seems they should at least have a public service announcement or allow rape crisis centers to display advertisements on there.
It would also be interesting if they released certain search terms for public interest broken down by location. There are privacy implications of course, but what if they could show areas where more people are looking for help on things like domestic abuse, rape, etc. It might help give another picture into a world which is often not easy to identify since victims do not want to come forward for fear of reprisals.
It looks like Google has similar standards -- no ads come up on a search for rape, but I get a couple for sodomy. I'm sure both engines have lists of banned words for PPC, but I don't know why they'd leave out such obvious ones.
Results pop up for sodomy, assault, molestation, and other similar terms, but there are no results for pedophile, child porn, child pornography, kid porn, kiddie porn, pedophilia, bestiality, animal porn, or animal pornography. Still, I wonder why rape is one of the "taboo" terms. It should be on par with sodomy, which generates results.
you're going to have the feds at your door by tomorrow :)
Awwww, crap. My boss made me do it!
You should check to see if there are other searches that are similarly edited. I suspect they may simply have a content filter for certain terms (or, they may not allow companies to bid on that word - also likely).