Or your definition of "SEO'd" is leaning more to manipulative/sleazy.
In your example about the spectacle cases, would the other site being an affiliate make a (huge) difference? If Google punishes companies that have more than one website, people would shift to affiliates or try to hide they own the websites in other ways. In a way I feel multiple McDonalds in one city is perfectly possible. However, there needs to be a balance between the "best" websites (be they from the same owner or not) and diversity of the results (a query deserves diversity).
[1] http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/the-importance-of-s... "We knew from the outset that Google would be a big part of our traffic, and I wanted us to rank highly in Google"
[2] http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/ "In the same way that Google trusts sites less when they link to spammy sites or bad neighborhoods, parts of our system encourage links to good sites."
[3] http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
Disparage not that which you do not understand.
The ultimate search engine would be ungameable, and SEO would be a waste of time because it would accomplish nothing. To the degree that SEO works at all, it is a bad thing.
SEO isn't what you think it is, yet you continue to paint all of SEO with your broad brush. Stop.
[1] (pdf) - https://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrus...
White hat is not exploiting the rules of a game, it is following the rules. Proper SEO according to G is doing everything you can to make your site interact well with crawlers. That's akin to following directions when applying for a job, or following the rules when playing a sport. You can't be considered for the job if you don't apply properly, and you'll soon be disqualified if you ignore the rules of a sport. Same with search: if your site doesn't comply with a search engine's standards for crawling, you won't have the opportunity to be ranked fairly.
That's one of the first things I think about when I look at a site from a SEO perspective: can the bots easily digest this site.
I'm not saying that's where we are -- But that's hopefully the end-goal
Non-authoritative answer: Name: www.spectaclecases.co.uk Address: 83.170.88.134
Non-authoritative answer: Name: www.aglassescase.co.uk Address: 83.170.70.106
Presumably they have two different webservers, perhaps connected to the same ordering system/db server. I guess they could be using a virtualisation service and found this easier to set up.
But things are worse than that! With few exceptions (Stack Exchange and Wikipedia are notable) most searches will return sites that have been SEOd.
My Google search for [spectacles cases] returns these two sites on the first page:
(http://www.spectaclecases.co.uk/)
(http://www.aglassescase.co.uk/)
> Welcome to SpectacleCases.co.uk. You will find a wide selection of Glasses Cases / Spectacle Cases / Sunglass Cases.
> Made from leather, fabric, metal or plastic finished to a very high quality. Hard and soft cases for spectacles, glasses and sunglasses. We also have a good selection of cheap glasses cases which offer great protection for your glasses.
> Welcome to AGlassesCase.co.uk. The one stop shop for Glasses Cases, Spectacle Cases and Sunglass Cases. We also sell a number of Glasses Cloths
> Made from a range of quality materials including leather, fabric, metal and plastic all finished to a very high standard. We sell hard and soft cases for spectacles, glasses and sunglasses. We also have a good selection of cheap glasses cases which offer great protection for your glasses.
These two different sites are the same company.
Maybe they're a great place to buy spectacles cases from, but it's vaguely upsetting that Google can create freakin' awesome stuff (A self driving car! It is actually wonderful and futuristic) yet can't fix this stuff. Obviously, Google are not to blame, and really the problem is with sleazy SEO and odd behaviours by vendors.