I was checking out a client web site and noticed that one of the main keywords for the index page was misspelled. I noticed the error after a Yahoo ranking dropped when I ran a ranking report. However, the Google rank for the exact same keyword increased all the way to the top page. What does this lead me to believe? Well it suggests in this example that Yahoo considers/processes the title element faster than Google, or puts more weight for the title element in their ranking score than Google.

Google on the other hand appears to value the anchor text of internal links more than the title element. Or, they are slow in considering errors in the title element. There is a third scenario for Google, and that's they're smart enough to figure out spelling errors and will rank close equivalents. That would make sense if they're looking for the 'best' web sites to show in the index and your market is particularly scarce on good resources (low competition).

Either or, ensure your title tags are correctly spelled and remember the weight of other web sites pointing to your web site--the more related and popular the other web site the better--so you can rank as high as possible.