Porn and Explicit Content No Longer Appearing in Google Image Search Default Results

Is Google hiding porn from its users?

In an unannounced update to its Image Search algorithms on Wednesday, Google has made it more difficult to stumble across explicit or pornographic images.

Now, when searching for a term that might otherwise be innocuous but has strong ties to sexually explicit references--"lemon party," for example, Google users see only the results that would be appropriate for work or children.

In order to get to the dirty goods, users will need to be more specific. So a search for "lemon party porn" or "lemon party sex" will return the old results, complete with an eyeful of old men in compromising positions. Go ahead and check it out.

In the past, Google offered customizable search options, called SafeSearch, which allowed either Strict, Moderate or no filtering of sexually explicit content.

Leaving SafeSearch off meant that any image search could potentially plaster the results page with raunchy photos or explicit images, and that was the risk some people took it they wanted to make sure they were seeing all the possible results, not just the ones Google deemed appropriate.

The default filter setting was Moderate, which did a pretty good job of scrubbing any sex or nudity from the initial results. The Strict option often blocked out many relevant sites with scientific content.

Those categories are gone, replaced with a simple "Filtering on" or "off" option. With filtering on, no matter how specific a search gets, it won't return explicit images. With filtering off, the algorithms go to work, parsing whether a user in researching breasts for more information of cancer screenings, or whether they're looking for topless photos of celebrities.

"We are not censoring any adult content, and want to show users exactly what they are looking for--but we aim not to show sexually-explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them," said Google in a statement.

"We use algorithms to select the most relevant results for a given query. If you're looking for adult content, you can find it without having to change the default setting--you just may need to be more explicit in your query if your search terms are potentially ambiguous. The image search settings now work the same way as in Web search."

This change could be a boon to Google search competitor Bing, which continues to use a filtering system that users either turn on or off, making all the porn on the internet just one click away.