Google started updating it's index and SERPs over the last weeks on different data centers, geo-locations and given the big number of reported changes, this seems to become the biggest SERP update in 2 years (since the infamous "Florida" update that put a lot of web companies "out-of-business)

There's way too much information to digest, interpret, assume and just speculate… and thousands of webmasters do it at once…

Just read on in the forums and let me know when you got a final conclusion

Matt Cutts – the GoogleGuy – released a very nice post announcing and explaining the current update

My point is that more than ever, we are constantly working to improve our algorithms and scoring.

I think a new set of backlinks (and possibly PageRank) will probably be visible relatively soon; I’m guessing within the next few days. I still expect some flux after that though, just to let you know.

I believe that there is a new binary wending its way out from the group of data centers that included 66.102.7.x . Most people won't notice much difference between data centers, but I believe that those searches are likely to be closer to what to expect.

Just don't assume the sky is falling from first impressions, patc. If the PR/backlink update is delayed, I'll let people know.

Google Update Jagger Overview from here

Decrease in Ranking:

• Heavily SEO's Sites
• Newer Sites
• Sites with large fluctuations in Inbound Links
• Sites that purchase a lot of paid links

Increase in Ranking:

• Older Sites
• Sites with little change in IBL's
• Mega Info Sites (howstuffworks, etc.)
• Ebay Listings
• Trusted Corporate Sites (Visa, Chase, etc)
• Sites with little or no SEO

Of course this summary can be boiled down to a High Trustrank vs. Low Trustrank theory as you can read here in WMW

one more frustrated guy:

The era of the mom-and-pop shop with a quality website ranking-well is over — unless it can afford a swath of links across high TR pages. Bottom line as it appears to me: The rich get richer and the barrier to entry much higher.

Other's think that anchor text got devalued and plain link counts are the ruler's of the SERPs … I dont follow the assumption that Link Anchor is de-valued in favor for pure Link counts – that would be a big step back?

Another speculation/summary from this post

After reading all these posts over the last 24 hours it seems to me…

• Authority sites are "in" be it corporate or informational.

• How you cover your kw topic makes a difference (are you targeting the traffic from the kw or the kw itself?).

• Recip links are devalued

• Traded/Purchased links are devalued

More detail posts

Are onpage factors the ruling factor?

Commercial Stop words

Commercial vs. Informational

Old sites rule

Devaluing

Link Dampening PLUS - the back-in-time devaluing of newer links vs older links … read about Link Dampeing here

It seems mostly authority/large sites such as


howstuffworks

news.com

newscientist.com

wikipedia

wired

come back to the first page – giving informational sites a big emphasis

Funny sponsored content effect – Debt Consolidation #1 on a pre-sell page/advertorial of Forbes.com – which is a proof of this concept…

BTW: Brett Tabke gave this update it's name and just showed me another way to spend a nice evening in Vegas — The Stones are playing Vegas the week of PubCon and Matt Cutts was recently called the Mick Jagger of search.