Planet13 - 1:36 pm on May 23, 2012 (gmt 0)

...but I am baffled as to why Penguin relegates some sites to position 3 for the company name...

I see that too.

Especially if I am looking for the phone number of a site, so I will type in the company name and their city and state, and what will turn up are either a couple of phone book directories, or yelp, and then around #3 or #4 will be the company itself.

Occasionally, possibly higher "authority" pages will show up. Suppose there is a charity fundraising group that lists sponsors, and the company I am searching for has donated to that charity and is listed on their sponsor page. The charity's page that mentions the company I am searching for will rank higher than the home page of the company I am searching for.

The lesson here is; don't donate to charity's if you want your home page to rank...