The Obama government’s new Recovery.gov web site went online earlier this week. The site features a top-of-page video welcome from President Barack Obama himself. Its slogan: ‘Your money at WORK’

The site is designed to act as a central clearinghouse for public information about the Obama government’s economic stimulus package, which was finally approved and signed by the President earlier this week. It’s seen as an exercise in government openness and transparency.

But critics are complaining that some aspects of the site send the wrong signals. Apparently, the custodians of Recovery.gov have set the site up to block search engine indexing.

But that hasn’t stopped search giant Google from indexing several dozen pages on the site in just the first week.

As yet, the folks behind Recovery.gov have not made any official comment aboiut the mixed signals sent by the search engine ban, but there are unofficial indications that the inclusion of code to exclude search engine indexing agents was unintentional, perhaps an artifact left over from a previous site which was used as a template on which to build Recovery.gov.

Some kind of response — if only the quiet removal of the block — is expected within the next few days.

We’ll keep you posted.