Is Google Trying To Ensure Imogen Thomas Footballer Is Not Named In Autocomplete?

The case of Imogen Thomas is a apparently a big legal deal in the UK.

The old order (who *might* be unfamiliar with how the interweb works) have super injunctions out to everyone to censor the details of, and alledged doings with, alledgedly, a famous footballer in the UK. It’s apparently a very dangerous thing to even discuss.

Imogen, 28, was exposed as the married Premier League star’s mistress but he won a court order to remain anonymous. Source:

Now I don’t really care about Imogen Thomas (well, rather, I wish her the best of luck), but I thought it was curious when I typed in Imogen Thomas into Google after seeing it on the news here in the UK.

hmmmmm…… no Google suggest results? (which is a GREAT little free tool for keyword research by the way). As an seo I am used to looking at Google for little nuances but this seems like a very obvious one.

As you type, Google’s algorithm predicts and displays search queries based on other users’ search activities. These searches are algorithmically determined based on a number of purely objective factors (including popularity of search terms) without human intervention. All of the predicted queries shown have been typed previously by Google users. The autocomplete dataset is updated frequently to offer fresh and rising search queries. In addition, if you’re signed in to your Google Account and have Web History enabled, you may see search queries from relevant searches that you’ve done in the past.

Well the above statement isn’t quite true for this search…..and strange because Google does pick up minor celebs ;)

Perhaps nobody is searching for Imogen Thomas I mean she is a munter….

OK, maybe not!

Right enough, looking at the Google keyword tool - plenty of people are looking for information on this former big brother contestant so you would *assume* they were looking for her now.

(Disclosure – I have edited some of that keyword data just in case because it has random famous people’s names in it who are probably nothing to do with this case…..)

Using Google trends you can see people DO search a lot for her…..

So…. where is Google Suggest (or Autocomplete) results for this big brother celeb? Is this a big enough deal for Google to censor for legal reasons?

Conspiracy? Or glitch? Playing it safe? I might be missing something obvious here it has been a very…. long day….. (i wrote this last night)

But it kind of gets weirder.

I can generate a Google Suggest auto complete query for every single search of {Imogen} + {any letter of the alphabet – APART from the letter ‘T’}

As soon as you put Imogen T…. in Google search….. Google isn’t going to go out of it’s way to help you that much to uncover any information about her at the moment……

Note: If they are – they have a job on their hands…..

If Google wants to ensure it has taken measures to make sure this doesn’t become a headache for it… they might need to go further, and into other areas like Realtime etc.

*A few folks asked me if this could be the Google adult filter kicking in on some level. I did consider that, however I didn’t think her images were that adult. It could be an adult filter at work of course – though a search for say Jodie Marsh, for instance, who’s arguably more notable than Imogen and a lads mag favourite (I hear), or Katie Price for instance, or fellow Big Brother contestant Chantelle Houghton seems to activate Autocomplete – which is why I wondered about it.

*** This COULD be because she has a sex tape.

COMMENTS ON THIS POST

I’m discussing Google auto suggest here (or Google ‘suggest as you type’ search recommendations) – any comments with any names in it other than Imogen Thomas will not be published. Nor will any theories about who the ‘star’ is. I don’t care.

UPDATE: MONDAY 23 MAY 2011

So a premier footballer has been named in the house of commons. And as of today – Imogen Thomas searches on autocomplete seem to be breaking through some filters (though this could be just that the name is filtered because of her sex tape – and Google autocomplete can’t keep up with the volume of searches):

Clearly, you can see Google now auto-completes searches for ‘imogen thomas’:

Closing….

One thing’s for sure. The PR person or persons advising the premier league footballer at the centre of the Imogen Thomas on how to deal with this social media backlash are incompetent.

Disclosure – This post was just a test post – I wanted to see how trusted the Hobo blog was in Google and how it faired against the domain authority of other sites.

End result – Highest result it ranked was number 2 for “imogen thomas”- it’s currently top ten in the uk –  Nearly 50,000 visitors to this post in the last few weeks.

It looks as though this post *might* have been accurate. Google is certainly filtering the name Imogen thomas at some level. For what? Is the question…… only Google knows