For anyone who happened to browse the Internet this week looking for the House Web site of U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, there’s a chance they saw something unexpected.

Depending on the search terms keyed in, Bing and Google spit back a link to Edwards’ Web site with this accompanying blurb:

“Official Web site for Representative Chet Edwards (TX-17), Republican Party.”

This screen shot shows local Democrat Chet Edwards being named a Republican.

An Edwards staffer initially expressed surprise when pointed toward the sentence, which got Edwards’ party affiliation wrong.

After checking with the site’s administrator, Edwards’ spokesman, Josh Taylor, said the mix-up was being caused by Bing and Google’s algorithms, not by any language on the House Web site.

“That information is not being pulled from our site,” Taylor said, and “the word ‘Republican’ is not anywhere on our site.”

To correct the problem, Taylor said, the site’s administrator inserted the key word “D-Texas” into the Web site’s code.

He said it would take a few days before the change is recognized by the search engines.

mshapiro@wacotrib.com

757-5707

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