[Cowperson]

Originally posted by Cowperson@Feb 9 2005, 10:06 PM
I sent them an e-mail asking them if they were making a political statement and asking them to reply.

We'll see if anything happens.

I could easily see some lower level guy setting things up without the top dogs knowing about it.

Cowperson

Sitting here in my office minding my own business when Google responded to my query above:

Thank you for your note about our search results. The particular case you
refer to is the result of the dynamic nature of the internet and Google's
reliance on the web's link structure as part of our search calculation.
The order and contents of Google search results are completely automated.
No one hand picks a particular result for a given search query. Nor does
Google ever insert jokes or send messages by changing the order of
results. Occasionally, when a particular website is the subject of public
attention, other sites begin linking to it. This may elevate its
importance as gauged by our ranking software, which assigns a PageRank
value based in part on who links to a given page.

Higher ranking in Google results may lead to more awareness, which may
lead to more links and so on. One side effect of not using an editorial
viewpoint to determine the ranking of results is that anomalies like this
occasionally occur. We view such occasions as opportunities for us to
learn more about how the web works and how to improve our algorithms for
all searches in the future.

Thanks for taking the time to write to us.

Regards,
The Google Team

Comments?

Cowperson