Today I did a google search for the terms shatner jew and was shocked when the results came back. First of all, I noticed the following in the area where adwords would normally be located:     Offensive Search Results    We're disturbed about these results  as well. Please read our note here.   www.google.com/explanation   Being the curious individual that I am, I clicked on the link to see what this was all about even though I made an educated guess where this was going. Here's what the link produced:      http://www.google.com/images/google_sm.gif   An explanation of our search results.   If you recently used Google to search for the word Jew, you may have seen results that were very disturbing. We assure you that the views expressed by the sites in your results are not in any way endorsed by Google. We'd like to explain why you're seeing these results when you conduct this search.     A site's ranking in Google's search results relies heavily on computer algorithms using thousands of factors to calculate a page's relevance to a given query. Sometimes subtleties of language cause anomalies to appear that cannot be predicted. A search for Jew brings up one such unexpected result.     If you use Google to search for Judaism, Jewish or Jewish people, the results are informative and relevant. So why is a search for Jew different? One reason is that the word Jew is often used in an anti-Semitic context. Jewish organizations are more likely to use the word Jewish when talking about members of their faith. The word has become somewhat charged linguistically, as noted on websites devoted to Jewish topics such as these:     http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/vol01/vol01.174   http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah081500.asp     Someone searching for information on Jewish people would be more likely to enter terms like Judaism, Jewish people, or Jews than the single word Jew. In fact, prior to this incident, the word Jew only appeared about once in every 10 million search queries. Now it's likely that the great majority of searches on Google for Jew are by people who have heard about this issue and want to see the results for themselves.     The beliefs and preferences of those who work at Google, as well as the opinions of the general public, do not determine or impact our search results. Individual citizens and public interest groups do periodically urge us to remove particular links or otherwise adjust search results. Although Google reserves the right to address such requests individually, Google views the comprehensiveness of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page.     We apologize for the upsetting nature of the experience you had using Google and appreciate your taking the time to inform us about it.       Sincerely,        The Google Team       p.s. You may be interested in some additional information the Anti-Defamation League has posted about this issue at  http://www.adl.org/rumors/google_search_rumors.asp . In addition, we call your attention to Google's  search results  on this topic.              My apologies for the jumbled text, but I wanted everyone here to see this tripe ASAP. For as fat as Abe Foxman is, he certainly gets around, doesn't he? 