Typing "Sell" in Google Finance redirected to Apple Inc.

I always wonder with things like this just how many people within Google know about it.<p>A single renegade engineer? A handful? Or A team having some fun with the approval of their managers and everything?<p>Is there an internal policy about easter eggs? If so, what is it?

"sell" showsup in Apple's description multiple times. It's just basic SEO. Not an Easter Egg. Though Google potentially could have set the algorithm to make that be the result - but Apple just needs to change the description then to see if it holds..

Weird...'ponzi scheme' doesn't redirect to Facebook.

The query matches a term that can be found in the stocks description. Give it a try yourself, copy something unique enough from the description and use it as a query, you will be redirected to that stocks page.<p>Romance, Mystery: <a href="https://www.google.com/finance?q=Romance%2C+Mystery" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/finance?q=Romance%2C+Mystery</a><p>X.commerce: <a href="https://www.google.com/finance?q=X.commerce" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/finance?q=X.commerce</a><p>Its unbelievable how many people in this thread accuse Google, conspiracy theories and all that. The thread was up-voted enough to be on front page. Don't believe everything you hear, do some research on it first ?

Is this something the SEC may technically be able to get their panties in a bunch about? It could potentially sway public sentiment.<p>It could be translated as "huge smart company that knows algorithms better than most have been trying to predict the stick market." Their current recommendation on AAPL is to sell.

Nah, searching for "worst" returns Konami. I'm quite sure it's not intentional but dynamic instead.

Don't be evil, they said. Surely there's some sort of hypothetical "Securities Exchange Commission" for this type of shenanigan. I don't like the way they own <a href="http://www.duck.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.duck.com</a> either.<p>EDIT: thanks for the correction, I had written Do No Evil without thinking. Check the second Google result for 'Do No Evil', as you say it's a common enough mistake to make.<p>EDIT2: as one of the commenters has pointed out below, the owner of duck.com was a previous acquisition, that owned duck.com prior to duck duck go being a competitor to Google. So owning duck.com is fine with me! I thought it was a prank/jibe on Google's part. Thanks for the info.

Someone just wrote on CNN.com forums:<p>Hey folks, I'm writing from Google. This isn't deliberate -- our algorithms seem to be keying off of the words "sell" and "sells" in the description of this very popular stock symbol. We're working on how to adjust things so it doesn't happen anymore. Thanks... back to the eggnog.

'over sold' takes you to Amazon <a href="https://www.google.com/finance?q=over+sold" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/finance?q=over+sold</a>

I learned about Google a decade ago when "worse than satan himself" brought up either Bill Gates or Microsoft. I worked at Microsoft at the time. Everyone I knew thought it was hilarious, and it spread through the company like wildfire. Within a week or two, everyone was using Google as their default search engine.<p>(I may be mis-remembering the exact search string, but it was something like that. Keep in mind that Bill's philanthropy had not become public at that time.)

Note: It's not a result provided by a neutral algorithm. Contrary to what debunkers want to say, it has been hard coded.<p>For example, search for other often occuring words such as those:<p>"over" "before" "using" "between"<p>Those searches give a listing of companies having these words in their description.<p>Searching for "sell" redirects straight to Apple stock even though many other descriptions have this word in them. Several have way higher density of the "sell" word than the Apple description.<p>The redirect for "buy" search is reasonable as the Best Buy has it in its name. Apple has no sell in its name.<p>It's fishy to say the least.<p>EDIT:<p>This can be proven even further by running a specialized search query to the main google.com page:<p>site:finance.google.com sell "quotes &#38; news"<p>If you use this query, which uses the neutral algo, you won't see APPLE anywhere near the top.

The reported behavior has now changed. The latest results for a search on the word "sell" on Google Finance<p><a href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=sell" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/finance?q=sell</a><p>show a rather boring list of companies, with no prominence given to Apple.

I wonder if `buy`, `sell`, and `over sold` are dynamic and actually a result of Google finances algorithm generating them instead of being hard coded.

Google is a search company at heart. They use keyword relevance in many of their products. Apple is a company that generates clicks when it is in headlines. Stock websites constantly write linkbait articles about Apple. Many along the lines of "5 Reasons Why You Should Sell Apple Stock Now" or "Is Apple Overvalued" etc...I bet if you researched, you would find that there are a high number of stock market related websites linking to the google finance page for Apple that also use the word sell as a keyword. Hence the association between "apple" and "sell" in the google finance search algorithm. Or maybe, it's just an Easter egg.

<a href="http://www.google.com/finance?q=buy" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/finance?q=buy</a> takes you to best buy

This may be due to the flurry of articles recommending to sell apple ...

If this is indeed an easter egg, it shows a serious lack of judgement on the part of at least one or more (somewhat powerful) individual at google.

It's very possible the code change is a reactive fix to seek SEC compliance. Now that it's posted on HN and other places, the impact of the "Sell" query result is significant.

Does that constitute financial advice?

So the conclusion is that Finance has "Im feeling lucky" switched on in a very subtle way by default?

This was on reddit all day.

what if it is a conspiracy, they will get away paying a fine of about 10-25million$ thats how SEC works, people will forget this in couple of days or weeks based on media coverage

And searching for "Buy" redirects to "Best Buy". Right.....

Didn't redirect for me

Not anymore.

It's not an "easter egg": <a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-finance-brings-up-apple-stock-chart-for-search-on-sell-143690" rel="nofollow">http://searchengineland.com/google-finance-brings-up-apple-s...</a>

When looking at the trend for Apple, I was surprised. Earlier this year some people expected Apple could be the first company to reach the market cap of $1.000.000.000. Right now they're under the $500.000.000 from $700.000.000 last september.