Hi Aaron, it is totally true and the most amazing is that authority poker sites have this problem, authority legal sites and governmental sites have this issue like bbc and guardian for noline poker or forbes for casinos
navtekt.info where I did tell a little bit about this technique and the most amazing is that top 10 results for most competitive keywords are seo black hat redirect spams.
I do not think it is Google update but rather a google HOLE. Watch some old domain sites with no relationships to the keyword update and repurchased in order to get into the domain age legacy.