I understand what people are saying about links, blog spam, etc. Point taken.

But I still find it amazing that incoming links will give first-page ranking to a site that doesn't contain the keyword anywhere on the site itself. In other words, content counts for zero! (Similarly for a site that has no content about Hainan other than a redirect to a site that does).

Maybe people have been doing SEO for too long when they start considering this kind of behaviour normal!

Anyway, this has been a valuable experience for me. I find it strange that Google expects webmasters to concentrate on developing content when their algorithm throws up nuggets like this. Why bother with content when SEO manipulation is so much more rewarding!