I have an EMD pointing to a free blog that was ranking steadily around #4 completely disappear on the 6th. It then came back at #1 about a week later, outranking my money site which has occupied #1 for years. I blast the EMD regularly with all kinds of spammy backlinks, web 2.0's, forum profiles, etc. but the money site is all organic with tons of unique content, low OBL, varied link profile from authority sites, etc. In other words, like others have said, the junk seems to be winning out over the good stuff. I don't buy that this is an algo test of some sort - G has labs in which they can do sophisticated scenario modeling for algo changes that the public never sees. I think it's far more likely that they are testing US and how we react to a perceived change, which is something they can't model in their labs. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the data they are collecting from all this results in a devastating future "Son of Panda" update.