I was looking for an online Latin translator a bit ago in google. I searched for what I thought would pull up some nice, innocuous sites. “English to Latin translator” seems innocuous enough, right? Well, every 3rd or 4th page has the exact phrase in it couched with either the word porn, fetish, or some other sexual term. :rolleyes: WTF? I can see this thread being about how much porn comes out of seemingly innocent word searches, but all are welcome to share their weird google search horror stories.
Actually my story just happened to me about 15 minutes ago. For kicks and giggles I googled my own name. (I’m not in the habit of that; just thought I’d try it once). First, you have to understand that I have a very common name, akin to “Jane Doe.” I’m that common… really.
I scrolled through several pages with references to my name. There were some legitamate ones in there – press releases I have posted on the web, with my name at the top as the contact. Not surprised to see those at all.
Then I found an interview I gave probably two years ago to some PR Guy in NYC. He was placing editorial copy to promote paper from I believe Georgia Pacific, or some other major paper company. For work, I had purchased somehwere in the neighborhood of a million sheets of this stuff. The guy called me, did the interview, then promised to follow up and tell me in what publications he’d managed to get the story placed. I never heard another thing about it and assumed he never managed to get anything published.
Lo and behold, I found it here. Disclaimer: I am NOT that intelligent. This guy made me sound like a paper/printing genius. You’ll find me quoted in the “not-so-fringe benefits” section. (Rather, you’ll see the quotes this guy crafted and attributed to me – I did approve them.)
I thought that was pretty cool… but I never thought I’d turn up like that in a google search. Kinda creepy really.
I was working on an annotated edition of Black Beauty (and you can probably already see where this is going). A lot of the book is about the mistreatment of horses, and I was researching its influence on the passing of humanitarian laws. So I entered into Google, “Black Beauty, whips.” I was at work at the time, too. It honestly hadn’t occurred to me that this search would turn up some startlingly insalubrious sites.
I was doing a Google image search for Jim Morrison (the Pirates infielder, not the late Doors-man). This was at work so I had the content-filter on. One of the pics it returned appeared to be a full-frontal nude of some woman. I skipped that page, of course. 
There’s a Great Debates thread having to do with a bomb-maker being charged with manslaughter and (IIRC) one person claiming that the OED lists “manslaughter” as a verb as well as a noun. I tried Googling to find out if any other sources list it as a verb (cus “manslaughtered” just sounds wrong to me) and wound up getting a bunch of “was Tori Amos really raped?” sites. Weird.
I once tried to find websites with info on amber (the fossilised resin kind). Only results I got, was porn and beer :eek:
(not google though, I’ve just tried it and got some resonable results - it’s a loong time ago - AltaVista perhaps?)
I did a search on “facials” and it came back with all these beauty products - masks and skin cream. Weird!
Some years ago, I was looking for help with some aspect of the computer or one of its components, so I searched for FAQ lists to see if there were any that were relevant. Well naturally this search turned up lots of computer oriented FAQ lists, but it also offered FAQ lists on some other subjects. One of the first results of the search was an FAQ list about the practice of “fisting.” Having no idea what that was, I clicked on it, and when I read the detailed how-to description of the activity, I was not only shocked that people would actually do this, but I totally couldn’t and still can’t believe that people actually get sexual pleasure from this. Now in general, I would enjoy reading about sex or seeing a naked picture as much as the next person, but this fisting business seems to me to be one more indicator of how depraved our society has become.
Going to hell in a handbasket and all that…
It gets worse. (1) There’s nothing special about our society or this time in history, much as we would like to think so. We have the internet, our grandparents had sideshows. (2) Try a search on “shit eating” sometime.
[slight hijack] Mr. Beckwall and I play a game where we combine two words, google them with the quote marks intact, and whoever’s phrase comes back with the least number of sites is the winner. No, zero is not a winning number, it has to be at least one site. But if you combine things like “tapir” and “vomit” (no, I haven’t tried that one yet, so don’t rag on me if the number is big) you might hit on something that only has 1-2 sites listed.
“Porn” is everywhere on google, but that still doesn’t explain the OP’s discovery.
Yeah, we are one rockin’ couple. Playing the google game is our passion. Sob, the honeymoon is over, I guess.
I was trying to find a copy of the “Yours is a very bad hotel” PowerPoint presentation. I googled on “Doubletree Hotel” plus “yours is a very bad hotel”. At the top of the google results was a sponsored link for Doubletree Hotels.
For those who might not know the story, here’s snopes’ version: http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/badhotel.htm
There’s a computer typesetting package called LaTeX… Of course google is not case-sensitive, so…
I was researching the many ways to spell "Mu’ammar al-Quadhafi
", and depending upon which one I was trying… found porn within the first five sites listed. The relationship between the two… we’ll I don’t want to think about it.
I was looking for some information on adhesives, and it turns out GLUE is an acronym for Gay & Lesbian University Educators, as well as Grib Lab Uniform Environment. Not appalling, just not expected.
My uncle once did a search on Dicks Sporting Goods.
He found out that you don’t just type “dicks” into a search engine.
I will never forget… I was a little girl (okay, maybe about 13) I typed in “ferret pics” on askjeeves.com, expecting to come across some cute, cuddly, balls of fur. What I did not expect, however, was to find these cute, cuddly, balls of fur involved in various sex acts! Seeing how inexperienced I was on the Net, I didn’t know what to look for to avoid the less obvious porn sites, and voila, full page on my screen was a nekkid lady with a ferret stuck you-know-where being forced to go God-knows-what!:eek:
Pondering Libertarianism, and having real live debates with them (getting the upper hand on those live debates I have to say) I arrived to the conclusion that libertarianism was really a philosophy for teenagers.
I left that idea on the back of my mind because it sounded too general, then on a recent google search for Libertarian pro and con articles, this article from Jonah Goldberg appeared! Even a conservative can arrive to the same “philosophy for teens” conclusion, independently from a liberal:
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg062201.shtml
I would never think I would see my conclusion expanded so clearly, and by a conservative too!
beckwall: check google fight for a twist!
http://www.googlefight.com/
[hijack] I must disagree. There’s plenty of evidence in your other posts to suggest there’s no dust on you. And none on the writer, either, who writes clearly and entertainingly enough to appeal to people outside the industry. Thanks for sharing the peek at a different world. [/hijack]
Interestingly, ‘tapir’ ‘porn’ brings back 1440 hits (“tapir porn” gets zero).
The first time I’d ever used a search engine, I was joking around with my friend about finding porn and so typed in ‘valueless smut’.
The first hit was a Michael Jackson fan page.