I was searching and searching this morning for how to filter my Netflix recommendations based on the MPAA rating. A lot of movies I like are action movies, and it turns out a lot of action movies are rated R. Since I don't watch rated R movies, I spent a lot of time clicking through recommendations for movies I would never watch.

Apparently my problem was that I was looking in the wrong place. I thought the rating filtering would be under Taste Preferences. Turns out it's in another spot entirely. Here are the instructions that I found on the Netflix Feature Wishlist:

1. Go to the top of the netflix website, next to your name, you'll see a link to "Your Account",
2. After clicking on that, click on the link that says "Account Profiles",
3. Click on "Edit" next to the profile you wish to change,
4. Click on "Maturity Level" and choose the level you wish to have access to only.

If you don't want to see movies rated R, just set the maturity level to PG-13. It worked like a charm. I no longer see recommendations for rated R movies. I only wish this had been easier to find.

Update: After using this for a few months, I've noticed that it's less than perfect. The levels you can select are all movie ratings (G, PG, PG-13, R, All Movies). Unfortunately, TV show ratings are slightly different, and the filtering doesn't match up. For example, I selected PG-13 as my maturity level, but I want to be able to watch TV shows like 24, which is rated TV-14. Apparently because 14 is higher than 13, I can't watch TV-14 shows unless my filter settings are set to "R."