g1smd - 9:27 am on Oct 21, 2009 (gmt 0)

I'd say it was all relative - Google would rate them in importance relative to each other within the page, and ignore excessive usage of any.

The heading tags are supposed to define a document heirarchy. Use the W3 HTML validation tool to generate a bullet point list of your headings. If that list does not look like a summary of your document then you are abusing the heading tags.

Is there evidence to suggest - for the same content - that a page using h1, h2, h3 does better than one using h2, h4, h6? I'd like to think there is a small benefit, but I would guess that Google understands that most sites would not use these elements exactly as they are meant to be used.