has google manually tweaked the algorithm so that "pics" = "pictures"
 

I was doing some searches and noticed that some of the top 3 sites for various searches for a keyword and pics comes up with sites that have the keyword "pictures" on their site, but no "pics" keyword anywhere on the pages, yet they are ranking #1 or #2 for popular terms...... could it be that google has tweaked some keywords to be equal, or are these sites benefitting solely from backlinks with the keyword? (I didn't bother to check that)

Google is not tricky in the slightest... very basic...

yes thats very true

i have a site called tubetubetube and it ranks #1 for stolen porn :upsidedow

sure why the fuck not?

because, I have sites optimized for the word "pics" and I resent being bumped in the serps by sites that aren't that word specific :upsidedow

check their backlinks and the anchors.