I'm in the exact same boat as you. It's been happening for a few weeks now. A term that Google's tool shows had nearly 9,000 EXACT MATCH searches per day in Feb we keep bouncing between page 1 and 3 pretty much every single day. The revenue roller coaster it's causing is very painful. And the same with us, it appears we're stuck on page 3 again for the last 2 days. There are actually 4 major terms this is happening with on my sites. It's like they're testing us out on page 1 (15 mins to an hour each day) to make sure us being there doesn't hurt their ppc income.
I sure hope you are right (about the reversing, don't want anyone to jump off a bridge, but maybe he deserves a skinned knee)
Can anyone else confirm, they have now stopped bouncing and have been stuck at a lower ranking since Sunday. from 26th Feb - 15 March site was bouncing for two major keywords Page 2 - 6th page one daily, sometimes three times a day and everytime i hit refresh. Now it's stopped for two days, and site gone down to page 3 lowest for months! what's happing with you guys now?