Neil Baldwin's blog

I hope you have all been using Google’s instant search features. Just to remind yiu you need to be logged in to Google and go to the google page to do your search, searching from the browser search or address bar does not do it. When you search Google presnts the search results as you typen not just the old suggested stuff that appears in the search box but the full results for what you have typed.
Any way it turns out that there are some words that that cause the search results to “white out”. It seems that iif you type a rude or offensive word as you type Google the ajax code somehow is triggered to white the page out. This will open up some interesting stuff.
If it happens you kind of wonder what you have done to cause it. Have you searched for something you shouldn’t or just made a typing error? You can imagine that if you notice someone on google and you see the screen blank, you will wonder what they had done, it is sort of an invasion of privacy.
This also has some implications for some people and companies, as some will fall foul of the trigger words. For example Bitch Magazine, Scunthorpe Council, a Russian name that start Urinea!
Google also get a lot of statistics about how we search and type. The search feature waits for pauses in your typing before presenting in the results, this means they get a real insight into the way you search, do you type the whole lot, or just a word then add more words until you find what you want?
Only time will tell what the trigger word are, how they will deal ith peoples name clashes.