I know most articles I read on the internet are of websites suffering because of the panda update... Lets here it for us who have slaved to develop high quality copy and content. My traffic has increased by over 20% on most of my websites (and so have my adsense earnings!). Never played any SEO games, did some minor link building in relevant areas. I'm glad finally people with better content are ranking ahead of the SEO gamers.
Yeah - I saw the same - one of my money sites went from 1000 / day to 2000 / day just by seeing the competition die around it It was a great moment hehe. Overall, the Panda update got rid of a lot of "scrap" that was out there polluting the SERPS. In my case, I always used genuine articles and links, so it's all good.
If you want to rank well in just days, then always choose the best content as well as unique articles, Panda is more secure these days.
I saw 0 to 4 jumps on page rank for couple of my clients. So I think anythin g is possible for Google!
Panda update is good for authority blogs having social media presence . I have some sites ranked well and some thing not ,after this update. The reasons are already given