* No title tag
* On page title is an image with no alt text
* Page content served in an iframe

+ design from 1996 + poor content

but still ranks for the sheer volume of inlinks.

There is a lesson in there…

A domain’s authority is precisely what allows crappy content to rank – a case in point being very poorly researched and written articles on Wikipedia which is an easy hypothesis to prove if you have a Wikipedia account with some history lying around.

Now, if you had said “So much for *quality*”, well I would agree with you entirely. But then, this is to be expected when we look at how Google looks at the quality of webpages. My impression is that they can only they cannot algorithmically determine between low and high quality articles in term of style or information quality. Style and informatino quality is determined by home workers on low wages outsourced to companies like Leapforce and Lionbridge. They are reliant on the “raters handbook” ( http://pdfcast.org/pdf/google-guidelines ) which in its last incarnation described the best quality content as being:

“A rating of Useful is assigned to pages that are very helpful for most users. Useful pages should be high quality and a good “fit” for the query. In addition, they often have some or all of the following characteristics: highly satisfying, authoritative [there's that word again hmmmm..], entertaining, and/or recent (such as breaking news on a topic). Useful pages are usually well organized and pages you trust. They are from information sources that seem reliable. Useful information pages are not “spammy”.”

To someone unfamiliar with the subject of “global warming causes”, working from home for less than the minimum wage, I could easily see them ticking the “useful” box for the above, thereby (in the eyes of Google) making it equally “high quality” to a thesis by a climate scientist etc. So, while I do find the page low quality, I don’t find it that surprising.

A SERP that would make me go “Wow” would be this one:

https://www.google.ie/search?q=buy+viagra

Search Google IE for [buy viagra] and find the number one result is a hacked redirect on the Irish Deaf Society’s website. In 2013. Yes, spam and hacking still works despite the Kool Aid being served by Google’s PR department.