Targeted searches with extra search terms

[mobilebadboy]

This one has always puzzled me, so after seeing another typical search today I thought I'd ask.

Someone came to one of my sites searching for car shows fwb (I'm assuming fwb = fort walton beach, florida). Anyway, although I'm not directly targeting car shows it's a term I'm trying to inadvertantly push. So for the search car shows fwb the site comes up 5th, fwb is not mentioned anywhere on the site. Google picks up on all the car show/car shows mentions on the site.

If you remove fwb from the search, the site disappears. So why do some searches do that? If you tack on an extra word or two that don't even appear anywhere on the site, it ranks it high with your keywords, but if you drop the extra word(s) it drops the site to nowhere.

fwb shouldn't skew it that much, since it has zero relation to my site, as to where Google picks up on all of the car show/car shows mentions and deems those important enough to put it 5th.

[dilligaf]

Maybe FWB is closer to ODB and it's reputation preceeeds it (smiley here). Actually I'd guess that the sites theme has been determined to be in that region (if that's it) by it's overall pages and incoming/outgoing links.

[mobilebadboy]

Yeah, it is a regional site, focused on a car show here in Mobile, AL., but also lists car shows for Louisiana, Miss., Georgia and Florida. There's a regional link from DMOZ and one from a similar type of site as mine, but it has more of a focus on car shows in in southern Mississippi. Then a few scattered links from non car show sites.

It just doesn't seem to me, even if that was the case, that Google would factor 'FWB' into that (Fort Walton beach maybe, but not 'FWB'). Now if it was 'Alabama Car Shows' and it ranked high, but fell off for just 'car shows' that would make alot more sense.

*shrug*