Comments and Search Engines

I got a comment today that raised my eyebrows a bit.

Having read just a small portion of your literature, what the f*** are you doing placing this website with those that advertise childrens toys. I am not at all adverse to bad language, I use it myself, but not in front of my son who has just learnt to read, and was looking on the net to decide what he would like for xmas!!!! Thank god he is supervised. Be a little more responsible and who knows, you might get a larger following???? Amusing you are! Responsible you are not. When you’ve moved your site let me know ‘cos I’d love to visit it, just not when my son is around!!!!!!!!!!!!

The commenter left his email address too, but I’m not going to add that in

Now, OK, I know I’ve been abusive of late about the POS masquerading as Toymaster’s site, but “placing this website with those that advertise children’s toys“? Funny, thought I. A quick check in Nedstat showed that I’d been linked to by NTLWorld’s search engine if you do the search for that brand of toy shops. So no, I hadn’t intentionally associated myself with it.

I did a bit more checking – NTLWorld has a “search filter” you can set to None, Medium (explicit images only will be blocked), or High (explicit words and images will be blocked) – even on “High” the d4d™ result comes up, which is – frankly – a piece of utterly naff coding on the part of NTLWorld.

Now, I could change the way I write – but why should I temper my phrasing simply because NTL can’t write code worth a toss? However, it’s definitely time to start seriously looking at the new template and a couple of the ideas within it. For now though, I’m going to write an email to this commenter explaining why it came up, and that the link wasn’t my choice, along with suggesting a complaint to NTL about why their search filters don’t work (oh, and by the way, why they only work at all in IE, try swapping it in Opera and the thing doesn’t work at all).

I’ll post up the emails, and any responses, as and when they happen.