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Google Instant Showing Adult Content 'Inadvertently'

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Google Instant

So as you experiment with Google Instant; one of the recent features of Google®. Beware of unintended, possibly adult graphic content, in your search results flashing by your child, or yourself, as you type in search terms.

As far as I can tell Google Instant is the default until you disable it (cookie) or login to have your saved preferences take over. So any new computer you use or if the cookies have been cleaned puts you back in default mode.

So you want to research navigation methods of the past and start typing 'sextant', take a look at what flashes by on the way there. Are you sure you want to risk your child seeing this stuff before you've been able to discuss it. Or your employer wondering what you are searching for?

When I tried this yesterday (2010-09-08) results for 'sexting' were showing up as I typed. And this is a fairly tame example, I'm sure other terms will bring up unintended results as well as you type - and our human eyes are naturaly drawn to motion in our peripheral vision; consider closed captioning on a television screen.

Update: 10-05-2010 Alright, so Google is doing some filtering of what search terms they give 'instant' results on. Clearly this won't be fool proof, and perhaps might be considered a mild form of censorship.

A further thought, if you are an AdWords ® user. With Google Instant enabled search engine users may well be presented with your competitors sites on the way to typing a search phrase that you are advertising with and have done SEO on.

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