Panic or Patience? Dealing with Oct 2006 Re-Rank

[playtimes]

When a website ranks page one for 5 years across the board within a given sector, has a PR4 across its whole site and keeps within the rules of Google at all times and is pushed to page 4 (10 results per page)... should one panic? beat my computer up? or be patient?

I'm interested in knowing how other webmasters are dealing with this scenario?

[tedster]

Did all your search results end up at #31 [webmasterworld.com]? If so, I think patience is not the right strategy, and I'd suggest looking at the issues being discussed in that thread. Forget your past history with Google, no matter how good it has been. There's a new creature prowling the woods.

But if you are seeing variations in position for different search terms, and especially if a search on your domain name does not show you at #31 but at (or possibly near) #1, then perhaps a short period of patience might be in order.