Is ‘Suicide’ Themed Search Engine Optimisation Likely to Be Harmful?

Abstract

Objective: To increase website prominence, search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques use high-value keywords to attract users. As the search term ‘suicide’ is being used to attract browsers, it is important to understand whether this confusing practice is harmful or beneficial.

Method: To provide a method of documenting browser confusion, online searches used signal detection theory and subtractive methodologies to consider the impact of search terms: ‘painless methods’, ‘suicide’, ‘alcohol’, and ‘gambling’. The distributions of ‘harmful’ and ‘harmless’ content in 800 search results provided by Google in June 2023 were examined. The degree of overlap occurring between ‘harmful’ and ‘harmless’ content was indicated by d’, while the willingness to report harmful results was indicated by β.

Results: The most harmful search (largest d’) resulted from the search term ‘Painless Methods’, but Google was less willing to report this content (highest β). Including the search term ‘Suicide’ elicited more helpful sites and reduced d’. However, more harmful content was shown when the terms ‘Alcohol’ or ‘Gambling’ were added.

Discussion: Using the word ‘Suicide’ on websites is actually beneficial, and can flag the site for health services, but deliberately using it to attract the vulnerable to harmful websites seems inappropriate.