Archive for the ‘google’ Category

Belly Aching: AKA should I worry about Google or should I worry about Ashley & Kisha?

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

A few years ago I went to a very Sad Place to make a movie about some very Bad Things. Along the way I taught myself a Silly Trick.

Not knowing quite what do do with all the anxiety about being in a Sad Place making a movie about Bad Things, I bundled up all my worry and put it in the pit of my stomach.

When I got home from the Bad Place and started editing the movie about the Sad Things, I started to feel sick. The obvious answer was that I must have gotten a Bad Bug in Sad Place. But when no manner of poking or prodding or looking at my shit under a microscope could find any Bad Bugs, my doctor and I were forced to conclude that I was manifesting a classic symptom of stress. I had quite literally worried myself sick.

Knowing my inside were not being devoured by a Bad Bug was a huge relief. I didn’t get better right away, but I did get better. But the Silly Trick stayed. I don’t know where my worry used to live (probably nowhere because I was too stupid to worry,) but now it lives in my belly. Take it from me, this is a stupid place to put your worry.

This morning I’m worried about the fact that some time in the last 36 hours Google’s index of ComstockFilms.com has become seriously weird and our search-related traffic has dropped by 50%.

I’m worried that we may have inadvertently done something to trigger this strange re-indexing and I don’t know how do fix it. But I’m worried that we may have done nothing, and that we are powerless to fix it.

But this mornign I’m also worried about the fact that Ashley & Kisha’s interview is still over an hour long, and I’m already into hard choices about what to keep and what to let go.

If it were Summer, I would take the morning off. I’d go to the beach or the lake, or go fishing, or do something else to take my mind off of things. But it’s not Summer. It’s the dead of Winter, in the middle of a cold snap, and we don’t even have any snow. There’s not much to do, except fret, and worry, and belly ache. Which I am, and it does.

But it’s not all belly aches and belly aching this morning. Here’s a nice passage from Ashley & Kisha’s interview, about how Ashley used a deftly applyied tongue to seduced Kisha, and what it means to be out and in love:

http://www.comstockfilms.com/quicktime/akpreview0207.mov
(approx. 6 minutes, 20megs.)

Still a rough cut, so please, be cut me a little slack on the mix and the edits. I can see how I could cut it down by 30%, but I’m worried about being too heavy-handed. Somes the best thing to do is just give people the time to say their piece.

Google Is Tweaking Sex Searches Again

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007

Since the great Google scare of 2006 I’ve noticed some very good things happening in our search-driven traffic. Specifically traffic generated by the searches ‘tera patrick’ and ‘nina hartley’, and others of dubious Relevance has been slowly drying up as our PageRank on those terms has been steadily falling.

I know people who come to Comstock Films on those search terms aren’t finding what their looking for because Google Analytics shows their page count average is extremely low. So that’s good for them.

It’s good for us too. If someone’s looking for a picture of Tera Patrick or for a review of Nina Hartley’s new book, more than likely they’re just going to be pissed off if they get end up on our site. Angry people don’t buy our DVDs, at least not if they’re angry at us!

Unfortunately, this tweeking has also moved our ranking in more Relevant search terms way way down. Of course I think we should be at the very very top of the search ‘real sex’, but my own biases aside, this morning the returns for the ‘real sex’ search look goofy. Should Comstock Films be utterly and completely outranked by a book about chastity, or a YouTube clip of turtles fucking, or article about cybersex? I hope not! Overnight we’ve dropped precipitously in other searches that traditionally work well for us too.

If it sounds like I’m sending up a flair, well hell yes I am! Propane is nearly $3/gallon, and this cold snap has us burning it at a prodigeous rate. Hey Google! Got an ETA on when this latest tweek will sort itself out? It’s not supposed to get above freezing for another week!

Update

Since the above post, I took a look at the Google index for ComstockFilms.com, http://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.comstockfilms.com&hl=en, and noticed some odd things.

For starters, neither index.html or main.html are anywhere near the top, not first page, not fifth page. In fact, Peggy’s blog is number one, which is nice for her, except she’s not the most active blogger in the world. It’s certainly not our most important page. (At least now I have an explanation for why last week we suddenly started getting all those visits on the search ‘ovusoft blog’.)

No less odd is seeing casting.html at #6, a page that hasn’t been active in two years. No reason that should be ranked so high. None of the archive pages from the old blog should be there either. On the fear those old pages may have been giving us a duplicate content ding, we excluded them from being indexed in our robot.txt six weeks ago, and the bot’s been by for a visit three times since then.

It looks to me like a hiccup in the Googleverse, which is actually a relief. Better a bug that gets fixed, than a re-ranking that could turn our world upside-down. But I’m reminded of the old phrase, “when America gets a cold, the world gets pneumonia”. When Google has a “bad hair day”, little guys like Comstock Films end up with a bad hair cut!

Fun with the Adwords ‘Romantic Erotica’ and ‘Erotic Romance’

Thursday, January 4th, 2007

Okay, so I can’t get ‘romantica’, so I thought I’d try ‘romantic erotica’ and ‘erotic romance.’ Here’s what the dictionary says about these words:

Erotic: 1: of, relating to, or tending to arouse sexual love or desire
2: strongly marked or affected by sexual desire

Romance 1: A feeling of excitement or mystery associated with love.
2: Love, especially when sentiment or idealized.

Sounds like a good match for Comstock Films, no? Looks pretty Relevent right? Not according to the Googlebot:

This keyword has a low Quality Score, so the minimum bid exceeds your current maximum cost-per-click (CPC).

What does this mean?
Each keyword is given a Quality Score based on the relevance of your keyword, ad text, and landing page. If your keyword quality is low, the minimum CPC bid required to show your ad for that keyword will be high. Conversely, high quality keywords have lower minimum CPC bids.

If the minimum CPC bid for a keyword is greater than your maximum CPC bid, your keyword becomes inactive and your ads stop showing for that term. Learn more about monitoring your account performance.

Here’s a site that seems to have a better Quality Score for ‘erotic romance’ than Comstock Films. The Googlebot does think we’d be a good match for ‘cum guzzling sluts.’ Says we’d get a low CPC on that one. Thanks, but we’ll pass.

You know what I think the problem is? I think the Googlebot needs to get laid!

Back to the drawing board…

P.S. It looks like Google is serving anti-porn advertisements onto Violet Blue’s San Francisco Chronical Column. And here’s another site advertising using the Adword keyword ‘erotic romance’ that apparently has a higher Quality Score than Comstock Films. I think the Googlebot is conflicted about sex!

Google Responds to Romantica

Thursday, January 4th, 2007

Hello Tony,

Thank you for your email. I’ve reviewed your account and found that your website, www.comstockfilms.com, contains material we consider to be sexually explicit. To help ensure that all ads reach their target audiences, we’ll only show adult ads alongside search results that contain more than a certain amount of adult sexual material.

For example, your ad may not appear when a user searches for your keyword ‘romantica.’ Search results for this keyword are unlikely to contain sufficient adult content to show your ad. You may consider using this keyword in combination with a more sexually explicit phrase, such as ‘XXX.’

Please note that keywords are evaluated globally to determine if they are sufficiently adult. For this reason, a keyword that may seem adult-orientated in your language or country may still not trigger any adult ads if global search results for that keyword are unlikely to contain sufficient adult content.

We recommend you use specific keywords that are relevant to your targeted audience. Well-targeted keywords can help you reach your intended audience and maintain the relevance of Google search results and advertisements for our users. To edit your keyword list, please follow the steps listed at https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6271&hl=en_US.[emphasis mine]

In addition, Google doesn’t permit ads labeled ‘Non-Family Safe’ or ‘Adult’ to appear to users who have activated their Safe-Search filter. Please make sure your Safe-Search filter isn’t activated, and try searching Google again. To check your Safe-Search filter preference, follow the steps listed at https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=40905&hl=en_US.

Tip: Use the Ads Diagnostic Tool to see whether your ad is appearing on the first page of search results and to identify why a particular ad or group of ads may not be showing. On the Keywords tab of your ad group details page, point your mouse at the magnifying glass icon next to any keyword to display a help bubble with information about your keyword. You can also access the tool at any time via the ‘Tools’ link on the ‘Campaign Management’ tab.

If you have additional questions, please visit our Help Center at https://adwords.google.com/support to find answers to many frequently asked questions. Or, try our Learning Center at http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/ for self-paced lessons that cover the scope of AdWords.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

Sincerely,

Ram Balasubramania
The Google AdWords Team

Okay, fair enough.

While it’s true that some of the top top returns for ‘romantica’ are concerned with cock-sucking, butt-fucking, ass-eating, and orgies (all in the context of a loving, man/woman, monogamous relationship, you understand,) but if you keep clicking, you’ll find a lot of returns for hotels, lingerie, bridalwear; which are all things that go quite nicely with cock-sucking, butt-fucking, ass-eating, and orgies, but not in and of themselves sexually explicit.

Now the strange part.

As of 7:44AM, Google’s Adwords is showing our ad as active on the search ‘romantica.’

Squeaky wheel gets the grease? Algorithym refinement? Lots of Ellora’s Cave fans inside the High House of Search? I don’t care. Comstock Films is a by hook or by crook operation!

Update 12:53PM

We’re back where we started. No advertising for Comstock Films on the keyword ‘romantica’. The googlebot is fickle!

Google Fails Because Google Doesn’t Know What “Romantica” Is.

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

This morning I decided I didn’t know enough about this whole Adword thing, so I decided would by one of Google’s Adwords, and the word I choose was romantica

For those of you who don’t already know, romantica is a sub-genre of romance that places a heavy emphasis on sex and arrousing the reader. My friend Lauren Dane calls herself a romantica author. This is what Ellora’s Cave has to say about it:

Romantica® is the name for the line of erotic romance novels published by Ellora’s Cave Publishing. Erotic romance is defined by us as: any work of literature that is both romantic and sexually explicit in nature. Within this genre, a man and a woman develop “in love” feelings for one another that culminate in a monogamous relationship.*

In a piece of Ellora’s Cave Romantica® literature, sexual language is typically expressed in frank adult terms, rather than couched in flowery phrases. In other words, rather than describing lust in a woman’s body as “a whirlwind of electricity that jolted through her love valley” as is generally found in mainstream romance novels, an author of Romantica™ might say, “intense desire coursed through her body, making her wet with arousal.” (E-rated and above titles typically use much more graphic language than that.)

Romantica® doesn’t begin from the premise that women’s sexual experiences are dirty and therefore in need of being perfumed up by flowery phrases. The premise of Romantica™ is that women’s sexual experiences are legitimate, positive, and beautiful.

(*I’m not quite sure how the man/woman/monogamy part works with EC’s Gay & Lesbian themed titles or their Menage a Trios or More themed titles.)

Romantica is popular with women, and does a huge trade in e-books. E-books are a handy way to buy and read your smut because e-book readers are secure and portable. You can keep in e-book reader in your purse, and just to make sure your kids or husband doesn’t get nosey, you can password protect it. And a good thing too. Romantica books get pretty saucy. Here’s Ellora’s Cave’s (the best known and largest publisher of romantica) trademarked SEX rating system:

S – ENSUOUS
E – ROTIC
X - TREME

Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica® reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (E-rotic), and X (X-treme).

S-ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

E-rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. E-rated titles might contain material that some readers find objectionable—in other words, almost anything goes, sexually. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry in terms of both sexual language and descriptiveness in these works of literature.

X-treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Stories designated with the letter X tend to contain difficult or controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

Romantica authors and publishers don’t consider what they do porn, but whatever you call it, some of it is pretty damn saucy. Inside the genre there are threesomes, foursomes, orgies, BDSM, ambiguous consentuality, and every manner of penetration you can imagine. These books are about sex, but the reason that (most of) the people who read them, write them, and publish them don’t consider romantica to be porn is because romantic places an emphasis on character, chemistry, and craft that just doesn’t come to mind when most people think of porn.

I’m none to fond of the p word either, for most of the same reason. But whatever you call our work, by Ellora’s rating system, I’d say that our films are an S; Our sex scenes leave nothing to the imagination, but they’re pretty vanilla as far as actual sex acts. I’d guess that some the of people who like getting turned on reading romantica might enjoy getting turned on watching one of our films. And that’s what makes the reason that Google won’t let me buy the key word “romantica” positively absurd. Here’s what google says:

Reason:
An Adult classification is preventing your ad from showing.

What does this mean?
AdWords Specialists have classified your ad as Adult, but the search query isn’t adult in nature. Google will only show adult ads for queries that meet certain criteria for adult content. For example, a Non-Family Safe or Adult ad is not eligible to appear for a Family Safe search term such as flowers. In order to see this ad, users will need to enter a search query that indicates interest in adult content.

What can I do?
If your AdWords ad is classified as Adult, modifying the content of your site or your ad text may make your ad eligible for consideration as a Non-Family Safe ad. However, both of these classifications were created to protect users who do not wish to see material intended for adult audiences. To ensure that we provide a positive user experience, we do not permit the advertisement of adult sites for unrelated, Family Safe keywords. Click here for more information about our ad approval policies. Alternatively, you can edit your keyword list to reflect the adult content of your ad.

I don’t know if Google “AdWords Specialists” are pizzaboxes or people, but either way, if Google thinks ‘romantica’ isn’t an “adult search querry”, then something’s wrong with Google. (In case you’re wondering, Ellora’s Cave is the #2 search result for ‘romantica’.)

It’s looking more and more like Violet is right. Whether or not the “Adword Specialists” are pizzaboxes or people, Google does not have the tools – or current knowledge – to evaluate sex on the web.

P.S. I sent Google a note using their form. (I hate formmail because I don’t get to keep a copy.) I told them they were wrong, that ‘romantica’ was not a family friendly search. I copied Ellora’s Cave’s rating system into it. We’ll see what happens.

P.P.S. Here’s another rating system from another first page return for the google search ‘romantica’:

STORY RATING
1- Don’t waste your money.
1 If you have it, it’s worth the read but goes back to the ubs.
2 Good story, but probably goes to the ubs.
3 I like everything this author writes, but they’ve done better.
4 This is a keeper.
4+ Rare find, must find everything this author has written.
5 THERE ARE NO WORDS FOR THIS BOOK!!!!!

SEX/LOVE SCENE RATING
Limp=> Bad, little or NO SEX AT ALL!
Erect==> Good sex toward the end.
Boner===> Good sex half-way through and thereafter.
STIFF====> Good sexual tension throughout the book, and when it happens, you feel you’ve been there already.
HUGH=====> GREAT SEX in the first 1/4 of book and throughout the book.

Monetizing Social Capital (aka working hard to stay clean and trusted)

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

I’m probably late to the party on this (busy making sex films, y’know) but I had a thought: Is the priority that Google places on link quality (and the resulting rankings and revenues) an example of an effort to monetize social capital in action?

Conversely, is the social capital that Comstock Films enjoys in its little corner of the internet devalued by the larger company it keeps? Our outbound links are all either: a) People who have said nice things about us and our work, or b) People, places, or things we think are nifty. Isn’t that what the googlebot likes? Shouldn’t ComstockFilms.com be a “clean and trusted” site? (Sound sort of like talking about VD in the Forties, doesn’ it?)

I used to think we were “clean and trusted”, but in light of my recent sex-related searches, I’m not so sure. Maybe we’re bad company.Does our linking to Tramp Lamps help them or hurt them?

In fact, just now I’ve just revisited them and see they’ve added this bit on their link page, “Thanks for stopping by our little web site. If you would like to link up, and your content would not embarrass my mother, contact us about an exchange.”

Would Momma Tramp Lamp be embarrassed by Comstock Films? Hard to know, isn’t it?

P.S. Maybe this why Andrew Sullivan didn’t link to me when he quoted me. Maybe he’s afraid his clean and trusted blog might catch whatever I have. Is there such a thing as Valtrex for blogs? Blogtrex?

Google Fails When The Sex Industry Fails

Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

In her follow-up post, Google is Still Pretty Broken, Violet Blue writes:

It’s clear by reading this post that Google absolutely does not have the tools — or current knowledge — to evaluate sex on the web. And possibly a lot of other things as well. This is how they do it? Really? They need a community liaison for each of the types of spam they’re expected to deal with, because it’s crystal clear they are in the dark.

Over at Threadwatch.org, Mr. Turner writes:

To understand why the results are poor in adult, you have to understand how adult sites work. You essentially have under 1% of the sites that actually sell something, and over 99% of the sites pushing traffic to those sites as affiliates. There is very little middle ground here. You have very few sites that put up porn for the fun of it. It’s essentially like taking a mainstream industry and dropping every site in it that doesn’t sell something or is an affiliate for someone.

So what that leaves is a group of webmasters all fighting for the same dollar. No one is giving up links to other affiliate sites because they feel it is beneficial to their user. No one is linking to adult sites just for the hell of it as well. The primary way of getting links has been through trades. While this was fine and dandy in the past, as Google’s algorithm advanced to spot link schemes, adult has been sacrificed because of it. Since most sites have relied on reciprocal link trading and since the industry lacks any natural linking because of its nature, it simply doesn’t work in an algorithm geared toward mainstream sites.

So what you’re seeing is sites that were popular in the past become untrusted, which in turn flourishes to new sites that receive links from them. A lack of “trusted” and “authority” sites has made it difficult for new sites to flourish as well.

To me, it’s not about Google blocking out adult content. Heck, a good percent of their searches are adult oriented and there are certainly better ways to block out that content than this. I think it’s just a case of adult having a completely different structure than most mainstream industries.

**I’d also like to add that it looks like they have been targeting blogs of late in Google. Not older established blogs, but new ones that generate feeds, trade links with other blogs, and never obtain links from good neighborhoods. I think the fact that sex blogs don’t rank as well also has to do with the fact that newer and smaller blogs are having a much more difficult time than before.

In a comment at Matt Cutts blog I wrote:

Last week when I needed some rubber tipped flu-flu arrows, I had no trouble using Google to find what I needed, compare products and prices, and make a purchase. But then you don’t see a lot of archery spam, do you?…are sex-related searches important enough in the grand scheme Google and the internet as whole to warrent an ombudsmen devoted having a person or even small department devoted to making sure sex related search results as relevent, useful, and informative as archery querries?

I don’t really encounter that much porn related spam in my websearching because for the most part, I already know where to look and how to look. So I have been mulling over this notion of good neighborhoods, trusted sites, and the rest with fresh eyes, and I spent sometime this morning trying to imagine I was someone who was trying to use Google to find sexual information and entertainment, but who hadn’t spent the last 15 years of his life learning where and how to find the good stuff. In this case, we’ll assume that the searcher in question has an interest in women’s sexual pleasure that is similar to mine. Some Google searches:

videos showing real female pleasure

videos showing authentic female orgasms

is female ejaculation real

real female exhibitionist videos

And just one for TMI

hardcore pictures of redheads with freckles

I wouldn’t go as far as saying the above results are useless, but then I’m looking at them as someone whose journey began nearly 20 years ago when I sent Xandria five bucks for their catalog (which turned out to be same flesh-colored rubber dildos as everywhere else, but with inoffensive names and illustrated with demure line drawings.)

Now some archery searches:

flu flu arrows

archery supplies

Notice a difference? I sure do, and I don’t think it’s all Google’s fault.

While I do think the name-search thing was a grade-a fuckup, I think it’s a ligitimate question to ask how much effort Google (or anyone else) should put into figuring out how to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to online sex.

The sex industry is mostly shabby, and nowhere is the shabbiness to sexy ratio higher than online. Even if porn is a $52 billion/year business (a highly dubious figure,) it’s still not as big as the recreational fishing industry. How much time do you think Google spends worrying about fishing spam?

That doesn’t mean I’m letting Google off the hook. (Robots don’t groan at puns!) Google’s business is Relevency, and no matter how you slice it, beastiality and anal rape sites should never rank ahead of Comstock Films when someone searchs ‘couples porn’.

Meanwhile, it’s is a good reminder that what we do, or what Violet does, what Njoy does or what Chelsea Girl does, we do against an overwhelming tide of badness and indiffernce (Doubt it? take a look at the Digg comments when the story broke.) Safely ensconsed in our community of like-minded people, it’s easy to think that the diffence between Comstock Films and a TGP link farm is as self-evident as the diffence between an Njoy buttplug and a jelly rubber buttplug.

It’s not. Not to everyone. Not yet!

Writing for Robots

Monday, January 1st, 2007

In an e-mail to Matt Cutts, I wrote:

It’s hard for me to image what sort of algorithm would be able to distinguish the highly entertaining, very intelligent, but often utterly filthy Pretty Dumb Things (apparently still in the Google penalty box) from run-of-the-mill sites that use similar language in similar quantities, and even in similar, but tremendously less artful ways.

Right now Peggy and I are re-jiggering page titles and writing meta-tags. In other words, we’re writing for robots, and it’s the most hateful writing assignment I’ve ever had.

If what I’ve learned from Matt and Danny and others is correct, robots are decidedly unimpresses by nearly every aspect of language I adore. Robots don’t care about alliteration, simile or metaphor. Robots don’t subvocalize when they read.

Robots don’t cringe at puns. Robots can’t appreciate a well turned phrase. Robots might write poetry, but they don’t read it. They don’t appreciate music, and they don’t appreciate the musicality of words lined up just so.

I am writing for robots, and I hate it.

Thank God I don’t have to make movies for them.

Matt’s Meme: Name Three Indespensible Sex Sites/Blogs

Sunday, December 31st, 2006

In all that discussion of machine vs. human search, this sort of got buried in the preveious post, so I’m pulling it out for a post of it’s own. Google’s Matt Cutts askes:

I think it would be a great question to open up to your blog. Maybe a good way to do it would be to ask people what their favorite three sex-industry sites are?

Here’s my answer:

Violet Blue’s Tiny Nibbles
As far as I’m concerned, Violet is the internet’s most passionate voice for sex being treated in an intelligent, adult and fun-loving way.

Adult DVD Talk
ADT is giant repository of viewer-written reviews of all sorts of porn, erotica, and adult films (pick the name you like). I rarely read them. I am, however, addicted to hang out in the ADT Discusion Forums. Purile enough to make things fun, smart enough to keep things interesting.

Blowfish.com
It’s where I shop when I want something new to shove up my ass.

Here’s an answer from Drew Black at ADT:

Here’s three recommendations for quality businesses in the adult DVD retail sector: adultdvdempire.com, xrentdvd.com and bushdvd.com. These three companies are class acts and constantly improve their sites to the benefit of their customers.

We’re still waiting on Matt’s list, but I’m not sure how comfortable he is with sharing his sexual proclivities with the world. But I know lots of you delight in sort of sharing (just as much as we delight in reading it!), so please do – either here, on on a blog if you have one!

Google’s Matt Cutts want to know more about sex.

Sunday, December 31st, 2006

I hadn’t realized it until a couple of days ago, but Comstock Films had a celebrity visitor comment on my Will Google Kill Comstock Films post of a few days ago.

Matt Cutts is the head of Google’s webspam team, and if you spend any time surfing around the SEO-osphere, you’ll see his name come up rather frequently. Since that comment, Matt and I have had a bit of correspondence about sex on the internet

12.28.06

Dear Tony,

I worked on Google’s SafeSearch filter years ago, so I know that distinguishing between the “good porn” sites compared to the “regular porn” sites is a hard
problem. I used to be able to reel off names like Jane’s Guide, Persian Kitty, The Hun, Greenguy, Luke Ford, etc. These days I haven’t worked on porn-related stuff in years, so I’m less familiar with the space compared to how I used to be.

In fact, I’d be curious to hear your take on what several the highest-quality porn-related sites would be these days. I’m familiar with stuff like fleshbot.com or nerve.com, but less so with sites like tiny nibbles or erosblog.com. If it sounds like a lot of work for an email, you could also do it as a blog post. I’d be curious to hear what some of the leading lights are in the porn industry these days, and I’d be able to point a few people at it to make sure that we work on distinguishing higher-quality sites from run-of-the-mill sites.

Dear Matt,

I’m no expert, but it’s hard for me to image what sort of algorithm would be able to distinguish the highly entertaining, very intelligent, but often utterly filthy Pretty Dumb Things (apparently still in the Google penalty box) from run-of-the-mill sites that use similar language in similar quantities, and even in similar, but tremendously less artful ways. That’s not just my opinion either. An interview with the site’s author will be appearing in next week’s edition of The New York Observer, one of Gotham’s most influential weekly papers.

Perhaps that’s why Jane’s, Persian Kitty, etc were successful. Maybe distinguishing run of the mill filth from quality smut takes the human touch. Of course that’s not perfect either. In spite of each of our films taking prizes at film festival, including non-erotic film festivals, Jane has yet to bestow her Quality seal on ComstockFilms.com

In any case, I will give it some thought and see what ideas bubble up. If nothing else, your and apparently google’s ignorance of Violet Blue is a place to start. With nearly a dozen well-loved and best selling books about various aspects of sexuality to her credit, I’d rate her as probably the most authoritative, respected, and independent sex writers on the internet.

12.30.08

Dear Matt,

My wife and I have been hashing this around for the last few days, and some thoughts are starting to coalesce. A couple of things:

The sex industry is, if not actually dominated by, at least characterized by businesses which make their margin by *not* giving people what’s been promised (There is no sex in the champaign room.) By and large, this is possible because of the shame that surrounds sex.

From the outside, the core of Googles core business would seem to be Relevance. Perhaps value-laden taxonomies, like “good porn” vs. “regular porn” are not a useful way to parse the sexual content of the internet. Rather than “distinguishing higher-quality sites from run-of-the-mill sites” perhaps the challenge is to distinguish sexually oriented sites that are what they say they are and offer what they say they offer, from those site that are not and do not. (There is no sex in the champagne room.)

Up until recently, my vision of Google has been a rack of yellow pizzabox CPUs. I have, since my initial post, become substantially more educated about the inner workings of Google (in light of my ignorance, this is not a strong statement,) and have come to realize that I had substantially underestimated the importance of Google’s human assets.

With that in mind, I’d point you to the Boing Boing post in which Violet Blue offers, “I’m guessing that whoever might’ve tested their sex searches didn’t know the difference between Comstock Films and your average skanky porn film site.” Laying aside “skanky” (which is hardly a value-neutral descriptor,) being able to distinguish between Comstock Films, Vivid Video, Evil Angel, Bang Bus, and a TGP link farm would seem to be a key component of producing relevant search results.

As to your question about my take high-quality porn related sites, I don’t know that I’m the person to ask. I have a vitriolic hatred of nearly all porn, both what is produced and how it’s produced. I take my inspiration from the new generation of sex toy makers (Vixen Creations, Njoy Toys, Fun Factory). They make their money by offering well made products, sold honestly. This approach would bankrupt most porn companies inside of a month.

But I do understand what you’re getting at, clean sites, trusted sites in the community, and all that. With that in mind, via my blog I’d like to open up your question my readers and our community. While some of them might enjoy jacking off to Bang Bus (yuck!), none of them like being ripped off or led astray. If Google is truly interested in delivering relevant search results in this area of inquiry, there’s a wealth of knowledge that can be tapped.

Dear Tony,

I think it would be a great question to open up to your blog. Maybe a good way to do it would be to ask people what their favorite three sex-industry sites are? I’m guessing that you would also be able to use your industry knowledge to prune the lamer suggestions for sites that don’t add value in some way (e.g. deleting cookie-cutter sites that don’t have any original content or links, and only exist to shunt people somewhere to make money).

I’d be curious to see what sex sites people really valued.

—-

It would seem that Comstock Films has caught, or at least been caught up in the Zeitgeist. Just yesterday on my post Google Fails When Language Fails, Part 2 I quoted a Times Online article about a theoretical wiki-based challenger to Google’s algorithm-based approach. Then just this morning I see there’s a Q&A With Jimmy Wales On Search Wikia, the same fellow quoted in the Times Online article I posted. The human touch seems to be the topic de jour in search.

Meanwhile, whether you subscribe to the Google Porn Purge point of view, or the It’s Happened to Other Industries and It’s Just a Bug point of view, it’s pretty clear that something’s amiss in the High House of Search.

An overly aggressive algorithm when it comes to sexual language, especially sexual colloquial language is certainly an explanation for how sites like TinyNibbles.com, Pretty Dumb Things, or our own Comstock Films could ever be mistaken for spam sites. The implications of that spin off in all manner of troubling directions.

Alternately, if it’s Merely A Bug, and this happens all the time in other industries, the implications of that aren’t particularly reassuring either. (Especially not, if like me, you’re holding Google stock.)

Some of you might be old enough to remember it was human indexing that made Yahoo such a useful tool in the early days of the internet. (I’m not bragging, but back in day, two of Peggy’s projects go the Yahoo Sunglasses of Cool.) Of course the internet exploded, overwhelming Yahoo’s human indexing capability, and pretty soon the only way to get listed on Yahoo was to pay them, completely devaluing Yahoo’s listings, and opening the door for Google.

I’ll confess, my faith in Google has been, shall we say, a little naive. You won’t even find meta-tags on Comstock Films, because I always figured that with the crunching power of those millions and millions of yellow pizzaboxes, *actual* content would count for more than meta-content. We’ll be adding meta-data ASAP, but it looks like we’re a little late to that party.

If Jimmy Wales is to be believed, actually human beings actually looking at webpages is the wave of the future. Will “Real People, Real Search, Real Results” be the tagline of the company that displaces Google? (More importantly, if it comes to pass, how will Comstock Films fare in this new order?)

Meanwhile, Comstock Films’ google ranking on our core search terms has crashed again, this even time worse than before. In some cases so low I quit clicking to the next page when I saw we were out ranked by zoophilia sites. (That’s people having sex with animals.)

Does the googlebot really think that people searching ‘couples porn’ are looking for pictures of women getting fucked by horses? I’m not ready to take a short position, but I do think I’m ready to sell half and look for other opportunities.

And oh yeah, Matt’s question looks like it just begging to be my first ever blog meme:

What are your three indespensible sex URLs and why? Me?

Violet Blue’s Tiny Nibbles
As far as I’m concerned, Violet is the internet’s most passionate voice for sex being treated in an intelligent, adult and fun-loving way.

Adult DVD Talk
ADT is giant repository of viewer-written reviews of all sorts of porn, erotica, and adult films (pick the name you like). I rarely read them. I am, however, addicted to hang out in the ADT Discusion Forums. Purile enough to make things fun, smart enough to keep things interesting.

Blowfish.com
It’s where I shop when I want something new to shove up my ass.

Your turn, Matt. And everyone else too!