Request Media Kit

Tumblr Search Gets Smarter, NSFW Content Easier to Manage

Tumblr has just announced a big improvement to their search function, one that they say will help users better explore the 65 billion posts now currently housed on the site (65 billion posts, yeah). N...
Tumblr Search Gets Smarter, NSFW Content Easier to Manage
Written by Josh Wolford
  • Tumblr has just announced a big improvement to their search function, one that they say will help users better explore the 65 billion posts now currently housed on the site (65 billion posts, yeah).

    Now, when you search a term, the results page shows posts that mention said term, not just the ones tagged with those terms.

    For instance, a search for “Breaking Bad” will yield results that are tagged #Breakingbad and results that simply mention the term “Breaking Bad.” If you only want to search results that are tagged #Breakingbad, you’ll need to enter the tag in your query.

    Tumblr is making it easier to find more specific posts too by allowing multiple tag searches in individual queries. That means you can now search for #breakingbad #amc #aaron paul #bryancranston to limit your results to post that include all of those tags.

    Also, the search results page will now include related blogs for your search terms.

    The final change has to do with NSFW content:

    “And in an effort to make the explicit content filter more transparent (and less confusing), we’ve moved the option right to the search results page. We’ve also been able to use this smarter filtering to unblock innocuous keywords in our apps that used to be prohibited by app store policies,” says Tumblr.

    You can see the new filter as it appears inside search results below:

    As you may recall, Tumblr took a lot of heat for supposedly censoring a bunch of NSFW and Adult content earlier this year. Tumblr fixed a bug that was preventing adult blogs from appearing in search results even when Safe Mode had been disabled. One issue that still remained, however, was Tumblr’s app family filtering tag searches for terms like #lgbt and #gay, even if that content wasn’t NSFW. But at the time, CEO David Karp said that there was really nothing to be done about some tag searches being blocked in the mobile apps – mainly because of Apple’s strict rules on promoting adult content and their fears over being banned from the App Store. This change to search should help alleviate some of those issues.

    Images via Tumblr Blog

    Get the WebProNews newsletter delivered to your inbox

    Get the free daily newsletter read by decision makers

    Subscribe
    Advertise with Us

    Ready to get started?

    Get our media kit