Does anyone know if the Google organic algorithm has changed in the last day or two?

On studying instances of text and also links in, a competitor's site which has remained unchanged (as has ours) has just been positioned with a higher slot.

I wonder if the way Google penalises too high-a-density of keywords has been adjusted?

G could dial up or dial down just about anything it wants at any given time, but one instance of a ranking change shouldn't be taken for indications of an algo change.

And keyword density in and of itself is a metric that can most probably be safely ignored at this stage in the game. In the past few years search engines have moved far past KWD to determine what a page is about. My gut feeling is that its effect is so slight that any turn of its dial would be virtually unnoticeable.

Have you considered any external factors such as new backlinks to the competitor's site or lost or downgraded backlinks to yours?

Many thanks for your response.

Have investigated backlinks and nothing has changed here - either my site or my competitor's.

Do you know of any other major factors that figure in the organic algorithm besides kwd and links in / out - for example, does Google have any idea of page hite based on traffic samples that it may factor into the equation?