Why is this site number one in google?

Hrmm, content is quite long and detailed (quality is average like you said). There are not any comment and social stats from what I can see. I would guess perhaps stomach bug is not that competitive? People usually search for symptoms. I would suggest you look into the competiton a little more, may be open for the taking (but then you want to think about if it is even worth it).

Yes i kind of agree with and am a little puzzles myself. In site explorer they have 16 backlinks, there Google page rank is 0/10 and there Alexa ranking is 18,000,000, plus they also have no keywords. I suggest its down to having a the exact name and what giving them the ranking. However, on the other hand Google is a strange one, if they were a person they would have schizophrenia, e.g you never quite no what they are going to do, there reasons or why they did it. For example my site is in constent compatition with Rick Stien. Now that is understandable the guy wrote a book Far Eastern Odyssey, which is sold or advertised on major listings such as Amazon and the BBC. However, my website Eastern Odyssey still ends on page 8 of Google even though it is a direct mach in my site title, description and keywords.

Now you may say well that is expected, however, on page 4 of google there is this site bahighlife which does not have the name in the title, or throughout the site. The thing that make them come up in front of my website is an article. The website ranks at 5/10 on Google the same as my website. In that case i would assume i would have authority as my site name is in the URL and the site meta description. Personally i would not mind as much, however, my site name is the only keyword i am ranking anywhere on at this moment in time. So i kind of need people to be able to find my website somewhere down the line.

Maybe this is a temporary thing...the ranking might disappear in a few months as I don't see it as a very reliable source for such a keyword with high search volume and has sensitive issue since its health related...people need more reliable source and not an obvious MFA website. I don't get google...one of my site has an EMD and with contents that are well-researched and better than this one and it still won't make it to page 3...Google needs to be more consistent in determining the rankings of sites.

Google is flawed. I actually like their search algorithm better a year or two ago. Who knows..

Very interesting indeed!

I think google is purposely keeping $hit screwed up so they're unpredictable and keep everyone confused.

I've seen a lot of crappy little sites near the top for competitive keywords with no real rhyme or reason at all.

One thing I've noticed though is that Google seems to be giving more weight to sites that don't have any affiliate links like the mentioned in the original post.

I think b/c the competition between advertisers is low.

Yeah, as seo4ever said, competition must be very low!

these things might happen in Gogle. it could probably disappear in few days..

Such surprises could be temporary. Let see what happens say 3 to 6 months from now.

The website you've mentioned has the exact-match keyword:

- in the domain name
- right at the start of the page title
- right in the first heading
- right in the first sentence (and it's in Bold)

Besides, the title of each post on this site starts with "Stomach bug".

Not only keywords are important, but also their position (distribution) on a page.