As a result the U.S. has fallen to 10th place, its lowest rank on the Index of Economic Freedom, since the inception of the Index in 1995, down from fifth place in 2007.
Google's official page for Webmasters cryptically notes that Google is "able toplace fewer restraints on sites that we crawl for this supplemental index than we do on sites that are crawled for our main index, " a phrase that puzzles most search marketers.