1. A bored male person opens the site and types the first thing that comes to his mind in the search box.
2. Website records this as a new search and suggests it at random to new visitors.
3. Curious people click it, interested to see what the site will respond.
4. Website notices it is a popular suggestion! Suggests it to more people.
5. GOTO 3.
I have seen similar bizarre (though not offensive) suggestions in google search.
My colleage typed: “how do I” and google suggested “how do i make my girlfriend hold her hand in front of a screen and pretend she’s a dinosaur”. (Or something like it). Someone typed it once, and if it is a random suggestion it gets clicked by about everybody.
For several years, searching "client/server database" on Google would return a first result for a web page with a pretty explicit description of a sex act, and then a million results referencing this page. At some point they fixed it, and evidence that this ever happened is hard to find. It survives in an urban dictionary entry[0]. I suspect the cause was pretty similar to what you describe.
1. A bored male person opens the site and types the first thing that comes to his mind in the search box.
2. Website records this as a new search and suggests it at random to new visitors.
3. Curious people click it, interested to see what the site will respond.
4. Website notices it is a popular suggestion! Suggests it to more people.
5. GOTO 3.
I have seen similar bizarre (though not offensive) suggestions in google search. My colleage typed: “how do I” and google suggested “how do i make my girlfriend hold her hand in front of a screen and pretend she’s a dinosaur”. (Or something like it). Someone typed it once, and if it is a random suggestion it gets clicked by about everybody.