Has anyone else noticed lately, Google's results have been utter junk? For instance, i've just watched an error page work it's way through the SERP's for the term "SEO" and land currently in #8 knocking out SEOmoz, Myself, SEO-Watch and nearly every other major SEO Company. This is the description: The term "SEO" is kind of like the trophy term for SEO's and this page doesn't even have the word SEO in the document body. I've also observed a lot of other error pages such as Index Of/ ranking high, and moving "up" through the SERP's and i know they have been like this for quite some time.
I am not showing that on the results i am geting here as i checked just now. But i know there is something up going on with google's algorithm as results have been changing a lot in the past month. I have a feeling there will be a major update coming on the next update.
Have a look at the cached page for that site. It has the title "seo" and although most of the text on the page is using asian characters (chinese?), it also has many occurrences of "seo". So it does look like a valid and relevant page for "seo". The issue is - how long will that page stay in a high position if the live page returns the error (which it currently does). I assume that's why the error text (rather than the cached content) is displayed by Google under the search result. You could argue that if the error is a temporary blip, Google is giving it a chance by not immediately booting it out of the SERPS. But, if it lingers for more than a few weeks whilst the error continues, then that would be rather poor. Howard
Actually the cache for that page has been the same as what's displayed on the page now for a couple of days. Very odd, looks like Google has reverted the cache. I've been watching it for a few days, and that's the first time i've seen the actual non-error page.