My site is principally about television so every now and again I verify the position of my site related to the search queries viewers make to get to my blog. In recent weeks I've noticed there is a site, wetpaint, that can have, on occasion, as many as 15 of the first twenty responses for a particular search. If anyone wishes to check, search Google US for 'alison's anklet pretty little liars'. In my check, that site appears to have 75% of the first 40 results. That's amazing SEO but also a bit unfair, I think.
Are you logged into a Google Account when you are running your search? I just checked it and I see they have one news result alongside Gather.com and Examiner.com plus three organic results immediately after. Then I see abcfamily.go.com, tumblr.com, answers.yahoo.com, cartermatt.com, etc, etc.... then on page two they have 4 more listings at the bottom of the page. So yes, they have a lot but I don't see as many as you are seeing. The one thing I did notice is that next to a lot of their listings they have either "1 Day ago" or "2 Days ago" which means it's been indexed pretty recently and is considered fresh. Maybe it's this that is giving them so many listings.
Yes I am logged in... d Did not expect the change to be so drastic. And on that "fresh content" point, Google's algo needs a reset because it's the most basic of stuff ranking high. I do take your point, though
Thats probably why your seeing more than me then, they are showing you personalized results based on your activity that they know about. e.g. when your logged in you search and click through to that web site frequently because they are a competitor so you want to check them out Google will see this activity and set preferences accordingly, especially if that web site has Google Analytics installed which makes it even easier for Google. I know it can be a pain to keep logging in and out all the time so what I do is use Firefox for my day to day activity and then use Internet Explorer for research and keeping an eye on competition making sure that Internet Explorer is never logged in to any accounts. I also clear the Internet Explorer cookies and internet history very frequently to reduce tracking as much as possible. So I always get a clean set of data when I use IE, then Firefox gives me my personal experience so to speak. As for the refresh, yes I agree there is still a lot of junk out there but Panda and Penguin updates have helped clean things up a bit.