Would swear words affect site popularity?

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Would swear words affect site popularity?

dravidia

10:08 pm on Mar 31, 2008 (gmt 0)

Hello all I just joined WW and this is my first question on here so be gentle :)

I'm planning on setting up a commentary type site, but plan on using swear words in my day-to-day content to up the humour level of the site.

I'm also going to allow people to comment more or less freely on the site, and this is invariably going to involve comments with foul language in it. I strongly believe that my target audience would not be offended by it.

Is this a generally bad idea?
Would it make some ISP's block my site?
Would I be listed lower in searches or even blacklisted because of it?
Do hosting providers generally refuse to host such sites?

I was hoping to use this type of humour as part of the branding for the site, so if anyone can give me an idea on how this would affect things, I'd appreciate it!

BigDave

3:17 am on Apr 1, 2008 (gmt 0)

You are unlikely to have any problems as far as hosting goes. You will probably not get any links from uptight sites, and you won't get traffic from people that search with SafeSearch on, but otherwise the search engines aren't likely to punish you.

Where most people run into problems with language is with various advertising programs.

dravidia

4:30 pm on Apr 2, 2008 (gmt 0)

Thanks BigDave ... just wanted to check before i start authoring :)

thecoalman

1:52 pm on Apr 4, 2008 (gmt 0)

I use filter (or censor) for my forum content which will automatically censor any words in the bad word list. The users can turn it off. Using something similar in a standard page shouldn't be that hard to work in.