Google Answers Pages in the SERPS

and ranking well

[steveb]

Maybe too general a query for site search to find anything here so maybe this has been brought up before, but today for the first time I saw a Google Answers answer page appear in the serps, and ranking at #5 for a 603,000 result search. The page was first generated on August 26.

The implications of this could be enormous.

Also, I'm very curious to see what pagerank this page is assigned next PR update.

[vitaplease]

Interesting

[webmasterworld.com...]

Brett mentioned it as a promotion tactic..

[webmasterworld.com...]

[michael heraghty]

Steveb, I noticed this today for the first time as well.

I think this is a good promotional strategy for Google. More people will see Google answers pages through regular search results, and will therefore become more aware of the service.

Still, I suspect this will lead to some people asking questions about whether Google is starting to misuse its power by promoting its services in this way. (Personally, I think not: if *another company* were providing this answers service, we would expect to see those pages in the SERPS.)

[steveb]

I would not expect to see a page from another company ranking this well (for a two word query), as #5 among 600,000 results. The page is basically just a dynamically generated bit of piffle. It happens to be on topic, but the person answering could have said any gibberish.

One explaination for the high ranking would be a artificially high pagerank (it shows a greybar tho), which is an invitation for those answering to spam URLs on these pages.