The Guardian reports that the PCC has rejected all the complaints (more than 25,000) about Jan Moir's article about Stephen Gately.

As it's late, I shall limit myself to comparing the reported ruling with the original article ...

PCC: "While many complainants considered that there was an underlying tone of negativity towards Mr Gately and the complainant on account of the fact that they were gay, it was not possible to identify any direct uses of pejorative or prejudicial language in the article."

Jan Moir: "the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see".

What lifestyle does she mean here?

Jan Moir: "Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true."

How gracious - "may" be true "in many cases" that "not everyone" is like George Michael (whatever that means).

Jan Moir: "Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships."

What's she saying, that all civil partnerships are doomed to end unhappily?

PCC: Moir's claim that Gately's death had not been "natural", while controversial and speculative, "could not be established as accurate or otherwise".

Couldn't we have just use the post mortem to decide this?

I still get several visitors a day looking for Jan Moir. And while idly checking Google's results for a Jan Moir search, I noticed that a top-10 result for the Angry Mob's site - a post from September called Jan Moir: I'm thinking she's a piece of shit - has been toned down in Google's results.

So does Google edit out swear words for popular searches? Or has it done a manual hack on this one post to spare Jan's blushes? The evidence is leaning towards the latter ... (I should apologise in advance for all the swearing - I've tried to limit it to only to what is necessary. Beware of running the google searches I describe - they will show swear words).

The curious case of the missing swearword

Here's a screenshot of the Google results page, showing the post (now at position 13) for a search on [Jan Moir]:

Jan Moir: picture shows no swear word

Jan Moir is no longer a bit of excrement. Until recently, Google showed the full title (ie including swearword) in its results. Now, instead, the title is given as "Jan Moir - Angry Mob - we read the papers everyday" (the URL still shows the word 'shit' though).

This title text doesn't appear anywhere like that on the page - it's just the first two words of the page title, and then the site's name and strapline (as it appears on the homepage title). Click through to the Google cache and the page has the real title, swear word and all.

It seems impossible to make Google return the real title. Search for Jan Moir and the s word, and you see the same as above. Search for Jan Moir I'm thinking, and you see a title of "Jan Moir: I'm thinking she's a piece - Angry Mob" - a slightly different title, but no swear word again:

Different title for the same Jan Moir post - but still no swear word

These searches are all with the google SafeSearch filter set to moderate ("Filter explicit images only - default behavior"). Changing to "Do not filter my search results" doesn't make any difference.

Google and swearing

I can't find any policy of Google's about swear words in results. On the one hand, I can see why they'd want to exclude them as children could be surfing.

On the other hand, Google suggest throws up insults about Gordon Brown and Prince Charles.

And it's incredibly easy to make swear words appear. As Joanna Butler pointed out to me, the Urban Dictionary has loads of results with the s word in. And Dean Cruddace showed me how a search for the internet is includes the s word in the second result. Search for Gordon Brown is and you get the c word on the first page ...

Conclusion

Initially I thought maybe Google tries to keep swear words out of the results for popular searches. This would explain why searches for 'Gordon Brown is' (not a common search) show swear words but a search for 'Jan Moir' doesn't (searches for which rocketed in October according to Google Insights).

But this doesn't explain why the 'shit' title for the Angry Mob's post isn't shown for a search on 'Jan Moir I'm thinking' - a search which isn't going to be popular, and which shows yet another variation on the title.

So that leaves us with Google hand editing the title to remove the swear word.

What do you think?

The furore over Jan Moir has thrown up several interesting SEO issues. Here's a basic one - how should you link to something you detest?

The problem with linking

Put simply, Google counts a link to a page / website as a vote for that page / website. So everyone who blogged about, and linked to, Jan Moir's article on Stephen Gately has, unfortunately, helped that particular article AND the Daily Mail website as a whole do better in Google's results. (According to Yahoo Site Explorer, there were 334 links to the original URL and 541 links to the URL after it was changed - that's 875 links in total)

Google will notice a lot more pages linking to the Mail, a lot more websites linking to the Mail - and will decide that the Mail and that Jan Moir article must be more important than they were the day before.

(You don't need to worry about linking in Twitter, though, as I explain below.)

You can see the effect here. A search for the letter 'a' in Google currently brings up Jan Moir's article first. (Update - it no longer does.) (It didn't used to. Fortunately, at the moment, that article is only on the second page of results for a search on 'Stephen Gately'. Notice, too, they've forgotten to update the meta description).

Jan Moir ranks 1st for a search on the letter 'a'

Here's how to get round it ...

The easy solution - don't link to it. Sometimes you have to, however - in the short term, you may need your readers to be able to read something to make sense of what you've written.

I saw someone suggesting a URL shortener like bit.ly. This won't work as, with most URL shorteners, Google looks at the ultimate link (read this post on the difference between URL shorteners' use of 301 and 302 redirects to understand why).

The best way to avoid your link counting as a vote is to add rel=nofollow to your links.

This means the links will still work as before for normal users - but nofollow tells search engines to ignore the links when calculating pages' importance - in other words, the link no longer counts as a vote. (Google has an explanation of nofollow.)

How to add nofollow

If you've got blogger or wordpress, adding this is easy. Once you've added a link as normal, just click on the HTML tag of the editor where you write your post - it looks like this picture in wordpress.

Add rel="nofollow" in HTML view

Then scroll down to where the link is. You'll see some text like this:

Jan Moir has written a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1220756/Why-natural-Stephen-Gatelys-death.html">disgusting piece</a> for the Mail on the death of Stephen Gately

The bit code in < > brackets is what makes the link. So you just need to add rel="nofollow" (with a space before and after) inside the bit of code that beings <a href="http: ...

So it now looks like this:

Jan Moir has written a <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1220756/Why-natural-Stephen-Gatelys-death.html">disgusting piece</a> for the Mail on the death of Stephen Gately

Then click the other tab at the top to return to the normal view. You won't notice any difference there - but you can be happy that, in Google's eyes, you're not promoting whatever you're linking to. Result!

Don't worry about Twitter

You don't have to worry about linking to something in Twitter. Twitter automatically adds nofollow to all links that you tweet. (Thanks to Minifig for the point.) And, likewise, comments in blogs usually have nofollow added to links automatically.

There's a lot to remember when you're running around in a social media storm, as Jan Moir discovered last week. It would seem that updating meta descriptions isn't high on the list ...

This meta description doesn't sit well alongside Moir's so-called apology

The meta description (the 'invisible' description used by search engines to describe a page) on Jan Moir's article about Stephen Gately's death still reads (at nearly 11pm on Monday):

Our columnist asks why no-one will face up to the sordid reality of the Boyzone star's demise.

In a fairly lame attempt to deflect the criticism this article provoked, the Mail had changed the headline last week from "Why there was nothing natural about Stephen Gately's death" to "A strange, lonely and troubling death..."

And as she was being reviled across the internet, Jan put out a statement saying:

"Some people ... have been upset by my article about the sad death of Boyzone member Stephen Gately. This was never my intention. Stephen ... was a charming and sweet man who entertained millions. However, the point of my column ... was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, his death raises many unanswered questions. That was all."

Am I the only one who thinks suggesting he was sweet but that his sad death raises many unanswered questions isn't quite the same as asking about the "sordid reality of his demise".

Or did the Mail change the headline but forget to change the meta description?

Update Tuesday 9.20am: They're still using this wording on their columnists' page (click the Femail heading to see it) to describe Jan Moir's Stephen Gately piece:

The wording is being used explicitly on the site too

Poor show.

As part of the fuss over Jan Moir, the Daily Mail ended up changing the headline and the URL of its story and 301 redirecting the old URL to the new one.

Message about the original page on the new URL

I wondered what would happen to the Sidewikis written on the original URL, such as this one.

The original headline and URL were:

• Why there was nothing natural about Stephen Gately's death
• /femail/article-1220756/Why-natural-Stephen-Gatelys-death.html

The new headline and URL became:

• A strange, lonely and troubling death...
• /femail/article-1220756/A-strange-lonely-troubling-death--.html

The answer is that Google keeps the Sidewiki, and adds a message at the bottom saying "Originally about: Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death | Mail Online"

So you can't defeat Sidewiki by just redirecting an old URL to a new one.

Update Rachel has commented below that she and others on a Facebook group had been even more proactive and along with others had been phoning the press offices / media buyers of the relevant advertisers. So I'm not sure I should claim too much credit for this ...

Original post: Oh my God, we've won. I started encouraging people to tweet to BT, M&S and Visit England asking them to pull their advertising from the disgusting Jan Moir Stephen Gately article.

This has happened! Even better, the Mail has pulled every advert from the page! See screenshot - the holes are where the ads were.

The holes are where the ads were ...

Another triumph for Twitter! If you were planning to blog about this, why not check out my campaign against cervical cancer vaccine scaremongering. I need bloggers to help. Thanks.

Update According to Google, at 2.45pm, Jan Moir is the 42nd most popular search in the last hour. The Mail must be loving the traffic they are getting. So, why don't you try contacting the advertisers on that page to let them know what you think of their brand sitting alongside the story? Try retweeting this tweet to M&S. Update 2 Don't bother, we won!

Jan Moir: hot (as a search term)

Jan Moir has written a disgusting piece for the Mail on the death of Stephen Gately arguing that while "all the official reports point to a natural death, with no suspicious circumstances ... 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again."

Yes, Jan, they do. People die. It's sad. She goes on to suggest, with no evidence, that his death is "sleazy".

The interesting thing is that the comments appear to show that Jan is out of touch with the Mail's readers. (The other explanation is that the  Twitter backlash has prompted large numbers of people to swing by and vote up/down the comments.)

Also, the Mail's comment-voting system is creaking at the seams and timing out - maybe the weight of angry people on this page?

Best rated comments

Best rated comments by other readers include:

Shame on this journalist who wrote the article and those who agree with her are just as bad. (+559 rating)

I cannot believe that Jan Moir has the audacity to write such a piece. Disgusting. (+506)

This is a very slimy article with lots of horrible undertones and a lot of inaccuracies. Healthy men do die in their sleep, fact. Why is it necessary to paint some sleazy picture of his last few hours? What are your intentions here? I am a married mother of three and I found reading this article extremely distasteful. I found it intrusive and disrespectful to his family and friends. This is not an article to challenge the our PC world gone mad; it is just a opportunist and snide piece of journalism.  Let the man be buried and have some decency. (+502)

One of the best rated comments

Worst rated comments

I won't repeat many of these, but they've got minus ratings in the minus hundreds, including:

A very brave and constructive article. In our current PC world, I hope Jan wont be pilloried for being truthful. (-380)

At last someone has the guts to say what they really think about the Steven Gateleys death. Congratulations! Excellent piece!!! (-284)

More information

• Martin Belam has written before about the Mail comments system.
• Anton Vowl has a good piece on this Jan Moir article.
• And there's a spot on sidewiki on the page, too, by Sarah Goodwin.