If you look at the results for a Google search on "BBC news", the first
result is:

        BBC NEWS | News Front Page
        United Kingdom and international news headlines. Contains video
        and audio webcasts, forums, and in-depth articles.
        news.bbc.co.uk/ - 90k - Cached - Similar pages
        England
        Sport
        UK
        World
        U.K.
        Entertainment
        Business
        Scotland
        More results from bbc.co.uk

The first element is the title:

        BBC NEWS | News Front Page

What is the second element?

        United Kingdom and international news headlines. Contains video
        and audio webcasts, forums, and in-depth articles.

I's not the <meta name="description">, which is:

        Visit BBC News for up-to-the-minute news, breaking news, 
        video, audio and feature stories. BBC News provides trusted 
        World and UK news as well as local and regional perspectives. 
        Also entertainment, business, science, technology and health 
        news.

So where have they got the description from?

Finally, the list of news sections:

        England
        Sport
        UK
        World
        U.K.
        Entertainment
        Business

That's presumably from some sort of sitemap data, but has Google
acquired it from the BBC, or generated it? Is it known on what basis
Google will opt to place such information in search results?

Daniele

In message 
<1ibvzr3.m3t1aunvntonN%real-not-anti-spam-address@apple-juice.co.uk>, 
D.M. Procida  writes
>What is the second element?
>
>        United Kingdom and international news headlines. Contains video
>        and audio webcasts, forums, and in-depth articles.

That is the description of the site in DMOZ the open directory project

http://www.dmoz.org/

Don't know where the rest came from.
-- 
Dominic Sexton

D.M. Procida  wrote:

> Finally, the list of news sections:
> 
>         England
>         Sport
>         UK
>         World
>         U.K.
>         Entertainment
>         Business
> 
> That's presumably from some sort of sitemap data, but has Google
> acquired it from the BBC, or generated it? Is it known on what basis
> Google will opt to place such information in search results?

It turns out those are called sitelinks:

<http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=473
34>

They're compiled algorithmically. Sometimes, odd or poor results re
produced.

Daniele