sandboxsam - 10:35 pm on Dec 30, 2007 (gmt 0)

“So perhaps this tweak in supplementals twisted rankings elsewhere enough to pop some sites into higher positions (again, the unintended consequence theory).”

This is not what we are seeing.

Five sites (five different sites for each search phrase) cannot pop up on every page of search results for every search phrase ahead of the affected site.

The other sites are not going up, the affected site is going down, this is very clearly the case.

That being said, I do think this is an unintended consequence since Matt has not heard of it.
But the question is; a consequence of what?

What is triggering this consequence, filter or penalty?