MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Free-flowing beer, live music, karaoke and arcade games kept the party raging at the Googleplex the other night, but the real action was unfolding inside a sterile conference room at Google's headquarters.

That's where the cunning internet entrepreneurs who constantly try to manipulate Google's search engine results for a competitive edge were trying to make the most of a rare opportunity to match wits face-to-face with the company's top engineers.

Google's code-talking experts, despite putting on a show of being helpful, weren't about to reveal their "secret sauce" -- Google's tightly guarded formula for ranking websites.

But that didn't zap the energy from the "Google Dance" -- an annual summer party that's become a metaphor for the behind-the-scenes twists and turns that can cause websites to rise and fall in Google's search results. For the millions of websites without a well-known domain name, those rankings can mean the difference between success or failure because Google's search engine drives so much of the internet's traffic.

Full article: Wired News