Finally somebody observes something that was absolutely evident from 25 August to yesterday.

Is necessarie to note, it has only visible at great sites, Web Autorities, Big Directories and similar.

For example, I control a big directory (f.e. yellow pages?) with more 2000 categorias, more 2 million registries and more 14 K regular daily visits.
After day 25 of August lost near 40 % traffic I deal, which we are beginning to recover slowly from yesterday.

That it has happened in Google? Change in algo? Change only for some areas or topics? I Not sure it, nevertheless we have made test during the 25 last days, and it is evident we find very anormal result. Pages in #1 with titles as "Home" and similar. Pages without relevance. Pages whith anormal URL, etc, etc, etc.

As far as the signs < and > , certainly mean less and more score within the global position assigned to the page.
I have not wanted to quantify with numeric data those because they will be necessarie more test and the experiences of others guys so that will be scientific data.