Randomized actions

The sites google decides to index

[Jacqwo]

I am not a seo. Rather someone who does his business through the internet and as such, I have had to 'learn' how to publish sites for the benefit of my surfers AND google. My opinion is not 'educated'.

I have several sites. Some I 'optmize' and some I don't. Some are full of content and some are just glorified advertising.

I have noticed:

1. Some sites which are full of content and reasonably optimized using the methods learned here and elsewhere rank in the 500's. In fact and following this latest 'update' there are dozens of sites above mine who are not even in the same industry, let alone theme!

2. Some of the sites with no content are ranked at 40, or 60.

3. In the past 6 months, there are sites (not mine unfortunately) who have stayed in top 20 for a 3 million 2 keyword combo query and which consist of ... one single page, and a very short page at that.

4. In the past week, some sites have appeared in top 10 with backlings from guestbooks. In fact when you visit those guestbooks, you realize that they belongs to the linked_to site and their sole purpose is to create back links. (I know this issue has been debated already)

My conclusions are:

1) that over and above a certain number of websites that google knows to look at, other websites are looked at randomly. So when a webmaster spends hours trying to tweak his/her pages and sees no improvement whatsoever, perhaps it is simply because Google has not picked those pages for analysis. Even if they have been spidered!

2) There is no specific pattern that google follows. Yes, I know about the [ercieved suggestions re title, h1 etc... but regardless, any search I do, on just about any subject always brings websites that do not in any way conform to the "Google code of conduct". Some of will say: Cloaking, and you may be right in some of the cases. But in every case?