Thanks, Ray.  What you said confirms what I speculated - too good to be true.  And not entirely above-board, either.

Never mind.  I figured it out (the solution i discovered: export the rankings data to a csv file; perhaps there's a better way, but it works).

Thanks, Rand.  It's kind of an honor to have you speaking up on my little question here!

It's probably predictable that someone (or more than one) would try to monetize this sort of trick, because of the Google pronouncements that you mentioned and the other articles that have appeared about CTR and time-on-site behavior.

Too bad.  I guess that we all have to actually earn all those visits and page views.