I think DIVs can have a positive effect on SE ranking though how significant I don’t know. Please look at this page done in DIVs
http://www.futuremovies.co.uk/friend....asp?movie=216 (sorry its a plug)
See how the navigation (and other potential text) is at the bottom of the HTML but on the page its at the top!
It will not help ranking on Google but other SE may be effected like Inktomi but the best thing about it is that if done properly (unlike the above example) you will see the description on the Google results and not the navigation - sweeet
