Those are some interesting results. But I did the experiment myself, and when you include the word "continent" in the African and Asian search you do actually get mostly results of maps rather than images of people/things that might be called African or Asian. It's not surprising to me that just the words "African" and "Asian" would pull up so many images of people and things. Americans do not tend to use the words "South American," "European," or "North American" to refer to people and things nearly as much, so it's likely that more instances of those words would be used to describe the continent (or the European Union). Though I do find it very interesting that "African" did pull up some images of the continent in the first 28 results while "Asian" did not, and the "Asian" images of people are so highly sexualized.

Racialized and feminized?

Why no Antarctican or Australian?

I just did a Google Images search and got the same results.  I wonder if there would be the same results in another continent, besides Europe and the US (assuming Sociological Cinema is US-based).

But when I type in those words in Greek, I do get images of maps and continent flags/symbols for all 6 continents.  Furthermore, when I type North American, African etc. as opposed to North America or Africa, I get mostly images of people.  Not only that, but because Greek is quite a gendered language, South American (masculine pronoun) shows me mostly men from said continent, public figures and both "modern" and ethnic-dressed anonymous figures alike; South American (feminine personal pronoun) gives  me mostly women in the same vein; and South American (neutral pronoun) gives me mostly inanimate cultural objects like food, animals, and pictures from recent headlines that have a connection with said continent.

I'm not arguing that the internet search results shown on this blog are not problematic.  I just think additional searches with a number of variables (different languages, different locations) need to be conducted in order to gain a more rounded perspective.

What the hell is the First Lady under African for?

Soo much going on here!

Europe is apparenyly rediced to the union, and mostly leaving out Russia and the eastern countries. What strikes me after a while is that colonies and other extra territories aren't included, like greenland and the french DOM TOMS (though I'm not sure of both of them are considered french)

Interstingly enough both Americas are almost exclusively maps (and a native person), so I suppose that from an American serach engine there simply isn't enough of a collected stereotype for those particular words.

The opposite is obviously true for Asia and Africa, and what's intersting here is that there seem to be more cultural preconceptions of Africa, since those pictures show examples of very particular elements of culture as representative for the whole continent. On the flipside, there's really nothing that culturally sets the Asia images apart from western culture, it's all about fetischizing East Asian physical traits, and signs of Russia or the middle east are nowhere to be found.

and as noted there are no results for Oceania, which could be a reflection that that continent somehow tends to be forgotten in the western narrative.

A quick tidbit - if you scroll down on the "North American" search the first photographs/non-map images are of military airplanes. There are a lot of military planes as you scroll through. 

I see that you're lacking one continent, Oceania, and you see two continents where there is only one (The Americas).

Asian with safe search off results in some porn too.

You guys know that you can access all local Google servers by just typing in the local Google address (i.e. Google.de for Germany, Google.co.jp for Japan etc.) in Google search and then clicking the link? Direct input in your browser will redirect you though.

Anyway results for Japanese Google are very similar for "Asian" and "European" but quite different for North and South American as well as African

North
http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=asian&hl=ja&prmd=imvnsl&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=wDZ2T8i_IuGdmQWL5eHpDw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CBgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=955#hl=ja&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=north-american&oq=north-american&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=img.12...0l0l7l6076l0l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0.frgbld.&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=dbf64ed8871cfdff&biw=1920&bih=955 

South
http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=asian&hl=ja&prmd=imvnsl&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=wDZ2T8i_IuGdmQWL5eHpDw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CBgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=955#hl=ja&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=south-american&oq=south-american&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=img.3...34843l35323l9l35616l5l5l5l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0.frgbld.&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=dbf64ed8871cfdff&biw=1920&bih=955 

African
http://www.google.co.jp/search?q=asian&hl=ja&prmd=imvnsl&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=wDZ2T8i_IuGdmQWL5eHpDw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CBgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1920&bih=955#hl=ja&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=african&oq=african&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_l=img.3..0l10.25189l26330l11l26597l7l7l0l1l1l0l68l395l6l6l0.frgbld.&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=dbf64ed8871cfdff&biw=1920&bih=955 

I took your head covering post and applied it to Google images for my tribe, "Orthodox Jewish". Where are all the women??? http://bit.ly/HAszcC

This is BS. I did a search for "asian" and a full third of what I got was porn. Self-censorship is dumb, Sociological Images blog.

Heh. Do a search for "American":
https://www.google.com/search?q=american&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=SZn&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnsz&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=elN2T6ujEMXItgfCyp2ODw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CBQQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=1076

Tuan Anh on the first page, Like a Boss.

search "Africa" the continent name not African. Search "Asia" not "Asian"

So there are Asian and African (and American) people, but South American, European and North American are geographical terms. On Google.

It's weird that if you said someone was European you'd be asked to be more specific but calling someone African or Asian isn't considered just as, if not more, uselessly vague. Well, not weird so much as just what you'd expect in commonly used English. I wonder if there are African or Asian languages where it works the other way: '"Asian" - what the hell is that? We're not all the same, like Europeans.'

All those Asian women and Asian Prince waaaaay at the end there.
"Hello Ladies!!!
I am such a rebel!!!!"

I searched アメリカン (American) from japan... Apparently they don't have an obsession with American girls... with one exception.http://www.google.co.jp/search?hl=ja&q=%E3%82%A2%E3%83%A1%E3%83%AA%E3%82%AB%E3%83%B3&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1920&bih=992&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=X3p3T4S6Gab30gGP5pigDQ

There's an obvious problem with using 'North American' as on par with 'Asian', which invalidates any direct comparisons. The former is nearly always used in a geographical sense, the latter both that and ethnic groups, persons, etc.

Flip that around and a comparison between 'Asian' and "Latino" would be just as (in)valid. So, for instance, any facile "this be objectification of minorities" argument isn't adequate.

As others have said:
Search for "Asia" instead-
https://www.google.com/search?q=asia&hl=en&prmd=imvnsz&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=WQR6T-m9L-OS2QXR77S2Bg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CA4Q_AUoAQ&biw=1285&bih=880

Search for "Africa" instead -
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1285&bih=880&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=africa&oq=africa&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_l=img.3..0l10.31857l33178l0l33516l6l6l0l2l2l0l186l454l1j3l4l0.frgbld.

Those are continent names and return the expected results.

"searching Google images for the continents"
Try nouns instead of adjectives next time. Good luck.

Humans over stupid white maps...? No contest. Funny though.

Apart from the wests opinion on Asia and S Africa there are a few Continents missing?!

Out of curiosity, I did all of the searches in (simplified) Chinese.

My results:

Asia: mostly maps, but a few pictures of groups of beautiful Asian women
Europe: half maps, half beautiful scenery/castles
Africa: a few maps, some wild animals, and lots of "natives"
Australia: half maps, half pics of the Sydney Opera House
North America: maps
South America: maps

Out of curiosity, I did all of the searches in (simplified) Chinese.

My results:

Asia: mostly maps, but a few pictures of groups of beautiful Asian women
Europe: half maps, half beautiful scenery/castles
Africa: a few maps, some wild animals, and lots of "natives"
Australia: half maps, half pics of the Sydney Opera House
North America: maps
South America: maps

This is pointless. "Asian" is a porn or sexual preference on the internet, which drives google image results. If you searched "asia" instead, you'd get a bunch of maps and flags.

I suggest you do your search again using the actual names of the continents "North America" "South America" "Asia" "Europe" "Africa"

A lot of people commenting here seem to be missing the point of the post.

You know what's funny, 90% of South American images are from Brazil and US citizens still have no clue what that huge-ass country IS, not to mention the humongous differences between us brazilians and everyone else in Latin America.

the thing I find most interesting about this discussion is what is missing: any real understanding of how Google algorithm's work, and what input they are based upon. These search terms are adjectives which are normally followed by a noun of some type. Without the noun specified, Google's algorithm implies the most popular nouns used in searches. Therefore, what is shown tells us something about what the most common searches on Google by English speakers in the U.S. made for "European" (European Union) and "Asian" (Asian Women or Girls). Which is highly revealing about the search interests of American Google users, but says nothing at all about Google (other than it's algorithm uses popular searches to fill in missing terms).