How can you be so sure with Google? They have a hostiry of surprising people with their sudden PR updates.
I think you could be right. Google updated the number of backlinks (Increased by about 20k) and then suddenly my rankings jumped from not in the top 1000 to position 4 almost overnight, for a keyword with 50 million results. I'm looking forward to the update. Should be good.
PR is just a webmaster fetish. I've had sites with no PR at all rank #1 in the SERPs, whereas other people's sites with PR4 - 6 being on page 2 or further. Try not to worry so much about PR. I use to obsess over this as well, but not anymore.
I have noticed a change in the number of links that show up on Google as well. I am guessing there will be an update late this month, or early next month.
This is a very normal routine for google one of my site has page rank 4 from 2 years . And has not changed so i dont think about it . U just need to be serious about blogging everyday .
I've noticed the same differences and my biggest sites traffic and earnings has doubled the last 2 days.