willybfriendly - 5:13 pm on Aug 30, 2010 (gmt 0)

Is the content relevant to your search? That is more important than it being a txt file or from 1994.

Relevant? Perhaps. Dated? Certainly! Accurate? Questionable.

What is relevant is aged links to a subdomain on a .edu authority site.

What is also relevant to this particular thread is that the markup we might think influences ranking is entirely lacking on this particular document. No title tag. No description. No Hx tags. No li tags. Nada.

Just bare text served up as naked as the day it was created.

It is certainly not the best resource on the subject, but there it sits at #9, solid as a rock.

Will add - on another related SERP the #1 result does not contain the search phrase, but comes close with a noun in place of the verb in the search, i.e. 'dairy farm' rather than the search phrase 'dairy farming'