sunzon - 1:02 am on Feb 23, 2005 (gmt 0)

<Funny how so many report seeing a lot of the really spammy sites disappear with this update, but then complain that their site is gone - not sure they realize the correlation between the two.>

Just as many people report seeing rubbish sites appearing at the top of serps that were not there before.

There are many posts in the forum here about "legit" sites (MIA) having dropped severely in ranking, with no question of over-optimization or 26 steps negligence.
That is the puzzle of Allegra, and creates questions about what to do, if anything.
That is the subject of this post, not how-to-make-a-good-website-for-top-ranking-in-google.
Rephrasing the question: blame Google (and sit it out), or blame yourself (and change your website).

Sit it out is honorable, but fretful.
Changing your website, if you follow the 26 steps plus some of those other wellknown tips, sounds like rewriting the rules somehow.

If only we all agreed/concluded "poor" sites ("poor" being..... just fill it in) got dumped, we could all be talking about the weather and congratulating G on an excellent upgrade of the algo.