CYBERSPACE — French web searchers who intend to find news and information when they type “lesbienne” into Google’s search engine will now receive informative results instead of adult content, thanks to critical tweaks to the company’s search algorithm.
“Lesbienne” is French for “lesbian.” The change has been credited to the operators of the Twitter account @SEO_lesbienne and French news site Numerama.com.
“They noted that only the word ‘lesbian’ linked to sexualized pages, whereas searching for ‘gay’ or ‘trans’ displayed Wikipedia pages, articles and specialized blogs,” writes Pink News.
Numerama also found that Google’s Pride Month banner, intended to celebrate all LGBTQ people, would appear when users typed in such terms as “gay,” “homosexual,” “bisexual,” “transgender” and “queer.” But “lesbian” would display the banner alongside links to pornographic content.
“The tech site noted that the same wasn’t true for English-language searches for ‘lesbian’ on Google.com, which returned informational and news content, like other LGBTQ searches,” reports Metro Weekly.
Numerama, citing "enormous social consequences" to such an apparent oversight, reached out to Pandu Nayak, Google’s VP of search engine quality. He described the results as “terrible.”
“We are aware that there are problems like this, in many languages and different searches. We have developed algorithms to improve this research, one after the other,” Nayak said, adding that searches for “girl” and “teen” will also now default to more safe-for-work results. When a search term can be interpreted in a pornographic context, he said, Google has taken steps to ensure a non-explicit context is prioritized in search results.
Image: SEO_lesbienne via Twitter