Search for “how google works” in Google – one of the top results (#3) is: http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html.
Apparently, this was an April Fool’s joke back in 2002. 8 years later, this page is ranking in the top results for the term “how google works”, which is typed into the search engine almost 15,000 times a year, according to the Google Keyword Tool.
I usually commend creativity and a transparency of a company’s personality, but people are looking for a serious answer when they search for “how google works”. As a matter of fact, the majority of these searches are coming from India and Singapore. How many of them do you think know what April Fool’s is? India celebrates a festival called Holi, but it’s in early March and very loosely related to our day of pranks in April.
Let’s hope there aren’t people walking around the world thinking about starting a search engine using a horde of Hawks…