7 ms·

Google Blacklist – Words That Google Instant Doesn't Like (2010)

christianbryant 12y ago
It's been a while since I looked at this article. What are your updates to this classic list? And, what terms have you searched for lately that raised suspect results; not blacklisted terms, but terms that you would have expected a whole other set of results for? While many of these are fairly banal and humorous, there are expectations of Google search users when doing serious research on human rights issues or political and big business wrong-doing that they are resulted current and relevant data. Share your anecdotes...
ganzuul 12y ago
Mmmh... Not getting a whole lot of hits on the blacklist. Even when searching for analog stuff.
TorKlingberg 12y ago
Similarly MS Word's spell checker will accept many common swear words, but will not suggest them.
UnoriginalGuy 12y ago
This doesn't really bug me since, frankly, autocomplete is just a convenient extra. But just to use this as a soapbox two things that DO bug me: - Android's keyboards REFUSES to type "rude" (by American standards) words in a super buggy way. There is a setting called "Block offensive words" that as far as I can tell does absolutely nothing (they're blocked regardless). You first need to uncheck that, THEN add them one by one to your custom dictionary, and only then it might SOMETIMES type "fuck" instead of "duck." But be careful to add "Fuck" and "fuck" to your dictionary as these are different bad words (based on capitalisation, as is "FUCK"). - Autocomplete is accepts suggestions without prompting, thus giving you things you never asked for. This presents in two ways, in Chrome you are just given it in the line and have to backspace before enter to clear, and in IE if the mouse happens to be positioned over an autocomplete option even before that option appeared, when you hit enter it will select that (helpful!).
- delecti 12y ago
  I've never had that issue with Swype. It doesn't come with profanity words in the dictionary, but once add it'll readily output them.
- custardcream 12y ago
  Windows phone is wonderful for those of us with a potty mouth. It completes the big ones right up: http://imgur.com/FZv9HHu.png http://imgur.com/FZv9HHu.png Even in swype mode.
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    I kinda like the hilarious autocorrects to "Oh, duck it!" or "I'm stuck in ducking traffic" or "Well duck, that sucks." Words mean whatever I ducking want them to mean.
    - xg15 12y ago
      This is why I never understood the reasoning behind the "sed s///" school of language censoring. Everyone who ... I don't know ... has actual conversations with other human beings should know that language is highly dynamic and context the pendant. Words take on - or lose - meanings all the time when the circumstances require it and all participants know what is talked about. Completely harmless words can morph into horrifying expletives over there course of just a few years if it's necessary - see "slut" or "douche". Forbidding certain combinations of letters does - if it does anything - only quicken that process. I do wonder how man many layers of dilbertesque organization you need for that idea to make sense.
- taralx 12y ago
  The inability to swipe offensive words when the setting is disabled is a bug. I can't give details, but the fix isn't easy and is being worked on.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
iLoch 12y ago
All I got from this is Bill is really into butt stuff. It's not as though Google is actually preventing these topics from being discovered or censoring their existence, but rather Google doesn't want to be an enabler for anyone searching potentially controversial topics. I get it. I think though that they may be overreaching with some terms, though I'm sure it's all automated so those results are censored based on the content people are typically looking for when conducting those searches.
nailer 12y ago
There's a similar list (or was in 2010/11) for Google developed web apps. It's all the obvious things, plus a lot of seemingly non-offensive things which 4chan invented - eg, mudkips, leeroy jenkins, pool is closed, etc.
Mobiu5 12y ago
ball sack, ball kicking, ball gravy. These are the first ones I tried because I thought they looked suspect. Google does return suggestions for these, so not blacklisted. There must be several more false positives in this list if the first ones I tried were wrong. edit: Oh, this was last updated in 2010... nevermind then.
- christianbryant 12y ago
  I noted earlier that this is an older article and I'm curious to hear what the experience today is. Again, a lot of this is lowbrow, but I do hear from time to time anecdotes of what seem to be serious rejections of certain search term combinations, whether it be related to Google product exploit searches, or key stories on hacktivist activities targeted at Google or Google partners. I have yet to experience this myself, and seeing this old article got me curious what is being experience in the here-and-now.
Oblouk 12y ago
A ton of these worked for me.
lotharbot 12y ago
This keeps grandma from accidentally stumbling onto something offensive by mistyping one character. For example, they stop autocompleting on the word cuckoLd at the letter "L". That happens to be the point at which it diverges from the word cuckoo. I know I wouldn't want to be searching for a cuckoo clock, mistype one letter, and suddenly have a bunch of stuff about adultery on my screen (or worse, a bunch of x-rated images). This was probably obsoleted by Safe Search.
- revelation 12y ago
  Google Instant is much more recent than Safe Search.
amelius 12y ago
I wonder if this list can be produced programmatically. I.e., a script that enters words in the search bar, looks at the result when pressing enter, and compares with the instant-search result. Then it could look for phrases of more words, etc. Note: you'd probably need either a lot of time or a botnet to run this script without getting blacklisted :)
DanBC 12y ago
Last time I mentioned this I probably got ad-words and ad-sense mixed up, but a bunch of people offered to help and send bug reports to the right place. Here's an image of me trying to send feedback to adwords and it rejecting my real name: http://imgur.com/HdwxGd7 http://imgur.com/HdwxGd7 I usually think it's funny when this happens, unless it's a hospital delaying blood test results. (The feedback was sorted a few days later so they didn't need my report.)
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Let's hope their search correction mechanisms are better than this. On second thought, never mind.
- surreal 12y ago
  In case you haven't found a way around those ridiculous validations, try adding arbitrary dots ( . ) in the middle of the "offensive" part. Gmail will deliver any dotted version of your own username into your own inbox as normal.
jasonkostempski 12y ago
I Really wish they would add "C String" to that list.
A_COMPUTER 12y ago
If you started typing certain celebrities' names, Instant would inform you that a bunch of people were curious if that celebrity was gay. I haven't seen it do that in a while now, though. I have seen other weirdly suppressed things as well, it kind of concerns me that somebody somewhere is exercising invisible but principled editorial control over these things.
sharkweek 12y ago
The "anal" blacklisting has saved me from many embarrassing moments at work - as I shorthand it all the time to get to Google Analytics
- JamesSwift 12y ago
  I just hope they don't sniff my searches, as I google 'anal' and 'face' most every day.
karmacondon 12y ago
A friend and I share the same first and last name, and for a long time the first instant suggestion for our name was "[name] sex offender" (because of another person with the same first and last). My friend lobbied with google for a long time, and surprisingly they ended up disabling all suggestions for our name. I'm not sure if we were added to the Blacklist or if google has some other mechanism for this situation, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's good to see that google will implement this for non-famous people as well.
Kiro 12y ago
Is this referring to autosuggest or where the search results are shown below as you type?
cyphunk 12y ago
the claims are very misleading and unclear. almost everything returns nothing in google instant. try "horse", "house", "mitch". All return no instant results for me. Perhaps I am missing something but this article appears to be blowing things out of proportion.

It's been a while since I looked at this article. What are your updates to this classic list? And, what terms have you searched for lately that raised suspect results; not blacklisted terms, but terms that you would have expected a whole other set of results for? While many of these are fairly banal and humorous, there are expectations of Google search users when doing serious research on human rights issues or political and big business wrong-doing that they are resulted current and relevant data. Share your anecdotes...

ganzuul 12y ago

Mmmh... Not getting a whole lot of hits on the blacklist. Even when searching for analog stuff.

TorKlingberg 12y ago

Similarly MS Word's spell checker will accept many common swear words, but will not suggest them.

UnoriginalGuy 12y ago

This doesn't really bug me since, frankly, autocomplete is just a convenient extra. But just to use this as a soapbox two things that DO bug me: - Android's keyboards REFUSES to type "rude" (by American standards) words in a super buggy way. There is a setting called "Block offensive words" that as far as I can tell does absolutely nothing (they're blocked regardless). You first need to uncheck that, THEN add them one by one to your custom dictionary, and only then it might SOMETIMES type "fuck" instead of "duck." But be careful to add "Fuck" and "fuck" to your dictionary as these are different bad words (based on capitalisation, as is "FUCK"). - Autocomplete is accepts suggestions without prompting, thus giving you things you never asked for. This presents in two ways, in Chrome you are just given it in the line and have to backspace before enter to clear, and in IE if the mouse happens to be positioned over an autocomplete option even before that option appeared, when you hit enter it will select that (helpful!).

delecti 12y ago
I've never had that issue with Swype. It doesn't come with profanity words in the dictionary, but once add it'll readily output them.
custardcream 12y ago
Windows phone is wonderful for those of us with a potty mouth. It completes the big ones right up: http://imgur.com/FZv9HHu.png http://imgur.com/FZv9HHu.png Even in swype mode.
- nostrademons 12y ago
  I kinda like the hilarious autocorrects to "Oh, duck it!" or "I'm stuck in ducking traffic" or "Well duck, that sucks." Words mean whatever I ducking want them to mean.
  - xg15 12y ago
    This is why I never understood the reasoning behind the "sed s///" school of language censoring. Everyone who ... I don't know ... has actual conversations with other human beings should know that language is highly dynamic and context the pendant. Words take on - or lose - meanings all the time when the circumstances require it and all participants know what is talked about. Completely harmless words can morph into horrifying expletives over there course of just a few years if it's necessary - see "slut" or "douche". Forbidding certain combinations of letters does - if it does anything - only quicken that process. I do wonder how man many layers of dilbertesque organization you need for that idea to make sense.
taralx 12y ago
The inability to swipe offensive words when the setting is disabled is a bug. I can't give details, but the fix isn't easy and is being worked on.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

iLoch 12y ago

All I got from this is Bill is really into butt stuff. It's not as though Google is actually preventing these topics from being discovered or censoring their existence, but rather Google doesn't want to be an enabler for anyone searching potentially controversial topics. I get it. I think though that they may be overreaching with some terms, though I'm sure it's all automated so those results are censored based on the content people are typically looking for when conducting those searches.

nailer 12y ago

There's a similar list (or was in 2010/11) for Google developed web apps. It's all the obvious things, plus a lot of seemingly non-offensive things which 4chan invented - eg, mudkips, leeroy jenkins, pool is closed, etc.

Mobiu5 12y ago

ball sack, ball kicking, ball gravy. These are the first ones I tried because I thought they looked suspect. Google does return suggestions for these, so not blacklisted. There must be several more false positives in this list if the first ones I tried were wrong. edit: Oh, this was last updated in 2010... nevermind then.

christianbryant 12y ago
I noted earlier that this is an older article and I'm curious to hear what the experience today is. Again, a lot of this is lowbrow, but I do hear from time to time anecdotes of what seem to be serious rejections of certain search term combinations, whether it be related to Google product exploit searches, or key stories on hacktivist activities targeted at Google or Google partners. I have yet to experience this myself, and seeing this old article got me curious what is being experience in the here-and-now.

Oblouk 12y ago

A ton of these worked for me.

lotharbot 12y ago

This keeps grandma from accidentally stumbling onto something offensive by mistyping one character. For example, they stop autocompleting on the word cuckoLd at the letter "L". That happens to be the point at which it diverges from the word cuckoo. I know I wouldn't want to be searching for a cuckoo clock, mistype one letter, and suddenly have a bunch of stuff about adultery on my screen (or worse, a bunch of x-rated images). This was probably obsoleted by Safe Search.

revelation 12y ago
Google Instant is much more recent than Safe Search.

amelius 12y ago

I wonder if this list can be produced programmatically. I.e., a script that enters words in the search bar, looks at the result when pressing enter, and compares with the instant-search result. Then it could look for phrases of more words, etc. Note: you'd probably need either a lot of time or a botnet to run this script without getting blacklisted :)

DanBC 12y ago

Last time I mentioned this I probably got ad-words and ad-sense mixed up, but a bunch of people offered to help and send bug reports to the right place. Here's an image of me trying to send feedback to adwords and it rejecting my real name: http://imgur.com/HdwxGd7 http://imgur.com/HdwxGd7 I usually think it's funny when this happens, unless it's a hospital delaying blood test results. (The feedback was sorted a few days later so they didn't need my report.)

jacquesm 12y ago
Let's hope their search correction mechanisms are better than this. On second thought, never mind.
surreal 12y ago
In case you haven't found a way around those ridiculous validations, try adding arbitrary dots ( . ) in the middle of the "offensive" part. Gmail will deliver any dotted version of your own username into your own inbox as normal.

jasonkostempski 12y ago

I Really wish they would add "C String" to that list.

A_COMPUTER 12y ago

If you started typing certain celebrities' names, Instant would inform you that a bunch of people were curious if that celebrity was gay. I haven't seen it do that in a while now, though. I have seen other weirdly suppressed things as well, it kind of concerns me that somebody somewhere is exercising invisible but principled editorial control over these things.

sharkweek 12y ago

The "anal" blacklisting has saved me from many embarrassing moments at work - as I shorthand it all the time to get to Google Analytics

JamesSwift 12y ago
I just hope they don't sniff my searches, as I google 'anal' and 'face' most every day.

karmacondon 12y ago

A friend and I share the same first and last name, and for a long time the first instant suggestion for our name was "[name] sex offender" (because of another person with the same first and last). My friend lobbied with google for a long time, and surprisingly they ended up disabling all suggestions for our name. I'm not sure if we were added to the Blacklist or if google has some other mechanism for this situation, but I was pleasantly surprised. It's good to see that google will implement this for non-famous people as well.

Kiro 12y ago

Is this referring to autosuggest or where the search results are shown below as you type?

cyphunk 12y ago

the claims are very misleading and unclear. almost everything returns nothing in google instant. try "horse", "house", "mitch". All return no instant results for me. Perhaps I am missing something but this article appears to be blowing things out of proportion.