Thanks to a list that’s making its way around the tubes. The list was created by Jamie Dubs of F.A.T. fame, and it features just about every kind of sexual-related euphemism you can imagine.

For instance, in the “B” section, “bunny fucker” is listed.

So yeah, if you want to enjoy such things, stick to a “SafeSearch off” Google Image Search. As for the list, Dubs uploaded his findings to Gist, and the list, which features 453 terms and phrases, can even be embedded. Over at the service in question — What do you love? — when such terms are entered, users are forwarded to the results page dedicated to kittens, perhaps the most-loved thing on the Internet.

There’s also a elimination of racially-insensitive epithets and other associated terms. Google’s list also includes the slang version of the n-word that ends with an “a.” Some of the more surprising terms on the list include “viagra,” “cyalis,” which seems to be a misspelling of Cialis, which, like Viagra, is designed to treat erectile dysfunction. Oddly enough, “Cialis” is not listed as one of the banned words, and search for the correct spelling returns a WDYL page devoted to the treatment.

For those of you who are concerned, “Goatse” is banned as well; as is the word “God,” at least according to the list.

However, a search for the term works just fine.

Does this mean Dubs’ list is inaccurate? Not if he farmed these terms directly from Google’s source code, something he said he did. Whatever the case, these words are only banned in the “What do you love” engine, meaning they work just fine in a normal Google search. This means if you’re search for dirty sex terms, limit yourself to web and image queries. That way, you won’t be forced to look at a page dedicated to cute kittens.

The company says it’s deploying a new technology that better understands associations and concepts related to searches. Google explains:

…one of its first applications lets us offer you even more useful related searches (the terms found at the bottom, and sometimes at the top, of the search results page).

For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that "angular momentum," "special relativity," "big bang" and "quantum mechanic" are related terms that could help you find what you need.

Google says it’s able to target more queries, more languages, and make suggestions more relevant to what users are looking for. We’ve heard Google talk about wanting to get better with intent-based search, and it looks like they’re now doing something about it.

"Additionally, we’re now offering refinements for longer queries — something that’s usually a challenging task," says a post on the Official Google Blog. The feature is available in 37 languages all around the world."

As for the longer snippets, users will see them when they search for longer queries (which users are using more of these days). They will display more text to show more of the keywords used in the query and how they are used on the page.

These changes may not be the final word in intent-based search. The "java" example discussed by Bruce Clay late last year isn’t addressed very well here. The related searches suggested when I search for that keyword do not include coffee or country related items. Still, the features are an indication that Google is indeed looking in this direction.

Sidenote: Mike McDonald sat down with Bruce Clay again at Search Engine Strategies last week and dicussed the subject of intent-based search among other things:

The longer snippets feature is not exactly delivering more relevant results than before, but it could go a long way toward helping users determine if results in fact  are relevant by giving them more info to reach a conclusion.

Tell us what you think about Google’s SERP changes.

Ask.com says they didn’t “sanitize” the list—as evidenced by including #3:

1. MySpace
2. Dictionary
3. Google
4. Themes
5. Area Codes
6. Cars
7. Weather
8. Games
9. Song Lyrics
10. Movies

And when they say they don’t sanitize it, they mean they didn’t take out porn terms, either. Odd . . . I could’ve sworn that the premise behind their big ad push this year was that Ask was a good way to find porn. . . .

Does it seem a little strange to anyone else how extremely generic these searches are? Other than MySpace and Google, what are these people looking for? “Themes”? The weather all over the entire world? Every movie ever made? Come on.

A few other interesting gems from their many lists: Ron Paul is the seventh most popular presidential candidate after Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Fred Thompson, John Edwards, Mitt Romney and John McCain—but don’t worry, Paulites. He’s still beating Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee and Dennis Kucinich.

Also interesting? No mention of Britney Spears anywhere. For once.

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Yahoo Queries The Obscure

Such frustration serves no one, not the searcher, and definitely not the search engine as it fails to place relevant advertising alongside the search results a person hopes to see. It’s a situation, as Resource Shelf indicated from Yahoo Research, that has room for improvement.

The fine minds at Yahoo Research, who most recently enjoyed their supercomputer debut at Carnegie Mellon, tackled the problem of obscure queries. Their research yielded a way to improve upon the one-off searches that engines sometimes see:

To address the problem, the Yahoo! team proposed a methodology for using search results, as well as information available on the Web, as a source of external knowledge. To this end, they sent rare queries to a search engine and assumed that a majority of the highest-ranking search results were relevant to the query. Categorizing these results allowed the team to classify the original query with high accuracy

The results definitively confirmed that using the Web as a repository of world knowledge contributes valuable information about the query, and aids in its correct classification. “We discovered the best source of information to understand what these rare queries are about is to look at the search results,” Broder explains. “If you look at each returned page as a vote on what the query is about, you find that the majority tends to be correct even though many individual pages are wrong.”

A couple of positive results should happen as research continues. Search results should be more in line with what the searcher expects, while advertisers with the most appropriate messages to place with those results may find better responses to their campaigns from qualified customers.

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• If you have an old site you should use analytics to track what keywords you are getting traffic for. For most webmasters it is easier to rank for more related keywords than it is to discover and dominate new areas.
• When you start a new site make sure you use keyword modifiers in your page titles, meta descriptions, and page copy. It is easier to rank for long tail terms than shorter search queries.
• You can find many keyword modifier types in this free XLS spreadsheet.
• When you start doing keyword research, you can start with a seed list of broad keywords to power a keyword tool and keep digging deeper. Then repeat the process with related keywords and other keyword tools. No tool is perfect. Think of them more as qualitative than quantitative. I like Wordtracker and my keyword tool.
• Organize your keywords into relevant baskets of keywords and modifiers that should be covered in different sections of your site and on different pages from your site.
• I listed many bonus keyword research ideas in a recent Wordtracker article.
• Some of my favorite follow up keyword tools to use when optimizing a page are
  • Quintura – shows a visual layout of related keywords
  • Google AdWords tool – shows you what keywords Google thinks a URL is relevant for and should be advertising on
  • Compete.com Search Analytics – shows keywords that competing sites rank for

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Approximately 35% of the top searches in the UK, USA and France are brand related, which gives you an idea just how brand focused our Live Search users are. If your brand is strong (and strong brands come in all shapes and sizes) include it in at least in one of your ad titles and try to get it in the descriptions too! We have often seen click through rates (CTRs) increase when brand names have been included effectively.

Brands are like attention…if your brand is healthy you have an endless number of streams of profit waiting to be unlocked. And brand keywords are easy to own because of the resonance.

• if others outrank you for your own brand then your public relations stinks or you have major SEO issues
• if others out monetize you for your own brand then your business model needs improved

Investing brand related profits into awareness related marketing helps reinforce your market position. Even if the ad return is at a break even point it still helps you by building additional attention that leads to additional citations.

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"And you may ask yourself - well...how did I get here?"
-- the wisdom of David Byrne, "Once In A Lifetime"

Judging by the latest figures from Compete, Google got there by snaring search market share away from Microsoft’s MSN and Live Search services.

Two-thirds of the searches performed in August traveled through Google. 66.6 percent. That’s not the mark of the beast, but the mark of a titan.

Yahoo held onto second place with a smidgen of a gain, to 19.8 percent. Microsoft had enjoyed a double-digit share in July, but that evaporated to 9.4 percent in August. Ask.com fared as it did in July, with 3.1 percent.

"After two strong months of gains MSN/Live search market share lost nearly a point in August," said Compete’s Jeremy Crane.

"The silver lining for Live Search is that despite market share losses, the actual number of queries being performed on Live increased nearly 3% from July to August."

Query volumes increased for the month for Yahoo and Ask, slight though they were. Google query volume rose over 3.5 percent from July to August.

FTC Sets Dates For Behavioral Town Hall

Consumer advocates, industry representatives, technology experts, and academics will discuss the issues related to tracking people’s online activity at the FTC town hall meeting in the fall. Google’s proposed acquisition of ad server DoubleClick has alarmed many with the prospect of one company holding a overwhelming amount of personal information.

Three organizations petitioned the FTC in April a few days after Google announced its DoubleClick intentions. Those groups, all privacy advocates, want the deal blocked.

The FTC listed several topics that will be discussed during the town hall meeting in Washington DC. They plan to cover a lot of the basics, including the use of collected data, how well collectors protect consumer information, and if anonymous data can be combined with other personally identifiable data.

The answer to that last bit should bring the AOL Research incident to mind. A researcher posted thousands of anonymized search queries online, where a number of people and organizations grabbed a copy, just before SES San Jose in 2006.

A report at the New York Times showed how they could build a profile out of anonymized data. They located a woman living in the South based on the interests shown in her search profile.

The FTC has invited interested parties to submit requests to be panelists, and to suggest additional topics to discuss in the context of the town hall meeting. Requests need to be submitted electronically by September 14, 2007, to behavioraladvertising_requests@ftc.gov.

Requests will need to include a statement detailing one’s expertise on the issues, and their contact information. FTC will notify the panelists they select by October 5th.

Almost Half of Search Queries Are Repeats

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to the study’s authors, hailing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington, and Yahoo. It really depends on how much time has elapsed since their first search.

If users repeat a query very soon after the initial search, they are most likely looking for new information, rather than trying to re-find. However, if they don’t search again for a span of days, they either don’t remember exactly what they saw before, or are more motivated to find that exact website.

Sometimes it just depends on how exact they are at remembering what query string they used before, but most of them (around 70 percent) are pretty decent at remembering.

The study seems to affirm that the higher the rank, the higher the likelihood a result will be clicked. This is demonstrated on re-finding missions when a previously clicked result shows up farther down the SERP. It is less likely to be clicked than a previously un-clicked result that now appears closer to the top.

This is in contrast to when the SERP is exactly the same as before. The previously clicked result is more likely to be clicked again.

The authors write:

We found that it was much more likely for a repeat result to be clicked if there was no change in rank: 88% percent of the clicks for overlapping-click queries were repeat clicks if there was no change in rank, while only 53% of the clicks were repeat clicks if there was a change in rank.If the rank of the result had not changed, the second click occurred relatively quickly, while if the rank had changed, it took significantly (p<0.01) longer. Changes to result ordering appear to slow re-finding.

The researchers advise that search engines should be more mindful of repeat queries in the future by tailoring results that are predictive of what searchers are trying to re-find. They suggest that the best way to do this may be by providing software to the end-user that keeps of record of their individual search queries and reproduces either queries or direct links to websites previously visited.

They downplay, however, the practice of using popular results, generated from users on the whole, to influence search results, as search spam could unduly influence them.

"In contrast, personalizing search results based on search history can help avoid potential problems caused by spam."