The way search engines promote certain words and messages has a powerful impact.

With over 63,000 searches a second, Google is an incredibly influential source, making millions of connections between people and websites every day.

Earlier this year, French communications consultant Fanchon Mayaudon-Nehlig and her wife began to campaign against one particular Google anomaly, which occurred when you searched for “lesbienne” - the French for “lesbian”.

Due to the algorithms in place at the time, the results were dominated by pornographic sites.

In April, Mayaudon-Nehlig decided to create an activist group called SEO Lesbienne to combat the algorithm.

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“I created the hashtag #SEOlesbienne on Twitter in April after my wife, Louise, made me aware that she wasn't comfortable using the word ‘lesbienne’ in public,” Mayaudon-Nehlig told Huffington Post.

The campaign gained traction online and in French press, so #SEOlesbienne decided to recruit search engine optimisation experts with the aim of “hacking the SEO for the word 'lesbienne'".

On 9 August, Google announced that it had changed its algorithm so that searches for “lesbienne” would provide more representative results.

Since then, the search results have begun changing. However, because the shift is still in its early stages, according to the outlet, pornographic content may still come up.

According to Mayaudon-Nehlig, the campaign highlighted the sexualisation of lesbianism and women’s sexuality.

“Gay porn is marketed to gay men. ‘Lesbienne’ is a tag on pornographic sites marketed to heterosexual men,” Mayaudon-Nehlig said. “Lesbians on the internet are there to satisfy adult male sexual appetites. That's the only goal.

“The word "lesbienne" does not belong to the porn industry. It belongs to us, and we are glad that Google gave us the opportunity to own it.”

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