Last week, Danny Sullivan posted an article at Search Engine Land about the things Google Instant blacklists – the words you can type in the search box that won’t deliver Instant results, mainly due to potential offensiveness. 2600.com has taken things a step further, and is actually compiling what it is calling the Google Blacklist.
"Obviously, all you have to do is hit return to get the results like you always could," the site says. "However, even when your request isn’t blacklisted, you’re not getting the SAME results that you would get by hitting return. Entering "murder" into the search bar gets you suggestions of mostly band names. It’s only after you hit return that you can learn the other sinister meaning of the word. What we have here is a demonstration of how content can be filtered, controlled, and ultimately suppressed. It is indeed a good thing that Google isn’t evil."
The site has called upon users to help it add to the list any words that cause Google Instant to return a blank screen. What can one do with this information? I’m not sure. Maybe give you some ideas of keywords to avoid bidding on? Most of these words are likely only coveted by businesses that would expect such blacklisting treatment (whether they feel this is justified or not).
It is interesting to see which words Google has not blacklisted, compared to those it has. I’m not going to get into all of the specific words here. You can see that at the site if you like. Obviously, it contains offensive language.