I find that the co.uk market a different ballgame, I have seen substantial movement towards allowing thin sites on poor domains gain a advantage over EMD for the generic keyword, Google have gone from one extreme to another in my eyes, people that pay £xx,xxx for a domain are more likely to build a site out than some kid with carinsurance24-365.co.uk and undermining an industry, Google are relying to heavy on incoming links profile and allowing people to buy 10k facebook likes to survive at the top, this has become a money making exercise.
Look a company with a nice site, nice domain and staff to man the site are really struggling, we all know Google made this decision to make money, the good site with staff have to be pro-active, they cant rely on SEO to make there money now because its non existent, they are turning to PPC to at least be able to pay wages, Google want some of the action..look a spotty teenager who buys a £10 domain and puts some naff template onto the domain is good for Google, 10,20,30k links..."yeah ok we will let you get away with this", can he afford to put £10k in Adwords each month, no chance, he relies on someone who invested heavily into his site with staff.
Google even have there own comparison search facility embedded into search results now, did they have sound SEO to get to the top....that's a no then
and to top it all we have Nominet also kicking the co.uk, its a simple yes or no for the .uk extension, instability causes prices to crash.