SEM Guru

This from a question originally posted on SEO Round Table

If you want to know what I think, personally.... Well, I do not think Google manually adds sites into the SERPs based on it being competitive or not. I do think they adjust the algorithm to ensure the sites they want in the top 10 for certain keyword phrases are there. But I do not think they manually stick a site in.

Do they pull sites out? If they are "spammy" they will. If not, they may adjust the algorithm to knock them out.

All in all, I think for the most part, Google keeps it automatic and does not use manual means to have the "most relevant" results in the top 10.

I have to agree that Google change their algorithms to ensure the sites they want are in the top 10, however they can't always achieve that using algorithms alone. I've seen results for searchs where around the 6th position there's a line and three different entries, then another line and then the rest of the organic results. These inserted results seem to be linked to the search term having more than one meaning, the second meaning this then displayed within the lines. Sometimes this is a trademark that is also a search term, other times I've seen it was when looking for a PHP command, and the official php.net site has appeared within the lines and no where else in the top 10.