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Is Herndon the most obscene municipality in America?

The 4.2-square-mile Town of Herndon, with a population of approximately 23,000, has received its share of business-media accolades over the years. In 2006, it was named one of the "Most Affordable Suburbs" in America by BusinessWeek magazine. This past summer, the municipality was ranked one of the top 25 national locations to live "For The Rich and Single" by Money magazine.

But the town's mayor is a little reticent to accept Herndon's latest designation, that of "Most Obscene City in America."

On Nov. 10, Herndon was given that dubious distinction by The Business Insider, an online business site based in New York City. The Web site has been in existence for nearly three years and is staffed by a crew of about a dozen people, according to Deputy Editor Dan Frommer, a former technology reporter for Forbes Magazine.

Frommer said Herndon's title as "Most Obscene City" stems from an online study of "obscene" words made famous by comedian George Carlin's "seven dirty words you can never say on television" comedy routine.

The seven infamous expletives are entered into Google Trends, which compiles the information and determines what localities have searched for those specific terms the most.

"We were inspired by a 2008 Pensacola, Florida, court case in which a defense attorney had planned to use residents' Google search information to prove that the city's morals were abnormally lax," Frommer said. "That gave us the idea to use George Carlin's 'obscene' words in the same way and see which localities searched for them the most. Last year, Louisville came in first, and this year it was Herndon."

Not so fast, said Herndon Mayor Steve DeBenedittis in a Nov. 17 news release. "Herndon, and in fact the entire Dulles Corridor, is fortunate to be home to leading technology companies, including Internet service providers," he explained. "Therefore, much Web traffic that goes through Herndon likely originates elsewhere in the region. Google Trends, the source of [The] Business Insider's 'research,' can only attribute traffic to a region. It can't pinpoint it to an exact location -- such as a 4.2 square mile town."

"The same thing happened early last year when the Internet Crimes Against Children task force put out a report early last year that there were 1,000 computers with child pornography on them in Herndon," said Lt. Jeff Coulter, Herndon's police spokesman. "When we looked into the GPS coordinates, they led us to a junction box on Herndon Parkway."

"That probably also explains why our upstanding neighbor to the east, Reston, is also high [No. 5] on this list," DeBenedittis added in his release.

"Obviously, this was all done tongue-in-cheek," said Frommer after seeing the release. "But I did talk to Google about this, and they said Google Trends actually can differentiate between where a search originates and any data center that it is routed through."

Google representative Anne Espiritu said in an e-mail that Google Trends "uses IP address information from our server logs to make a best guess about where queries originated."

"We understand that this was all done tongue-in-check," explained Herndon Public Information Officer Anne Curtis on Friday. "But there were media reports that were picking up on the 'most obscene' title without explaining all the details behind it, so the tongue-in-cheek spirit was not readily apparent."

Curtis said it became obvious to her that there was something wrong with the study's results when Herndon beat major cities like Philadelphia and Boston.

But Frommer says Google actually takes a municipality's population into account. "The fact that Herndon is a small town may very well have had something to do with the ranking." he said.

Either way, Frommer said it is all in good fun. "High-five to Mayor Steve," he said. "I have never been there, but I am sure that Herndon is a wonderful place to live."