Google has apologized after it was discovered that certain searches in Google Maps containing the word "nigger" direct users to the White House. Anyone searching for "nigger house" or "nigger king" in the Washington area is directed to the home of US president Barack Obama, while global searches for terms including "niggahouse" also return the White House as the number one search result.

"Some inappropriate results are surfacing in Google Maps that should not be, and we apologize for any offense this may have caused," said a spokesperson for Google in a statement. "Our teams are working to fix this issue quickly." At of the time of writing, these offensives searches still return the same results.

This mistake, first spotted by The Washington Post, isn't the first difficulty that Google has had with its Maps app. Last month, the search giant also apologized for an image of its Android mascot urinating on an Apple logo that appeared in Google Maps in Pakistan. As a result of this incident, Google shut down the Map Maker program that allows users to submit their own edits to the site. Before this, pranksters had also fiddled with Maps' business directory in order to put Edward Snowden in the White House.