That it would pick up this thread so quickly on google ought to be of itself a cause for concern.
Why would google have such up to date information about the commentary on Free Republic?
It’s a search engine. It should be current. I’d be concerned if it weren’t.
Actually, it's testimony to the skill of John Robinson.
Sometime, look at the source of an FR thread. Towards the bottom, you will see something like:
<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript">_uacct = "UA-2288668-1"; urchinTracker();</script>
That notifies Google's spider to wake up and suck down the current thread and update those indexes!
This can be quite useful when some crackpot posts garbage on a thread. Just look up what he posted. If the current thread comes up first in the search results, you can bet he's invalid!