caveman - 7:12 pm on Dec 13, 2008 (gmt 0)

What DG and buckworks said. Sites have been ranking for years without the kw on the page, all the way up to the top spots. Nothing new there. And again I'm not talking about Google bombing.

It can result from strategies and tactics ranging from what people would call white hat, to black hat. Lots of ways to do it. Sometimes it even happens without the site owner knowing right away. ;-)

The most relevant question for most Webmasters, IMHO, is whether or not traffic from that keyword, if arriving on your site, is happy with the result. For the average Webmaster, if the result is relevant and a search engine rep looked at it and had no issue, there's not much else to think about.