If you have ever used Google Instant, you will have noticed that, when you enter something into the search box, it attempts to show you what you are looking for even before you have finished typing. The service predicts a user’s query and modifies the displayed results as more letters are typed. The aim is to save you having to type by hopefully predicting what you are looking for, so you can simply click it. When it was launched, Google described it as “search at the speed of thought.” It is estimated that it could cut up to a third of the time off the average web search and be of help to people who aren’t very good at spelling. Overall, Google’s intentions are good. With saving time, one might argue that the box that drops down with the search suggestions and the displayed results may distract you when you already know what you are typing. But, in helping you to spell, you cannot really fault it, because a spelling mistake can often take you in a whole different direction.

The problem is that Google now has the unachievable task of making sure Google Instant doesn’t offend anybody with its search suggestions and results or, at very least, offends as few people as possible. To tackle this problem, Google has clearly compiled a list of “bad” words, terms and phrases that are likely to offend people and programmed Google Instant to stop helping you if they are typed into the search box. This also extends itself to the names of certain people. This has become known online as “The Google Blacklist”. With some of these “bad” entires, it keeps suggesting alternatives to the last minute as you are typing. With most, however, it cuts off almost immediately, just in case they predict wrong, to reduce the risk of offending you.

Understandable, wouldn’t you agree? People getting offended is one of the great problems of our age. I was at the hospital recently, sat on a chair, awaiting my turn when the doors of ‘Accident and Emergency’ burst open and two men came in, holding up a third man by his arms, whose weak legs trailed behind him. The men were crying out for help. Doctors and nurses came running from every direction. The first doctor to reach them asked: “What’s happened to this man?”

One of the men that was holding him up replied with “He’s been offended, doctor.”

The doctors and nurses looked at one another. “What was it?” the doctor asked.

“Sexual reference,” said the man.

“Are we talking a technical term or a slang term?” asked the doctor looking like the odds had just been stacked against him.

“Slang,” said the man.

“Okay,” said the doctor. “Get him on that bed. We’re going to take him straight to the operating theater. This man could be dying.”

Of course, this never really happened. This is my whole point. Getting offended doesn’t actually do anything to you. It’s nothing you cannot deal with. If seeing a certain word in a Google search causes you that much distress, perhaps you’re not mature enough to be using the internet at all. Perhaps you should lock yourself in a media-free room and never leave it again or have any visitors, who may say something that shakes your little world.

Google will more than likely tell you it is protecting children using the service. It’s obviously chiseled on some ancient set of stones containing the business commandments. “When all else fails, hide behind children.” They need to be protected from certain search suggestions and results, don’t they? Ask yourself this: When you were a child, did you have many conversations about sex with other children, that went far beyond rudimentary sexual knowledge or experience, where you used the correct technical terms for everything? Did you refer to innocent games of ‘doctors and nurses’ as “medical malpractice”? Children have their own language made up of slang words, which change as often as fashion does. Is Google blacklisting the words, terms and phrases they use? No. Most of the ones I know and typed in to the search box to check are still showing suggestions and results.

Why doesn’t ‘sexual abstinence’ blacklist? That could offend somebody. That is a sexual term. Some parent could see that and think “When I tell my child not to do something, it seems to make them want to do it more. It’s almost like reverse psychology. Tell a child ‘don’t’ and the child does. If my child sees sexual abstinence in the search suggestions and results and reads up on it, it could have the reverse effect and make my child become a sex addict.” Typing abstinence into the search box gives you a list of suggestions as long as your finger and countless results.

So, who is Google really trying not to offend? Why are they really attempting to filter content? Surely, if such words cause offense, wouldn’t the offended already know these words and their definitions in order to be offended by them?

In blacklisting technical terms related to sexual identity and gender identity, for example, to avoid offending people, are you not offending those who identify with these terms? In an age where discrimination of such people is in the media almost daily, is that not an astonishing display of bad judgment?

My main problem with ‘The Google Blacklist’ is that it simply does not work, because it is impossible to keep on top of the ever-growing, ever-changing mess of sexual words, terms and phrases. Where slang is concerned, it is near impossible. I know this well. For years, I have run a website which defines such words, terms and phrases for people’s amusement and, even after all this time, I still come across new ones almost daily. I am also a regular contributor to Urban Dictionary and I have personally coined many amusing sexual slang terms that have become popular. This has put me in a very good position to write this book, because, as you can imagine, I know a lot of “bad” words. In checking my personal list, word by word, in Google’s search box, I was surprised to find how many they have missed, which could be deemed ten times more offensive than the ones they have not.

Google also seems to be on a mission to blacklist the names of all adult film studios, their producers, their writers, their directors, their actors and the films they make. With millions of titles coming out each year, so far they have only succeeded in blacklisting the more well-known ones. Every serial killer in history is allowed. People having consensual sex for the entertainment of others isn’t. Which is worse in your mind?

On top of this, it’s at war with the growing trend of “Shock Sites”, which are websites with misleading names that are intended to be offensive or disturbing to their viewers. They usually contain either an image or a short video of weird, over-the-top pornography. These are easily more offensive than anything already mentioned. Google is putting up a good fight, but ultimately losing. People are usually shown Shock Sites by friends, who usually have a webcam set up to capture their reaction. These reactions are then often posted on Youtube and become quite popular. That’s right: you can go on Youtube and watch the reactions of many people, including children, to seeing deformed and mutilated genitals, people eating feces, amputees penetrating their partners sexually with their severed limbs and people having sex with every living creature imaginable. These reaction videos tend to go viral and people then head to Google to search for what the person they saw in the video was looking at. Google helps them find these Shock Sites too. But they can’t really be blamed here as these Shock Sites are a fast way to a lot of internet traffic and they are springing up daily. They are also, as I stated above, given misleading and often innocent titles, which makes them hard to identify. For example, Google blacklists ‘prolapsed rectum’ but gives you a list of search suggestions for ‘Jar Squatter’, which is a Shock Site showing a naked man sitting down on a large jar, so that it enters his anus, only to have his weight cause it to shatter inside him, which naturally sends copious amounts of blood everywhere. Secretly filmed reaction videos of people watching ‘Jar Squatter’ have shown them fainting. It is commonly believed, but not known for sure, that the man died.

This is the main obstacle that Google faces if it is to successfully clean up Google Instant. Things that Google would consider offensive are being given perfectly inoffensive slang names, which could lead to somebody being offended, not so much by the suggestions, but the results that Google gives. Also a lot of writers, musicians and filmmakers are cashing in on the popularity of certain offensive terms and using them as titles for their own work. Thus they are finding a sly way to get back into the search suggestions. I am noticing, in particular, a growing trend for naming songs after blacklisted words. In some cases, Google actually tells you, if they include an “offensive” word, that it is the name of a band, song, etc after the suggestion to cover their asses.

But the one that really bothers me the most is that Google Instant is not showing you the names of well-known, board certified sex educators. Maybe this is why underage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infection rates are on the rise. Shouldn’t it be encouraged, when looking for information on sex, to seek out these qualified individuals? Would it hurt Google to allow their names and perhaps state ‘sex educator’ after them the way they state, film, band, song, etc? This could perhaps lead to a few shocking statistics turning around and going the other way. If people stumble up on one of these sex educators in their web-browsing they may teach them something that may save their lives. If they click one of the serial killers who Google happily suggest, what are people going to learn there?  That Peter Sutcliffe “the Yorkshire Ripper” began his killing spree of women because a girl mocked his sexual performance in front of his friends? That Ed Gein had a belt made from human nipples? That Jeffrey Dahmer believed that by killing his male sexual partners that he could turn them into zombies who would stay with him forever?

This is the trouble with Google, like many other companies that become hugely successful, wealthy and powerful, they develop something of a God-complex and want to start dictating what goes.

It’s like the Spider-Man quote: “With great power comes great responsibility.” Why does this “responsibility” never involve not promoting violence? If the same amount of attention was given to spreading anti-violence and anti-sexual violence messages, that is given to trying to “protect” people from consensual sex, we would live in a more peaceful world. This is why Google Instant doesn’t blacklist nearly half of the amount of words associated with violence that it does words associated with sex. That sounds irresponsible to me. But if people want to look at violence, that is their business. The same way if they want to look at sex.

Google and other search engines have got to stop taking it up on themselves to decide what is or isn’t offensive, because I find that offensive. Who asked them? They need to put the power of decision making back into the individual’s hands and stop playing parent or guardian. Who are they to tell you what is and isn’t offensive? If it is children they are worried about, all they have to do is make it known, with an advertising campaign, that it is impossible to control content on the internet and advise parents of options in protecting their children online. That’s a parent’s job. They could put it on the Google homepage. They could spend some of those lovely Google dollars offering an easy to use parental control filter with a pin number. It’s a waste of time though, because there is more than one way to access the internet. Parents seem more than happy, despite the risks, of allowing their children to have computers in their bedrooms and also phones with internet access. When I used to answer letters on a website’s problem page, if I had been given a dollar for every letter I received from a young person who was asking for advice having had sex with an adult they met using an internet chat-room or one phone app or another, I’d be richer than I am today. A lot richer.

Offense is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual. Where you live, how you were raised, your sex, your age, your race, your religion and many other things all play a part in what is offensive to you. What offends you may not offend me. And Google wants to attempt to eliminate offensiveness? They may as well just eliminate Google Instant altogether, because there will always be somebody offended by anything and everything. Why are Google behaving like a government-controlled public utility? Is this what they aspire to be?

Here is an interesting and somewhat valuable piece of information. It is a fact, proven by countless studies, that ‘Sex’ is the most searched word on search engines worldwide.

So, why are internet search engines, which are supposed to be businesses, trying to hide all words, terms, phrases associated with Mr Popular? Isn’t that a little bit like a fast food establishment doing an annual study to find out which its most popular hamburger is and then removing it from the menu? Does that seem like a good business strategy to you? No. Me neither. So, why are these search engines really behaving in this manner? What’s the agenda?

Why has no entrepreneur, looking to make his fortune through the internet, used this freely given market research? Why has none of them thought “I know. I think I’ll start a sex-positive search engine for people who aren’t easily offended. I’ll also start an advertising platform similar to Google Adsense that gives people an option by clicking a little box whether, as an advertiser they would like their ads displayed on adult websites and as a publisher whether they would be happy for their websites to carry adult ads. Rather than assuming, on an internet where sex is the most searched for term, that they wouldn’t. I’d make BILLIONS!”?

Doesn’t it strike you odd? Like, in a business world where everybody is looking to make money, nobody has seen the potential of using the 100% free valuable market research that are annual lists of the most typed words in search engines to come up with a business model based around the number one word. Instead, they will spend money having you fill out surveys online and having folk stand outside stores with clipboards accosting people doing their shopping. Doesn’t it seem to you that everybody who makes it big in business is following some unwritten, undeclared code of conduct that is anti-sex and makes absolutely no fucking sense to the rest of us?

Do you think Google hasn’t got the money to come up with a three level filter that the individual user has the final say in rather than Google? It’s demonstrated that it can blacklist words. Why not have, for example, a triple X, double X and single X system that a registered user could sign into their account and determine what level they want to browse the internet at in their own settings? Triple X could show every search suggestion no matter how offensive, including sex terms both technical and slang. Double X could keep the technical words, but remove the slang words. X rating could filter the vast majority of “offensive” words. If Google really wants to have a serious attempt at making it work, it could hire an expert on “offensive” words or even introduce a reward system where it pays members of the public to report words and their meanings. It could offer a point system. One could redeem their points for credit to be spent on Google Adsense. But any kind of filter would only work if Google treated people like adults and didn’t insult their intelligence. It has to let people decide what they want to see themselves. Though I think it would be an impossible task to blacklist everything, as I stated earlier, I personally could make Google search suggestions 100 times less offensive in 24 hours. In researching this book, I found over 1000 things they’ve missed.

One thing that I am against is any word that appears in a dictionary being blacklisted under any circumstances, because they are the words that make up our language. Slang words I can take or leave.

And back to Google AdSense. Why haven’t they done what I suggest above? Why doesn’t it offer advertisers of adult-related products and publishers of adult-related websites a platform to find one another? Why isn’t there an opt-in service that can be decided by the individual with a click-tick in a box? Why the zero tolerance? Does it realize that sex is how its customers are made? Sex-negativity just doesn’t make sense to me. It’s the same as PayPal not accepting adult merchants. Why? It’s a private transaction. They just handle the money. What the fuck has it got to do with them what people sell and buy? Why are they similarly being a good little sex-negative company? Who are they taking their orders from? The same people as everybody else seems to be?

This is a personal experience I had with sex-negative advertising about a year ago: I have a Twitter account for my website, which had over 50,000 followers at the time. I registered with a sponsored tweets website that allows you to place an advertisement in your timeline once a day from their list and get paid for clicks that the advertisement gets. This website informed me almost immediately that, under the normal run of things, they wouldn’t allow me to have an account with them because mine is sex-related. However, due to members of their staff being “huge fans” of my account, they were prepared to make an exception for me. They did advise me not to tweet advertisements from their list, but to continually tweet out their own advertisement encouraging people to sign up to their website. I didn’t want to do this because I felt that putting the same advertisement out over and over again would be seen by my followers as spam. I ignored their advise and selected an advertisement from their list for a company that buys people’s old phones from them. They were offering several cents for clicks from within the U.S. The advertisement was tweeted into my timeline and the clicks began. On visiting my account on the sponsored tweets website, it showed my “money earned” total rising. Then, the next day, it suddenly dropped back to zero. I soon received a message in my account inbox saying that the advertiser had rejected my campaign. The reason given was: ‘Adult content in your timeline. Advertisement not relevant to your audience.’ Of course, I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand and cried out “How could I be so stupid? How could I forget that people who like sex don’t use phones and have old ones knocking about for sale?” But the sponsored tweet website had made it easy for the advertiser to do this, informing them that they can reject a campaign and giving them several options for grounds they could do this on. The top one was ‘Adult content’. This phone buying business allowed me to carry their advertisement for 24 hours and get thousands of visitors to their website before they pulled it. This is an example of how businesses are encouraged to be sex-negative.

A new advertising platform could carry a message saying ‘BREAKING NEWS! An exciting development has happened in the world of advertising! Contrary to popular belief until now, we have discovered people who like sex actually DO spend their money buying things. I know. I struggled to believe it too, but it is apparently true. We can now offer you the option to try and increase your business and your profits by allowing you to let websites that cater for these sex-positive people to carry your advertisements. Or you can continue trying to make money from the small amount of asexuals in the world. The choice is yours.’

In fact, I’d like to point out that ‘Asexual’, a person with a lack of sexual attraction to others or a lack of interest in sex in general, doesn’t blacklist either. They want you to learn about asexuality.

I’m not the first person to attempt to compile a Google Blacklist. I have even contributed to other people’s attempts. Ever since Google Blacklist became a pop culture term, people have been trying to compile them.  There are countless websites that have tried and also many forums that have a Google blacklist as a topic where members discuss the subject. Most previous attempts have just been lists of words without definitions. They have also been dependent on people sending them in as they come across them and many have been inaccurate in what they say is blacklisted. Each thing I have listed in this book has been double checked and it is the most accurate Google blacklist you will read. I have also defined each word, term and phrase, so as not to leave you scratching your head wondering what the hell something means.

The subtitle of this book is “Google knows more bad words than you”, but it doesn’t know more “bad” words than me. I feel I am the perfect person to take on this task, because over the years my website has amassed possibly the biggest collection of sex terms, both technical and slang, online. I have also published a previous book where most fetishes and philias were covered. This book concentrates on what Google has spotted, but not what it hasn’t. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.