I believe Google is doing one of the following:
1) Accepting cash from big corporations to bump them into top positions. We're talking like millions of dollars here.
2) Clicking some button that flags the website and allows them to either.... rank high on related keywords, or rank extremely low or off the map.
Lets take one of the most competitive and lucrative consumer products, shoes.
The biggest dealer who also has an affiliate program, Zappos.com.
They are ranking in the top 3 for almost every 'discount brandname shoes' phrase. And they never use these words in that exact order on their page.
Google has definitely placed less emphasis on having the keywords searched on in the same order on the page being brought up.
Search google on the following-
discount steve madden shoes
discount clarks shoes
discount adidas shoes
There is no other explanation. I do not think this is the works of an algorithim. I believe Zappos has either paid Google lots of money, or Google is now placing emphasis on the huge dealers regardless of optimization.
Optimization is over. I have other examples that prove over optimization penalties. I believe it's on a per domain basis, not page. Google flags an entire domain as over optimized (could be an automated flagging system).
Here is an example (not my site) of an affiliate who used to be in the top 3 for every brandname shoes phrase.
http://www.shoes-style.com/ - Has a PR6 and what used to be perfect SEO.
They are an affiliate of zappos... and now off the map.
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