anand84 - 11:19 am on Oct 3, 2011 (gmt 0)

It's doubtful it helps but it may on trusted big brand sites such as eBay that add user generated titles to their urls which are often spammy.

One of the persons I interviewed recently for an IM position at our company described her previous experience in a small Online marketing company in India where she said her client was eBay and her job profile includes modifying the title, description,etc. on the site in order to increase search engine visibility.

I guess what the OP noticed was something that one of these contract companies did, and not necessarily the big corp.