SEARCH ENGINE LAND—Ever since it launched in 2009, Bing has been a very porn-friendly search engine, even though it was (and remains) dwarfed by Google in terms of the number of people using it and the number of adult sites that looked (and look) to it for traffic. But there are smoke signals emanating from reddit and other places that suggest that Bing's popularity as a preferred destination for porn queries remains intact and possibly growing, even if many people like it because it is a hassle-free destination for oodles of free porn.
Via an OutOfTheLoop reddit from a few months ago that spawned a Daily Dot article from a few days ago, which further gave birth to a story on Bustle.com, a web conversation about the best search engine for porn has been revived, with an expected consensus in favor of the world's third most popular search engine, behind both Google and Yahoo. That fact alone was noted by Bustle writer Emma Cueto, who wrote, "Overall, between the search results, the video preview feature, and the fact that it seems to be way easier to turn off safe searching, Bing does seem to be better at bringing you porn. But really that’s not so surprising—it’s actually the sort of thing I’d expect from a search engine whose commercials strongly suggest Google-related daddy issues. No, the surprising thing is that Bing actually did beat Google at something. Who would have ever guessed it? I mean, I know that Bing is the world’s third most popular search engine and all, but since that still means they’re losing to Yahoo, that isn’t saying much.
"But when it comes to porn," she added, "they seem to be number one."
Over at the Daily Dot, writer EJ Dickson notes the inescapable irony that "In the era of Pornhub and Redtube, griping about having trouble finding free online porn is a bit like complaining about how difficult it is to find shrooms at a jam band concert."
That said, he admits that when Google "tweaked" SafeSearch in 2012, making it "much harder to find hardcore smut on the search engine," a migration of porn fans to Bing quickly began, an otherwise unlikely event considering the fact that Bing, according to Dickson, is "a.k.a. the search engine you only reluctantly use after searching for anything on Facebook."
One very popular destination that became a "veritable shrine to the Bing porn search" was reddit, where users posted "informal paeans to the search engine’s virtues in r/AdviceAnimals and r/GIFS. Here’s a redditor imagining what life is like in the Bing offices (NSFW)."
So it was no surprise that the OutofTheLoop question from two months ago—Why does everyone say that Bing is great for porn?—generated a slew of responses, including:
“Google introduced filters a while ago that remove a lot of porn from search results, even if you have safe search turned off.”
“Going on Bing and video searching gets you the porn you want. No one cares about text or image searching, it’s all about the video searching.”
“Also since no one uses Bing, they will never see your previous/recommended searches.”
“I just assumed that if someone else checks my search history, they sure as hell aren’t going to check my Bing search history. They’ll check my Google one.”
Dickson comments, "Basically, the consensus seems to be that unlike Google, which requires you to type insanely specific keywords to get the kind of results you’re looking for, Bing’s video search immediately calls up a well-organized series of short links and related search terms along with your search results."
He reinforces his point with a side-by-side comparison of the video search for the term "blow job," the results for which could be more different.
Dickson's reaction to the Google results?: "This isn’t porn. I don't know what this is. It isn’t even NSFW."
His reaction to Bing's results?: "Ahhhh. OK. There. That's much better." For the visual results, go here, or just try it yourself.
Dickson also reached out to Bing/Microsoft to "see whether they’ve deliberately designed their search engine to make it easier to search for online smut, and if they’d like to comment on how revered they are among porn-loving Redditors," but did not expect a reply.
He got one, to wit: "A spokesperson for Microsoft has responded to the Daily Dot with the following statement: "Bing is focused on presenting the best possible multimedia experience period. Thanks to our SafeSearch technology, which by default is set to filter out adult content, we work to make sure people not only find what they want, but don't get what they don't."
From that statement, it sounds as if Bing is content with the status quo, which is good news for reddit and others who likewise look to Bing for their porn, though we would be remiss if we did not also point out that as amazing as Bing may be at providing never-ending rows of carefully curated porn videos offering the same legion of categories as are found on the most heavily trafficked tube sites, the vast majority of search result appear to be pulled from tube sites, and when one clicks on a video to watch it—though clicking is not necessary in order to watch thumbnail previews, which start automatically when the cursor is placed over them—one is not taken offsite but is kept on Bing where a larger window opens to play the explicit porn for free, and for as long and as many times as the viewer desires. No wonder its porn is so popular.
