I know Gary Illyes from Google is going to roll his eyes when he sees this post, but I find it funny and I want to share what he wrote on this Reddit AMA regarding Google's ranking factors. He was asked to share some more search ranking factors, and one that he shared was "Pornyness."
It is basic actually, Google does have an adult content classifier and that type of content does get treated differently for many reasons. So yes, it is an easy factor to pull out and say, yes, Google has a factor for adult content. But just the way he said it was funny.
Here was the question:
The CEO of Google during his testifying to Congress about user data (how the search works) said that there were 200 ranking signal factors, but he only mentioned 3 of them: relevance, freshness, popularity. Would you like to mention several more ranking factors? <3 So I will be able to implement them on my website and get better rankings.
He responded saying local, RankBrain, pageRank/links, language, and he added "pornyness."
The RankBrain bit was interested that he said that but whatever. The "pornyness" is true but made me laugh because most probably don't think of it as a factor.
Someone said the name "pornyness" sounds official and Gary wrote "Actually, it kinda is."
Forum discussion at Reddit.
