Explain this to me.

[johninbrooklyn]

I sell software under a unique brand name. For this discussion, I'll say it's Photoshop. There is a website out there called photoshopbooks.com It is a dead website. In fact, the "size" is 1K. It is for a bricks and mortar store that has long closed. There are very few inbound links to this website. But the website constantly shows up in the first 4-5 organic listings if someone searches for "photoshop".

Again, I'm using photoshop as an example but why is this listed so high in organic search if the website is a complete 404 and the company is out of business? The only thing I can figure out is that photoshop is in the URL e.g. photoshopbooks.com I know that's a very important variable but there are dozens of websites out there that sell this product and have lots of relevant copy and inbound links.

Thanks.

[AussieWebmaster]

have you tried buying the domain? do a whois search and contact the domain owner

[johninbrooklyn]

I did try to buy the domain. The owner wanted $100 more than I wanted to pay so I figured I'd stall him a few days. I learned a hard lesson. The domain was registered to someone new 3 days ago and my e-mails are now being returned undeliverable. Ugh. But it still makes little sense to me. I have great copy on my site with lots of relevant inbound links and I don't show up on the first SERP. This website that seems to have zero value does show up on the front page. I'd think Google would be smart enough to realize a dead website returns no value to someone searching.

[AussieWebmaster]

domain name, age of domain, listing in directories and a few solid strategic links could be all that is needed

[clickthroughseo]

Search on who links to the other site. It may be they had some solid links whilst they were in business, and you might need to get a few more inbound or backlinks to move your site up the SERPs.