caveman - 1:31 am on Jul 17, 2006 (gmt 0)

I do see some signs that kw oriented adjustments were made in this update.

More importantly, we have numerous sites with homepages and subpages at 15%+ kw density that are just fine. If higher levels of kw density alone were enough of a factor to significantly drop a site's rankings, we would see it. We don't. I'm with Kirby; it's not the big story.

That does not mean that they didn't do something with kw density, but if they did, it just one of many factors at play, and I doubt one that is sinking site's rankings unless kw density is almost all they had going for them (hint, hint).

Sometimes, things can look a certain way, when something else is going on. What if, for example, Y! substantially altered the way that links factor into the algo: Both from a quality and quantity standpoint.

Y's algo used to be much more onpage and kw oriented. Last year that began to change. Links became more a factor.

In this new update, links are again, IMO, playing a significant role: Both the quality and quality of links. Y seems to be exploring ways to push authoritative links more to the fore. Look at all those Wikipedia and MSN results in the SERP's now.

So what happens as a SE evolves from onpage to offpage orientations in more and more respects? It might look as though this onpage thing is hurting a site, or that onpage thing is hurting a site. When in fact, it is more that those onpage things simply aren't helping as much as they used to...and other off page things are completely overwhelming things like, for example, kw density. ;-)