Andylew - 1:02 pm on Oct 4, 2011 (gmt 0)

Absolutely no way. I have the de facto sites for my widgets yet my AdSense over night was slashed to 45%...unless, of course, Google's pocketing the difference?

Exactly my thoughts, perhaps another site which is not as good but is 'good enough' but making more money for them will appear above yours. ie:

Site 1: great content (score 5), low money making (score 1) = 6
Site 2: good content (score 4), average money making (score 3) = 7

A simplistic view but an easy way to see that if panda is a money making algo then quality could become second to money making.

A further thought which i dont think anyone has picked up on but I would question is why it isnt real-time, what statistic is being gathered that needs to be batch processed - ie is time is an important factor in the equation, if so this points 100% to user metrics (including adsense engagement) as this wouldn’t be statistically significant if done in real-time.