A year ago I wrote a blog article entitled, “Child Safety: Stop Posting Naked Photos of Your Kids.” It got sort of decent engagement, few shares, and fewer comments. In general it was pretty much ignored. My child advocate friends and colleagues helped as best as they could by sharing (thank you Ginger Kadlec!), but the overall feedback I received was underwhelming to the point of being disappointing.
“Why isn’t anybody noticing this important article about keeping kids safe?” I’ve been thinking to myself over the course of the past year. That is until I realized recently that there were many, many people noticing this article. And upon this discovery my heart sank immediately, my vision blurred, my ears started ringing, and I got about as close as one can get to vomiting without having to run to the toilet.
Let me start off by explaining what a search engine query is, in case you don’t know. Each time you visit Google, or Bing, or Yahoo, and type a series of words into the search engine browser, you create a search engine query. Different then keywords, queries are the exact sequence of words (misspellings and all) that you type into that white box. Some recent examples of my personal queries: “Female owned businesses in Austin Texas,” “Innovative shoulder mobility exercises,” “How late is the Valencia post office open until.”
The search engine then tries to decide what information you’re looking for and sends you a list of websites it thinks is the best fit for your search engine query. How does it determine which pages are best? It’s complicated, but one of the ways is by matching the titles of pages (articles, blogs, website home pages, etc.), and content of pages, to the words in the query. So if someone queries, “Jarrett Arthur self-defense,” Google, or whatever they’re using, will send them a link to my website because it’s the best match.
As a website owner and Google analytics customer, I have access to a report on the top search engine queries created by other people that are determined to be a match with my site, or pages on my site. Below is a screenshot of an actual report I just pulled from my website data. It shows 34 commonly used search engine queries that people have entered into their browsers that their search engines have determined my website is the best match for…
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
So, in case you’re lost and not understanding what’s happening here let me spell it out. Of all the ways that search engine users on the internet find my website through queries, the above 34 commonly used phrases from around the world are among the most prevalent. Because of the words in the title of my blog post on not posting naked photos of kids, which contains words associated with these queries above, Google and other search engines send these query creators to my blog post. Each entry does not represent one single query. This list represents the most commonly used queries.
Are you paying attention? Pedophiles scour the internet looking for naked photos of children. They get sent to me because of the words I used in my blog post, but even if your photo does not use “naked” in the caption or in the surrounding content, search engines can still flag your photo as the best match for these queries and send your pics directly to someone who has entered “naked child photos” or something similar into their search engine.
If you are a parent or relative who posts photos of your child in various stages of undress, or completely nude, it is imperative that you stop doing this immediately! This is not some fear mongering article I’m writing to get attention, this is a desperate plea, based on facts, to no longer supply pedophiles with unlimited material.
It is disgusting to think that when we post innocent photos of children in bathtubs, running through the sprinklers, playing in the backyard pool, or enjoying the beach, that child abusers are actively hunting for our pictures online, but this is the reality of the world that we live in.
If you wouldn’t post the exact same picture of yourself online, do not post it of your children. Keep nude child photos private and protect our kids!
As for me, should I pull the article? Hell no. Let these despicable human beings continue to find me, my website, and these articles.
The post Proof You Need to Stop Posting Naked Photos of Your Kids Now appeared first on Jarrett Arthur.