pmac - 12:21 am on Aug 12, 2005 (gmt 0)

>>>>explain how to tell a hand-coded result to those of us

Sure. In the past, a classic hand coded serp was dominated by directory listings in the the first 5 or so results. These were for the most part one word terms that are usually problem areas where spam is rampant. These results were pretty much static and rarely if ever moved, even through multiple updates.

The phenomenom that some of us are seeing now share the same attributes as what we have seen in the past, however there seems to be some authority sites in the mix that arent restricted to purely sites that are in the Y! directory.

Again, these are sites in problem areas that are usually dominated by heavily seo'd sites.

Example Query 1) Widgets

1) Directory site
2) .gov
3) directory site
4) .edu
5) directory site

results 5-10 the normal spam you would expect to see in a serp like this.

Example Query 2) Blue widgets

1) spam
2) spam
3) spam
4) so so site
5) spam
and so on and so on.

It's VERY unusual imho that Y! can arrive at the first example algorithmically, yet be unable to show the same type of ability to pick authority in the second example ( a very closely related query)

So in a nutshell, thats what some of are seeing.