geek,
Just put: 66.294.93.104 in your address bar. This is the next version of the Google SERP results. They appear sporadically now, but should stabilize according to Matt Cutts by end March. This datacenter has been live at google.com for about 15-30 minutes a day as they test. But you can always go directly to it by putting in the IP Address–I believe they are calling this ‘Big Daddy’–Also a lot less Spam in our area too, not gone but a lot of those sites like crap.russia.slots.ru or gamble.online.12345.it etc. that were previously 888 Spam are gone.
webber,
I appreciate your response, but I have a few comments…
1) The only thing I have seen Major Companies do to expand their Web presence (i.e. garner traffic) from an SEO perspective is waste a bunch of money on Overcrap. Now, of course I am not talking about the kind of companies that could pay Yahoo pr Google hundreds of millions of dollars to appear in their generic SERPs – if this even happens.
2) How could some fresh-out college students ever duplicate what we do? It’s a learned skill that takes a long time (at least for me) to master (and I definitely have NOT mastered it!!). But, I mean I can literally create 3 different articles and use techniques (including Web Design techniques) that will make, lets say Article #1 a potential winner in Yahoo, Article # 2 a potential Top-10 page in Google and article #3 a potential winner in MSN.
How would a college kid with no experience know what Keyword Density even was much less how to use it?
3) I have been saying for the past 2 years that linking, or at least the IMPORTANCE placed on linking, has to be abolished by the SEs, especially Google. It allows spamsters to totally manipulate the results. Although I do some linking, I have many results in Big Daddy that, based on their positions, have seemingly been given credit based on their content. I say this because my minimally linked sites are coming up with results far ahead of sites with hundreds or even thousands of incoming links. My only conclusion is that new Algo changes *MAY BE* reducing the weight given to links–just an opinion, but I would think this HAD TO HAPPEN. I mean the Google results of recent times are mostly crap, other than a few content sites that always seem to be there near the top, like casino.com or Doms site etc.
So what techniques do these companies employ and how different can they be from what you or I do? Just my 2 cents.