I get the feeling that Y is starting at the bottom and working their way up. They're still using an editor reviewed database for the big terms, like "free porn" (note the descriptions), while they're applying their new algo to the smaller stuff, tuning, tweaking, etc. As they get all the bugs worked out, those big term searches will start to look more like everything else....hopefully.
I think the stuff about recips getting penalized is bunk. Ranking sites well that have a lot of "votes" is a good idea, but how practical is that in the real world. How many of you vote for sites (besides your affiliates
), just because you think your srufers will enjoy them? It's not very hard to get a lot of votes to your sites, that aren't really votes, if you want to do that.