Now, When I say different, what I really mean is that they have removed their page template and only displayed the relevant content of the page, IE> removed the header, footer and left nav and added the structured elements <h1> <h2> etc to the content.

I was under the impression that this style of SEO fell under black hat tactics and was more than likely to end up with either a ban or a penalty, am I off base on this thinking?

This particular site ranks amazing for all the particular terms they are targeting.

As i was thinking more about what they were doing, it made sense to structure what google sees in that way (similar to froogle feeds). There are a few reasons wh y this could be benefitial for google.

1) They receive the relevant content of the page.
2) There is less to download.
3) Less filtering of html etc.

I am very interested to hear your opinions on this.

Cheers,

JC