Old news but situation still stinks so it would appear the tinkering goes on...
a Web Site Design Web Development Network: Pixel Resources: Wisconsin-Madison-Milwaukee-Watertown-WI: "Google Confirms Introduction of New Algorithms
June 11,2003 - Courtesy of: Stepforth

Google has finally confirmed what SEO practitioners have been assuming for weeks now. For the past three months, Google has been tinkering with its ranking formulas in order to introduce several new factors in clustering, ranking and SPAM filtering. During this time, websites that had once received Top placements have found themselves bouncing around the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), often dropping as far as 50 - 100th place in Google's rankings. While Google has not issued any official statements, an engineer at Google who writes under the name, 'Google-Guy' has confirmed in the SEO Discussion Forum, Web Master World that the changes perceived by SEO professionals were in fact being made, 'on the fly' as Google attempts to work out the kinks in their new systems.

The changes being introduced by Google have made a significant impact on search engine rankings and has caused a great deal of damage to many companies dependant on Google listings. As Google is a private company with no contractual obligations to the websites listed in its directory, there is absolutely no recourse for companies effected by a loss of position. Unfortunately, at this time, Google is the absolute king of search engines being responsible in one way or another for over 70% of all searches conducted on the Internet. According to our pseudonymous source, Google-Guy, the changes should be complete by the end of July. We expect to see a fairly different Google when all is said and done but we also expect that Google will continue to be the dominant search tool for at least the next 12 - 18 months as they have several distribution agreements with other"