Mel,
I've been reading various articles and forum messages on this Web site relative to datacenters and along with your explanation, I now have a better idea of how the Google-game works. As of this week, I've searched the word "conchology" on www.google.com, www2.google.com and www3.google.com using NS and IE, and my site [ http://www.worldwideconchology.com ]has been consistently ranked 2 and 3. So the conundrum is seemingly resolved. Hopefully Google will be keeping their remote servers in-sync in the future.
Thanks again.