Comment by stopcodon

MetaFilter at least has the advantage of being old and respected enough in tech circles to get the attention of Hacker News and Matt Cutts himself when something like this happens. For the vast majority of legitimate websites who see their traffic drop or become non-existent when google pushes an update to their ranking algorithms, there is virtually no recourse. I understand it's a necessary evil and there will always be collateral damage when trying to combat spammy websites, but at the same time it's scary to know that there are people whose sole source of income is web traffic and overnight it can disappear without explanation.