Don’t forget that the web is changing. There is more junk produced every day and Google needs to combat search engine spam and blackhat practices. This means changes and not seeing search results you are used to.
Double True, but I'm expecting to start seeing thousands of keywords in the footer of sites white text on a white background. It's like SEO is coming full circle. Just surprised Google is allowing ancient SEO tricks to work again.
That's a key missing thread. The web is increasingly dumb, and the types of people who produced great content are now in the FB/Twitter skinnerbox, liking things like drunken monkeys.