Adwords keyword tool censoring adult content?

Aug 14, 2008

I'm just trying to setup an Adwords campaign for an adult website. And I noticed the Adwords keyword suggestion tool is refusing to give me keyword data on the adult searches.

I'm pretty sure this is a recent change - I remember using the very same tool a couple of months back when doing the organic SEO for the site, and it was working fine then.

Now I'm getting the following message when I enter an adult keyword into the tool...

We are sorry, but we were unable to generate relevant keywords for this keyword. Please make sure you have entered the keyword correctly. Or, enter another keyword into the box to see related keywords.

Enter a family-friendly word and the tool works fine. Also the internal keyword search within Adwords is refusing to give me results for adult words.

I'm no expert in Adult Adwords campaigns (or even regular Adwords campaigns), but I'm pretty sure this behaviour has changed recently.

If so, I wonder why? The internet was founded on porn and dodgy adult content, and Google is happy to index these sites organically and take our Adwords dollars off us. So why can't we have the keyword data to help us make informed decisions on our campaigns, just like any other site?

Or perhaps this is just a glitch in one of the data centres, and things will come back to normal sooner or later.