Greggs, a UK purveyor of steak pies, sausage rolls and sweet pastries, scored a marketing coup this week through its deft response to a search engine problem.

The bakery chain fell afoul of the Google algorithm yesterday when an alternative logo appeared to anyone searching for the bakers online.

Instead of returning the slogan, “Greggs: Always fresh. Always tasty”, a Google search brought up the mock slogan, “Greggs: Providing s**t to scum for over 70 years”.

The image of the logo came from Uncyclopedia, a satirical version of Wikipedia. That site, and images on it, is hosted by Wikia, a free web hosting for user-driven sites called wikis. Because Wikia hosts a large amount of reliable content, Google’s algorithm assumed the image was legitimate and paired it with the word Greggs.

The discrepancy was quickly highlighted by Twitter users who contacted the company, asking if it was aware of the issue.

Greggs quickly contacted Google via Twitter with a message that included a photograph of an employee holding a tray laden with doughnuts. “Fix it and they’re yours!!!” they said.

Whoever was manning Google’s account got in on the bonhomie, replying with the message: “Throw in a sausage roll and we’ll get it done ASAP”. This was accompanied by an image of Homer Simpson, sitting at his work station in sector 7G of the Springfield nuclear power plant, eating some doughnuts.

To the apparent joy of Twitter users, the exchange continued with Greggs replying, “WE LOVE YOU GOOGLE!!!!” and, later, posting a photograph of the word ‘Google’ spelled out in sausage rolls.

In the end Greggs got its logo fixed and both companies received a great deal of favourable press coverage for their saccharine sweet social media repartee.