paybacksa - 1:18 am on Aug 17, 2004 (gmt 0)

But when I search for a less competitive term on google, it does show up, even if the "safe search" is on. Though, while doing safe search, the results were "357" and otherwise it was 9970

I also wondered about this, and played with the search filters. When looking at "strict" vs the others, I really didn't see a strong correlation between AdSense and Google search.

In other words, I do not believe AdSense and G Search filter are using the same rulesets. In my experience, AdSense is much more sensitive to specific stop words.