Could Profanity Decrease Google Trust in a Website?

[Peter264]

Could profanity such as swear words or cursing decrease the trust Google has in a website?  For example, abusive comments... etc?  I'm not talking about the SafeSearch filter, I'm talking about the overall trust of the website.

Your thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[ReneReinholdt]

I doubt it but have no real proof.. except porn sites and so on tend to rank very high

[Andy.Drinkwater]

It is interesting and no-one actually has a definitive answer on this. A best guess would say to me that too much profanity takes away from real useful content that is related to the audience. That is the way I would see it. For that, I would say ease back on the swearing as, lets be honest, there is no need for it - unless it is a site all about swearing!  

Andy

[CPU]

2 or 3 years ago I remember seeing an article which suggested that there were certain "stop words" that would reduce the chance of a site rankinghighlyl but I have never seen any further articles or any empirical evidence and none of the sites I have worked on have profanities on them.

As suggested below there are some sites with "rude" content that still manage to get ranked well despite profanities but perhaps Google takes into  account whether it is appropriate for the category of site.

[ReneReinholdt]

I just dusted off my memory banks (the hardware ones in my brain) and if I am not mistaken (don't know if it still there) there were a paragraph in the Google terms of use that stated that explicit content has to be at least 3 clicks away from the front-page. But on the other hand I just did a quick search on porn and none of them live up to that condition so it doesn't seem like that rule is being enforced if it was ever there. It is interesting but I must admit I have never had a reason to research the subject since I have never had a client that had explicit content.