Jan 29 2013 Update#3: As of yesterday or so, when Google rolled out their new interface they also included the SafeSearch changes for all other English domains that I know of, such as the UK’s, Canada’s, Australia’s, New Zealand’s, South Africa’s, etc. Google Image has essentially been killed. Looks like I’m switching over to Bing.
Are you in the US? Have you tried searching Google Images for anything since December 12th, like oh say… boobs?
Go ahead, go google image boobs. I’ll wait. Of course, if you were lucky you may have SafeSearch disabled and you only get the UK equivalent of “Moderate SafeSearch” which has been permanently forced upon us. There is no longer an “off” switch to their censorship.
If you search for boobs with it “on” you will get no results at all. If you search with it “off” then you will get boobs, minus explicit results.
At this point you’re probably like “Okay, I’ve had enough of this bullshit!” Or at least, if you’re anything like me then you are. Oh it’s not limited to boobs, by the way. It’s the same for everything.
‘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,’ Google said 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,’ it continued.
“Specifically searching for them,” eh? Okay, Google. Let’s google “blowjob” and see what we find… So uh, hey… if I specifically search for blowjob, that… does mean I’m looking for pictures of blowjobs…. right? Right?! …No? 😦
If you don’t like it, sadly the only choice is to either switch to a different search engine (Hey this is a good time to throw this out there: If you have any Google stock… abort, abort! Abandon ship!), or use a different country’s version of Google. If you’re using Internet Explorer or Firefox you can add Google’s Search Engine for other countries to your browser’s search options. I’m using Google CA-en SSL myself – Canada’s version Google, which hasn’t been censored… yet.
If they do roll this out to other countries, I’ve gotta say… I’m leaving Google entirely and going to Bing, Yahoo, or somewhere else. I won’t stand for this shit. When I search for something I expect to find it, not for my results to be censored. This is America… and you know what? China, where porn is illegal, has a less censored Google now. Laugh at that for awhile, before you start crying when you realize how terrible it is.
So tell me, what happened to “Don’t censor the web,” assholes?
Jan 13, 2013 Update#1: I don’t use Chrome, but if anyone out there uses Google Chrome and is looking to find out how to bypass it as well, here’s how you do it…
For Chrome just click the = thing up at the top right then go to Settings then under Search go to Manage Search Engines.
Then down at the bottom use this info:
Google CA (SSL)
google.ca
https://www.google.ca/search?q=%s{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}
Then just hit enter. Then hover over it and hit “Default” and it’ll be your default.
Jan 13, 2013 Update#2 I was informed that the recent changes are also adversely effective reverse google image searching. I’ve already fixed mine, so here’s how you do that…
If you have Firefox, grab this Add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/image-search-options/
By default I don’t think it has Google Image search, so here’s the info for that…
Sub-Menu ->
http://www.google.com/favicon.ico
Left Click Settings
http://www.google.ca/searchbyimageVariables (one per line)
image_url=::$URL::GET Var Markers:
?
&(unchecked) Use POST instead of GET
Right Click Settings
http://www.google.ca/searchbyimage/uploadVariables (one per line)
encoded_image=::$IMGDATA::GET Var Markers:
?
&(checked) Use POST instead of GET
Doing it like this will give you a right click contextual menu where you can use google image search via Canada’s version of google which is uncensored. I personally also use IQDB, which is useful for anime style art.
TiffLife 