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I tried replicating the searches described in this article, in an incognito window. Most of the searches described inthe article are quite dated; they're also s

I tried replicating the searches described in this article, in an incognito window. Most of the searches described inthe article are quite dated; they're also spread over a significant amount of time. None of the searches I tried came out the way the article described. There was no porn in the results for "black girls"; the third result for "professor style" was a black man, and there was a black woman further down on the first page. Search results for "three white teenagers", "three black teenagers", "professional hairstyles for work" and "unprofessional hairstyles for work" were dominated by links to the very discussion this article is reporting on, which sort of suggests they weren't queries anyone was making to begin with.

SkyMarshal 9y ago
How do you know the algo/search results weren't tweaked after these critiques went public but before your tests?
- ggggtez 9y ago
  Obviously they were. The point the parent post is making is that some of these results are old (like, 10 years old). Of course the algo would have changed, and the article even says that it did. But if no one is searching it, then of course it's just going to be semi-random results. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22three%20black%20teenagers%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22three%2... The top related query? "Three white teenagers". It's obvious almost no one searches this term unless they've read the article.
uncletaco 9y ago
> I have continued to search for black girls on a regular basis, at least once a month, and I can report that Google had changed its algorithm to some degree about five months after that article was published. Under the heading "Where are black girls now?" she notes that she doesn't see porn in the results anymore and after I googled black girls I got similar results to what she shows in the picture directly under that, where the first link is black girls code.
blisterpeanuts 9y ago
The first hit I see on Google is "blackgirlscode.com", a website to encourage black girls to get into technology. It's the fifth hit on DuckDuckGo. The other hits seem rather innocuous. DDG features "hot black girls" at the number 3 spot.

SkyMarshal 9y ago

How do you know the algo/search results weren't tweaked after these critiques went public but before your tests?

ggggtez 9y ago
Obviously they were. The point the parent post is making is that some of these results are old (like, 10 years old). Of course the algo would have changed, and the article even says that it did. But if no one is searching it, then of course it's just going to be semi-random results. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22three%20black%20teenagers%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22three%2... The top related query? "Three white teenagers". It's obvious almost no one searches this term unless they've read the article.

uncletaco 9y ago

> I have continued to search for black girls on a regular basis, at least once a month, and I can report that Google had changed its algorithm to some degree about five months after that article was published. Under the heading "Where are black girls now?" she notes that she doesn't see porn in the results anymore and after I googled black girls I got similar results to what she shows in the picture directly under that, where the first link is black girls code.

blisterpeanuts 9y ago

The first hit I see on Google is "blackgirlscode.com", a website to encourage black girls to get into technology. It's the fifth hit on DuckDuckGo. The other hits seem rather innocuous. DDG features "hot black girls" at the number 3 spot.