often when googling for certain search terms I get a list of sites that DO NOT include those terms (or at least not all of them.)
I’m aware of the dynamic nature of Google indexing but still…
for example I was looking for Mary Marry Marie Maria Mariah (don’t ask 
and got this
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-06,GGLJ:en&q=Mary+Marry+Marie+Maria+Mariah
any ideas ?
I use google tool bar if it’s relevant.
Sorry, don’t have a good answer for you. Just wanted to reminisce about the days when boolean operators worked like they where supposed to.
Google defaults to “and”, but uses some “clever” fuzzy logic modifiers.
If you want an absolute boolean search, the + and - signs, as well as capitalized OR or AND:
Mary +Marry +Marie +Maria +Mariah
If you want to exclude one, use the - sign.
Mary +Marry -Marie +Maria OR Mariah
Sorry, ignore the “AND” bit. That is in fact the + sign. The horse’s mouth.
It could also be that those words appear in tags on the pages, or that other pages link to that page using those words. For instance, if you search for “miserable failure”, the first hit will take you to George W. Bush’s official biography, which contains neither of those words. This is because a lot of people deliberately linked to that page, using those words.
Now, what you’re seeing presumably wouldn’t be that sort of a concerted effort. But it’s nonetheless quite possible that someone might link to, say, a Wiki article about Mary, mother of Jesus, using the word “Maria” or “Marie”. So that Wiki page gets on Google’s list of sites to return for those search terms. And since there are probably very few sites which actually contain all the words you’re searching for, tangential things like that make up most of the Google results.
When I open your link ( cached !!) it actually says :
** These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: miserable failure **
so to make sure I get pages that actually contain my search terms I have to use those