What's Google up to now?

[gcaine]

I've been noticing that typing a key phrase in quotes gives unreliable results as far as the number of competing pages go.

Here's one thing that happens fairly often

Putting word 1 word 2 in quotes will return about 100,000 less result than putting word 1 word 2 word 3 in quotes.

How can a two word phrase have less competition than a three word phrase that starts with the exact same two words?

Another thing I've seen is that a phrase will have a competition of 30,000 one day and 130,000 the next, and yet I managed to hold my position in the search.

It seems to me that they don't want anyone to try to optimize a web site around any set of keywords.

This makes me wonder if the number of searches the adwords tool shows is anywhere close.