Google Hates Indie-Porn?

It's a good thing Matt Cutts didn't promise Google wouldn't be making any algorithmic changes just before the holiday season, as is Google's habit. The online purveyors of indie alt-erotica, who are collectively bemoaning the lump of coal Google dropped in their stockings this holiday season, would have cause to climb all over him. In October, Cutts wrote on his blog that he didn't expect any major changes this year, "but I know better than to make a promise." It could be though, that these operators were friendly fire recipients of the newly instituted Violet Blue (NSFW), a self-described sex writer and educator who also writes for the San Francisco Chronicle and Fleshbot (not to be confused with Violet Blue, the adult film star), made the proclamation that "Google is broken." "In recent weeks," writes Blue, "Google has been changing its search algorithms and now many (though not all) sex websites have been dropped -- including this one. It seems to have coincided with changes they made relating to their pay-for-play keyword ad program, AdSense." Blue listed several other sites dropped or demoted that previously ranked very high in the natural search results for certain sketchy keywords, but also for keywords directly related to the sites themselves. Searches for [Comstock Films] weren't bringing up Comstock's website. The same was true for [Tiny Nibbles] and [Violet Blue]. "What's disturbing to me (besides the harm it's done to small businesses over the holidays) is that Google's snafu seems to have dropped more sex-positive businesses (that focus on accurate sex ed) than big-gun, mainstream adult businesses (that sell unsafe sex toys and skanky product)," said Blue. Adding insult to injury, spammy porn sites were replacing them for those specific keywords. Some bounced around a theory that it was an attempt to clean up the search results, but Google's never really SEOBlackHat.com, relevancy should rule over prudishness. I contacted to Google about this issue, typing out the funniest premise to a set of questions to date: "A lot of indie adult erotica bloggers and website operators complained that a change in the Google algorithm, or a new Google policy, or a Google preference for mainstream porn, caused their sites to drop out (or drop down) of the search rankings just before the busy Christmas porn-shopping season." I'm eagerly awaiting a response. More on this if they do. Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark Murdok: