martinibuster - 3:00 pm on Sep 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

...optimized these sites fully, plus increased their page rank.

I think the old line by Starkist Tuna applies here:

"Sorry Charlie, we don't want tuna with good taste, we want tuna that tastes good."

In other words, it's not neccessarily enough to "increased their page rank" because what the toolbar shows you is meaningless. It hasn't been a reliable SEO metric for a few years now. Also, a "fully optimized" site, depending on what you mean by optimized, may be the last thing Google wants in it's index.

That is the difference between tuna with good taste, and tuna that tastes good.