Safesearch Hell - Filter Imposed on my site for..? I just don't know

[Asia_Expat]

18 months ago, I realised my website was having it's images filtered by safesearch. I carefully examined the site, found nothing explicit... but removed anything that *might* be considered borderline, such as girls in swim suits looking sexy/pouting yadda yadda. So far, no effect.

To my horror, I noticed a couple of months ago that my entire website is filtered by strict safesearch and I don't show up for site: or the site name with the strict filter activated.

I spent ages going though things, racking my brain trying to think of/find something that might be the cause and I can honestly find absolutely nothing. My forum members occasionally use profanities, getting around the badword filter by using replacement characters... but it's nothing that can't be found on my competitor's websites and they don't get filtered... In summary, I can find nothing that minght trigger the filter and my website is a family safe place for expatriates.

... So, I submitted a reinclusion request on the 5th of September, politely explaining that I have extensively examined my website, taking into account any relevant webmaster guidelines... Nothing has changed and I guess after this amount of time (AT LEAST 18 months) it's not going to. I've either missed something, or nobody cares. If I've missed somethign, I'm either blind, or stupid.

Can anyone think of a fresh direction for me to take on this problem... because I'll be darned if I can think what is wrong with my website.
Actually, I think there is nothing wrong with my website... this is an error on the part of Google that they're not interested in fixing. If it's not an error, they should have the courtesy to reply to my re-inclusion request and explain it to me... as I took a great deal of time to try and figure out the problem myself.

I think I'm getting incoming links from a bad neighbourhood, or an adult website... I'm 80 percent convinced this is the cause.

[edited by: tedster at 3:40 am (utc) on Oct. 8, 2008]

[netmeg]

Do you have any outbound links that might be dicey? Last year a friend of mine asked me why his punk rock site would only show up with safesearch completely off, when it had been working fine for years and years - turns out all he'd done was add a link to another friend's leather shop on ONE page (and it was a logo graphic, no anchor text) and the entire site was filtered. As soon as we took the link off, it popped back in, even with safesearch on.

[StoutFiles]

but it's nothing that can't be found on my competitor's websites and they don't get filtered

You can't say that you should be allowed to do something because a competitor does it. Some people get lucky and some don't. I'd remove that mindset right away.

I think I'm getting incoming links from a bad neighbourhood, or an adult website... I'm 80 percent convinced this is the cause

There was a topic about this earlier...it's a shame that you can hurt competition by creating links to them from shady sites. It's a problem that needs fixed as incoming links should never hurt you as you have no control over them.

[Asia_Expat]

I accept that I should not have the attitude that 'if they can do it, so can I'... yet I don't think it possible to entirely stop forum members from using mild profanity, and I have done some research into many of my Internet neighbours and ALL of them get away with such mild profanity... I don't think that is the issue on my website, and if it *is* the issue, it is unreasonable to fix it. If you're expected to control a forum with such a Nazi approach, I might as well shut down the forum.

[Asia_Expat]

... BTW, I checked all of my outgoing links ad infinitum.
Also, all external links on the fourm are rel='nofollow'd.

[Leosghost]

You are going to have to download your logs going way back ..then run analysis on them for "inbounds" that could be suspect ie from adult sites..you could very well have been added to the links area of a site wishing to establish itself as a hub for "bargirls in asia" type searches ..your site could be linked to as part of their "padding" ..

because yes ..inspite of what G say ..inbounds can hurt you ..

[Asia_Expat]

Well, is there any other way to communicate with Google over this issue, because I'm not sure that a reinclusion request is the way to go and I've sure had no luck with that, perhaps the people that read those requests have no control over the safesearch status for a website?

[Asia_Expat]

I've spent most of the day and night going over my website again and examining incoming links... I spotted something that might be the cause of my problems...

There is a political forum that linked to my website two or three years ago in one of their threads and the link is still there. I didn't notice this before because it points to my old domain name (I successfully moved domains a couple of years ago and I still have the old domain 301'ing to the new domain).

I recall that this political forum website was listed in Google as 'Being harmful to your computer' in the serps. They no longer suffer from that terrible label... but could this be the cause of my problems?... and if so, what on earth can I do about it? Google have totally ignored my communications so far.

[edited by: Asia_Expat at 12:07 am (utc) on Oct. 9, 2008]

[Leosghost]

Difficult to see how a political forum could be deemed "unsafe" and warrant the "this site etc" ..But links out from the sites carrying the "may harm your computor" message usually do pass some toxicity onwards in the eyes of G ..

If you are suffering from a penalty by association ( with malfaiter ) and not only are you innocent but they are also considered clean ..then others here have better "ins" to the plex than yours truly ..

But ..I still would go for the "adult" connection ..
the reason being that hacker sites ,warez boards etc can get tagged by G with the "this site may harm" etc ..but specifically "safe search filters" have always AFAIK been dependant on the "explicit sexual content" being present ( or as I said above you can be linked to from adult sites and depending on the inbound link text and your landing page text or image then the strict filters can get you ) ..
So you may well need to keep looking in your logs ..and backtrack from there ..
Googles link tool is so distorted so as to avoid them giving away to site owners any info that it is useless ..only your logs ..or lucky investigation of visible inbounds would help you nail it down ..

One other thing ..if any of the text on your site is non english language ? are you absolutely sure that you know what it means and that none of it has double meanings which G might be reading ? or anywords that either in english or in any other language are very similar to adult words ..this happens more than people realise ..G's "did you mean" can show up some of these ..

Other thought..do you have guides or reviews relating to what might be tourist resorts in the day but red light areas at night ..or areas that have recently become known for topless bathing etc ..

Again actually getting G to listen to you and deal with "it" isn't something that I can advise upon ..but "brainstorming" in the hope that you might have eureka moment due to thinking in an unusual direction may be of use ..the biggest problem is that no-one has a definative list of what G thinks are adult words even in english ..

Came back into my post to edit a typo ( english on a french azerty keyboard makes for many errors ) and the idea came to me ..have you checked for typo's ..in text and also in alt tags titles ? h1's , headers , footers ..etc ..a typed "passing" with only a single letter typo in it "could" make your page "unsafe" in G's eyes ..and some words change their meaning when in proximity ( not actually next to ) others ..you can see how G sometimes pulls two non adjacent words in a sentence as the "relevant" result for a Keyword1+ Keyword2 search ..

[edited by: Leosghost at 1:14 am (utc) on Oct. 9, 2008]

[Asia_Expat]

Thanks for your comments... but honestly, I've been bending my brain in various directions at this problem for ~18 months and I've made no progress, nil.
I can't afford it, but I'm at the point where I think I might employ a good SEO person to try and figure this out for me and a remedy for the filter.

I wonder, how much this is actually affecting my traffic... I imagine quite seriously, as I know that many of my potential visitors/customers surf from their workplace.

[edited by: Asia_Expat at 1:16 am (utc) on Oct. 9, 2008]

[iridiax]

The Google SafeSearch algorithm is just not very accurate, and because they are more worried about accidentally showing sexual content than they are about filtering out innocent sites, they have dialed it up to be far too strict and sensitive.

I have a G-rated website, and when I last checked, 1/3 of my photos were filtered out as unsafe.

I think that my problem is due to image hotlinks from sites with adult content, incoming links from scraper sites that also have scraped up adult content, and incoming links from adult or fetish forums (it's amazing what things people have a fetish for).

[tedster]

That's the thing about the "strict" setting - it needs to be a near-guarantee against adult content.

But the default setting is "moderate" and that setting filters out suspect images, not text. I'm wondering, Asia_Expat, if your audience has that many people who have actually reset their default preference for Safe Search to "strict". Or might there be some other reason for your traffic drop that you still need to identify.

[Asia_Expat]

Well, as far as I can tell, the safesearch strict filter has always filtered my website since before I started tracking the traffic properly (although I only noticed the filter on web results 2 months ago), so I have no data to compare and I can't claim a drop in traffic. I've watched the traffic grow from zero referrals 2 years ago, to it's current ~1,300 unique IPs per day (~1000 of which are from Google) and it's been a slow and steady rise... however, I'm wondering if the filter is curtailing substantial traffic, as I believe most workplaces would have strict filtering in place as their company IT default, and many expats surf from the office looking for advice.

Maybe this filter is making no measurable difference to my traffic, which would be great.

[metaman01]

I had the same issue as you some time ago, Asia. I was scratching my head bold.

I am now out of the safe search H**, and I did two things:

1. Got rid of a third party tracking service that linked to the service's site in a noscript tag. (Also adult sites uses this tracking service)

2. Altered all images on the site that had a lot of "skin-color" in them to other images or no images at all.

That seemed to do the trick for me. 2 months after I did these changes, my site was in the main images search index.

Hope this may help.

[Rosalind]

It's surprising what Google may consider dodgy. I was writing some Adwords copy, when an alert came up warning me I couldn't use the word "speed", because it's a drugs reference. It's obvious when you think about it, but not something I ever would have guessed.

So a good tip would be to type some of your main keywords into Adwords, even if you don't run the ads, just to see what comes up. You could be tripping the filter with some word that just happens to have a kinky double meaning.

[Asia_Expat]

Well what an absurd state of affairs this is turning out to be. Should I be rabid and paranoid is one of my forum members posts a reference to 'breast' cancer, and follow the post with Beavis & Butthead sniggering that they said 'breast'?.... huhu hu huhu huhuhuhu.

... or maybe I should ban my members from writing about the issues surrounding illegal 'cock' fighting in Thailand, or specifically forbid they mention #*$!su dogs from Tibet.

I'm really tired of all this and it's just a waste of time. I'm actually beginning to wish I'd never started this website. It's too much effort for very little reward.

Thanks for all your advice, I'll sure take it on board.