@TheGooner 170345 wrote:
Google also gives higher placement results to sites that have adwords displayed – or that are paying for adwords ads.
My retail site would appear in google serp position #2 for my top keyword in the natural listings (for 3 years consistently). At the same time I advertised with adwords which listed it in either the top 3 or far right 3 sponsored listings for the same keyword depending on how much I bid. While the ad appeared on some of the google network sites it was listed twice on google, once for the adwords ad and once in the natural listings at #2.
I stopped using adwords, optimized the site and it moved to #1 position in the google natural listings for the same keyword. Plus the site has a pagerank of only 2.