Is there any good reason why I shouldn't use more than 1 H1 tag per page? I haven't found anything, but I figured I'd ask. And yes, I do understand the H1 is the largest heading so theoretically it should be the page heading, but I just figured I'd ask.

He|| use as many as you want...that's what the tags are there for...just so long as the design looks good to you & your users...H1 to your hearts content

If search engine results are a factor in the site it is suggested that you only use as little h1s per page as possible. If there is only one the search engines will weight the content in that header heavier than if there were ten h1s on the page. I tend to use one h1 and multiple h2s per page.

Is that H1 Search Engine thing a fact or just a rumor?

I've "heard" that too but no one has ever been able to actually proved me with a whitepaper that says "we weight multiple H1 tag's as less important than a single one"

Do you know Tom?

I don't think anyone knows for sure as search engine algorithms are very closely guarded. I don't think multiple h1s could really hurt a pages rank but using only one h1 could help a search engine understand what a page is about. If you are using a h1 to title some tertiary piece of content on a page as well a h1 for the main heading I could see the bots having trouble determining which one of those h1s is more relevant to the page or if they should be counted equally, or if the one higher up in the markup is the most relevant one. See where I am going with this, the h1-h6 system was designed to rate different levels of importance in an html document. It seems to be accepted that the engines follow this system as well.

Yes - I understand the theory - I just wonderd if there was any HARD evidence to prove that...it just seems like an odd way to determine what is important on a page since it is such an...arbitrary tag. Arbitrary is probably not the correct word, but it's not a tag like a link which is a solid representation of "I think this it important enough to link to and therefor you should weigh it". I've always thought of H1..H6 as more of style tags and not content tags. Perhaps I have been mistaken.

H1 is a style tag and not a content tag, you are correct. However it is an overused tag. It would be better to use CSS to take care of font formatting that way if a search engine skips over the H1 tag (which I haven't heard of happening) it will still scan the code. It makes it more easy all around on the search engines anyway.

if thats a concern then why dont u just make the h2 tag the same size and properties as the h1 tag?
i wouldnt use a reg css class to make it bigger but a h2 tag would tell the search engines its important and rank those tags with a higher relevance(over css)

personally, use the h1 till your hearts content