Yahoo visitors searching for "link" were in for quite a surprise earlier this week, as it seems Yahoo recommended the infamous "2 Girls 1 Cup" video as part of its suggested search entries.

Let me warn you ahead of time: if you haven't already seen it, do not look the video up. Especially if you're at work. 2 Girls 1 Cup is best described as a disgusting shock pornography meme that is currently making the rounds around the Internet, and a number of videos have sprung up on Youtube showing peoples' reactions upon having it unsuspectingly shown to them.

It appears that Yahoo's goof wasn't intentional, but merely the result of the system's automatic search system. As the innocuously-named 2G1C video has been making the internet rounds lately, it seems natural that Yahoo's system would suggest it if it were being searched for enough. It concerns me though, as "Link" is also the name of the chief protagonist from The Legend of Zelda series of videogames; it's entirely possible that someone running a search for "Link" might find Yahoo's suggestions curious.

Yahoo's flub serves as an excellent illustration to the downsides of letting technology think for us: unlike humans, a computer program doesn't have standards beyond what its programmers coded in, and as a result we get the occasional little aberration such as this. Further, it sounds like someone might be able to poison future "also try" results by gaming Yahoo's search recommendations system; in fact I would consider it entirely plausible if 2G1C ended up getting recommended in the first place.

The good news is that Yahoo has since adjusted their search recommendations to something that isn't 2 Girls 1 Cup. My most recent search for "link" yielded suggestions like "add link," "pa career link," "philippine news link," "tv link," and the ceaseless "more..."

EDIT: Fellow DailyTech writer Chris Peredun, posting in the comments section, puts it best: "Be warned - there are some things you can't un-see. This video is one of them."