Thank you. I'm a programmer too but I didn't get it. I figured that could be the case but then I wonder how? I, first of all, naively assumed they couldn't do it because they say they can't (shame on me for being so trusting), and then figured that if they changed the algorithm then there'd be collateral damage. I dont really get into algorithms much so I didn't know they could target a single page like that. The smart programmers would probably say I was a yellow belt compared to their black belt. Anyway, thanks for the answer.

It doesn't require any inside knowledge to manipulate the ranking system. There are some methods that you can't really architect against (like paid posts) from a software angle, so Google has rules and penalties in place to discourage sites from doing that in order to distort their page rank. In this case, one team seems to have accidentally run afoul of those rule and is being penalized appropriately because it makes sense in terms of the larger picture of protecting the quality of search results.