An Illustrated Guide to Mendacity and Folly in the Imperium Americanum by Gregorius alexandrinus, pictor mendacrium stultorumque (Gregory of Alexandria--painter of liars and idiots)
Political cartoons and social commentary with Fred'n'Bert of the Squirrel News Network, Lafayette Park, Washington, DC Updated MWF weekly, except holidays
Does Google Think That This is an X-rated Porn Site? Or Is there Another Reason For Blocking 90% of my cartoons in SafeSearch?
Background
I've been doing Hail Dubyus! now since August of 2003. I haven't had very much time to do any advertising and frankly, I really don't have the know-how...I'm lousy at self-promotion and most of the websites that tell you how seem to be more about selling someone's services and are geared towards generating sales. I'm not selling anything *confused shrug*. However, my hit counts were going up and up as more people heard about me and, as more and more of my cartoons started hitting Google image search. In fact, it was the best advertisement I had.
Around November of last year (2005), my hits seemed to flatten out. At first, I thought that this was due to two holiday weekends in that month and that my counts would continue to be flat through December-January because of the holiday season and then would begin to rise again in February. In fact, they went seriously downhill during that period (see chart on sitemeter.com), although they did begin to rise again in February like I predicted. Imagine my shock when at the end of March, they began dropping like a rock, continuing to drop throughout April, until my weekly counts were below those of just nine months before.
April 18, 2006
Since Google has been my main source of new traffic, I figured that somehow I'd run afoul of some Google protocols. I wrote them at that time and revamped part of my site to make it more "Google-friendly", removing some of the keyword stuff that might make it look like a spamblog, adding Google Search, providing Google with a sitemap, etc..
Here's that correspondence:
Hi...I've been running a political cartoon weblog on salon.com called HAIL DUBYUS! for almost 3 years now. During that time, I'd slowly built my traffic up to about 600-800 hits/day mostly through Google image searches. Consequently, my Google ranking is an important part of my daily traffic.
In January, I acquired a forwarding address, to which I intend to load my archives and transfer to, but have not had the chance to yet because of some problems my web helper has been having (and I'm a cartoonist not a programmer). Other than that, I've not made any significant changes to the site except for cosmetic changes.
In March, my hit counts stalled and there began a drop in my number which became extreme during April--I'm now about 30% of my former hit counts and
continuing to drop. The reason for this is many fewer referrals from images.google.com.
I'm kind of frantic here. I don't have any idea what I've done wrong. Have I been confused as a spam site? Which I definitely am not. What can I do to correct the situation and keep it corrected in the future? Please help.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
I received this reply:
Hi Greg,
Thank you for your reply. Please be assured that your site is not currently banned or penalized by Google. We understand your concern; however, these changes are consistent with the normal fluctuations outlined in our previous email. As we add new pages and incorporate updates to existing pages, you may see changes in the ranking and inclusion of sites in our index. Because our index changes regularly, it's
possible your site will regain its ranking. In the meantime, we hope that you will review the helpful tips posted on our site.
We're sorry we can't be of further assistance in this matter. The Google Team
Well, that really didn't help much. I was wondering how what was by that time a 50% drop in weekly hits could be considered "consistent with normal fluctuations". My hit counts continued to drop as you have seen and I was wondering what could have possibly caused it.
May 16, 2006
Now I'm a grown boy. I never use SafeSearch on Google Image Search. I've always figured, if there are naked women in my image results, I can handle it (pun intended). So although I knew that 478 of my cartoons show up on Google Image Search, it never occurred to me to see how many appeared under SafeSearch. The answer will surprise you. Only 53 of my cartoons are considered safe enough for children. OK, so I don't draw my cartoons for children. Let's turn on the "moderate" SafeSearch setting and see what shows up. After all, "moderate" is the DEFAULT Google setting, the one you get if you don't modify the search preferences. Surprise, surprise. Only 56 of my cartoons show up under the default SafeSearch setting.
Now, I'll admit, my cartoon is not meant for children. I tried at first to keep it strictly Disney G-rated, but when I saw cartoons in the newspapers around the time of the Ah-nold Fondleator Scandal that showed the he-man squeezing boobies, I decided that my self-imposed censorship was much too stringent. This IS the internet after all, and so I allowed myself the option of going R-rated, but of course, nothing I would consider X-rated. My target audience is VOTERS. They're all over 18. I imagine that politically concerned teenagers will check it out, but if they're concerned with politics, they're probably mature enough to handle cartoon nudity...they'd get much more in an R-rated flick and god knows, teenagers see more R-rated movies than either their parents or theater owners would care to admit. But in that case, I'd say that 95% of my cartoons SHOULD show up under "moderate" SafeSearch settings. But look here at an example of a cartoon that Google thinks is NOT for impressionable minds:
Racy stuff, huh? Whoa! check out that squirrel. Wow, what a tail!
Now, it occurs to me that there are several ways for me to have such poor results under SafeSearch. I do have a few racy pics. No X-rated stuff, but call it R-rated. I wouldn't expect these to show up in the strict SafeSearch results. But the bulk of my material IS G-rated. So I see three possibilities. 1) I've run afoul of the SafeSearch AI filters and I need to move the offensive material to another site. 2) Someone--possibly someone with rightwing politics--has seen my site and complained to Google to get me blocked from SafeSearch. Or 3) Google SafeSearch is a lot more political than it purports to be. Hey, think globally--Google will censor sites in China for democracy. They'll censor for the EU and Israel for neo-Nazi and anti-holocaust sites. Why SHOULDN'T they downgrade sites that are anti-administration in the USA? It only makes sense in terms of global market strategies to tailor your search criteria to local customs, mores, beliefs, politics, etc.. There's only one way to find out.
So I called Google--there's no way to complain about inappropriate SafeSearch results EXCEPT to report Naughty Sites that show up on the supposedly kid-safe pages (keep that in mind). The receptionist (they can't connect you to anyone if you ever call Google) gave me the SECRET PASSWORD to include in my email topic line to show that I wasn't just anyone but I'd actually spoken to someone at Google first. So I wrote the following email:
Dear Google:
I run a political cartoon website, called HAIL DUBYUS! It is located on the salon blog server,
My site is for the greater part what I would call G-rated. Naturally, given the nature of high-interest news items, some of it is what would be considered edgy, or for more mature readers, but none of it is what would be considered pornographic or for strictly adult readers.
Recently my referrals from Google have dropped drastically (Google has been a major source of my traffic) and I have been wracking my brain for the reason why. Imagine my surprise when I tried searching google for my images with SAFE SEARCH enabled and discovered that only 53 of the 478 total images that Google catalogs of mine show up with SAFE SEARCH enabled and only 56 of them show up with "moderate" safe search. Only a handful of my images show any nudity whatsoever, and none of a graphic sexual nature, and yet the majority have been blocked.
How has this happened? What can I do to correct this?
Please respond at your earliest opportunity.
So I wait, and wait, and wait, and no answer, not even an acknowledgment. Time to call Google again, which I do on
May 26, 2006
The receptionist informs me that the previous receptionist gave me the WRONG SECRET PASSWORD. She'd in fact given me the one for the next week. So I resend, adding a few clarifications and the info that I'd been hanging around for over a week so far.
Dear Google:
I run a political cartoon website, called HAIL DUBYUS! It is located on the salon blog server,
My site is for the greater part what I would call G-rated (about 95% G-rated, in fact). Naturally, given the nature of high-interest news items, some of it is what would be considered edgy, or for more mature readers, but none of could be considered pornographic or for strictly adult readers. There is no explicit graphic sex.
Recently my referrals from Google have dropped drastically (Google has been a major source of my traffic) and I have been wracking my brain for the reason why. Imagine my surprise when I tried searching google for my images with SAFE SEARCH enabled and discovered that only 53 of the 478 total images that Google catalogs of mine show up with SAFE SEARCH enabled and only 56 of them show up with "moderate" safe search. Only a handful of my images show any nudity whatsoever, and none of a graphic sexual nature, and yet the majority have been blocked. In fact, to illustrate just how bizarre this blocking of my material is, one of the cartoons being blocked for safesearch consists of two squirrels sitting on a tree branch complaining about snow after a blizzard ...
How has this happened? What can I do to correct this?
Please respond at your earliest opportunity and thank you.
Please note: I originally sent this email on 5/16, but the receptionist had given me the wrong password, so I'm very concerned to have it addressed as soon as possible. Thanks.
I almost immediately get an acknowledgment which is written so vaguely, I have no idea if a human being saw my post.
Hi Greg,
Thank you for your note. We apologize for our delayed response and any
inconvenience this may have caused you.
We are constantly working on improving SafeSearch and expect improvements
to be released in a couple of weeks which should resolve this problem.
If we can assist you further, please let us know.
Regards,
The Google Team
And a few days later (May 31, 2006), a second response that seems to indicate that my letter has at long last reached someone's inbox.
Hi Greg,
Thank you for your note. We have passed your email on to our SafeSearch
team. We appreciate your taking the time to write to us.
Regards,
The Google Team
So that's where we stand. As a person with 100% Eastern European ancestry, I'm a natural paranoid. It seems all too possible for someone of right wing leanings, connections, interests, whatever, to have complained about my site OR for Google to be playing politics. But since I am self-aware enough to recognize my own paranoia, I know that possible does not always equal probable. So this is how I'm proceeding (your average Russkie doesn't take a dump without a plan)--if Google is helpful, I'll assume that scenario 1 is in play. I'll do what they say, and if the bulk of my cartoons reappear under "moderate" SafeSearch conditions, everything will be fine and dandy. But, if Google is not helpful, OR if my cartoons continue to be dropped by the SafeSearch engine, I'll assume that the invisible hand of CENSORSHIP has made its ugly play.
