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PhilippLenssen
From what I can see Google talks about highlighting synonyms (both in their blog post and in their statement to you), not searching for them per se. And e.g. "jogging" may appear in a search for "running" because it's a topic appearing on a site which gets a lot of backlinks with the word "running" (or contains the word "running" itself). Does Google explicitly say they now also search for synonyms? (If you're not using the tilde operator...)
Matt:
"... we don't even have a way to pick or force a result to be the #1 result for a query."
Not true, there's always the weird "Google Promotion" box (that doesn't seem to be triggered by AdWords, and neither is organic). It may even include images!
As far as "humans vs algorithms"... well, every algorithm is human-made and human-tested. That applies to Google ranking algos too, of course.
Another way to think about hand-picking which results go to #1 is this. When a Google employee can ban the "normal" #1, then the old #2 result will be the new #1. Hence, you did pick the #1, manually. Take for instance censored results in Google China, where many "former" #1 results are removed by Google. (If you admit that there can be a self-increasing feedback loop -- people in China linking to the result they find at #1, thereby increasing its PageRank -- then you would even strengthen the former #2 a long time after you removed the censorship, if Google ever considers doing that in China.)
I know you were not referring to the "Google Promotion" box, which happened to sit at the #1 overall spot -- organic + non-organic -- for some queries in the past (and present, if you include Google Products search).
But likely either it's an ad or it's not, I think Google should make up their mind. If it's considered part of organic results than you are misleading people by saying no one can simply toggle a switch to have something on #1. If it's an ad, then the AdWords team is misleading people as they said Google manages ads under "the exact same guidelines, principles, practices and algorithms as the ads of any other advertiser. Likewise, we use the very same tools and account interface."
Or is this box that thing in-between ads and organic results, and if so, isn't that a great loophole where Google *can* put anything they like at #1?
I know you aren't responsible for all Google departments. But IMO someone at Google *should* be responsible for "overall results quality & integrity," including every last onebox and "related tip" and checkout icon and results censorship and "Google promotion" and what-not. Or do you already have that person/ team?
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Story: Google Now Searching For Synonyms