Hi, I just searched for 'v & a' in Google (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-09,GGLD:en&q=v+%26+a), then clicked on the first result and my browser shows the google url rather than the website's home page url in the address bar. Two questions. Does this happen for you as well? And I've never seen this before, any idea why this happens?

Yes, it happens for me too but only when using IE (Firefox doesn't do it) – and only for this site. This search produces the same effect:

http://www.google.com/search?q=www.vam.ac.uk

This must be an IE bug – perhaps with some JavaScript in the V&A home page...?

BTW, this doesn't seem to be specific to just Google. I tried this locally and I believe that you'll experience the same problem if you click this link:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/