A suggestive story implying a Facebook-related link between golfer Tiger Woods, musician Lady Gaga and the word ‘sex’ has failed to produce any discernible increase in web traffic for gossip website Pimpsandhos.com, much to the publisher’s disappointment.

Despite repeated mentions of the disgraced sports star Tiger Woods in close proximity to in-vogue singer Lady Gaga and the words ‘Facebook’ and ‘sex’, it seems the site has failed to influence search engine algorithms in any significant way. This is despite ‘Tiger Woods’, ‘Lady Gaga’, ‘Facebook’ and ‘sex’ being amongst 2009′s most searched keywords.

“I was convinced any story about Lady Gaga and Tiger Woods being involved in Facebook sex was bound to give us an uplift in visits,” said Pimpsandhos.com site owner Tom Scheffler. “According to the analytics firms, ‘Facebook’ has run away with the title of most searched keyword this year, while ‘sex’ is a perennial winner. I also thought Tiger Woods and Lady Gaga were guaranteed to bring in visitors after the year they have had.

“Michael Jackson could have completed the picture, but I couldn’t come up with a tasteful way of working him into the Facebook sex story alongside Lady Gaga and Tiger Woods.”

Google is highly secretive about how it works out its search rankings, saying only that it uses criteria that balance relevance with popularity. However any site that manages to push its way onto the first page of results for top keywords like ‘Facebook’, ‘Tiger Woods’, ‘Lady Gaga’ and ‘sex’ can expect huge amounts of visitors via Google alone.

Yet the search engine takes a dim view of websites that attempt to trick its algorithms, penalising them in its rankings. “I guess this is where the ‘Tiger Woods, Lady Gaga Facebook Sex’ story fell down,” said Scheffler. “I’m just going to have to think of more imaginative, relevant stories to generate interest in the Celebrity Sex Tape section of the site.”