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Hi Joe,

Thanks for the comment. Its one of those things that its very hard to establish a cause and effect relationship or a correlation. What i've found is a increase in traffic not only to the home page but to the internal pages as well.

I'm keeping my eye on this to see where it all goes.

I'm not sure if anyone has tested this properly but i'm begining to suspect that google is using site usage statistics as a site quality guide and ultimately as a ranking variable. The this what i've seen so far on one of my sites (site A)

Week 1= bounce rate (83.88%), Avg time on site (0:0:57), Pages/visit (1.28)

no changes made to the site apart from the usual link building.

Week 2:  Traffic drops by 30%, Keywords generating traffic drops by 39%. Bounce rate (87.25%), Avg time on site (0:0:43), pages/visit (1.21). I replaced all affiliate links on my homepage to internal pages where the chunk of the content is and did a reconsideration request.

Week 3: Traffic goes up by 30%, keywords generating traffic goes up by 65%, Bounce rate (30.41%), Avg time on site (0:3:02), Pages/visit (3.74). This is not the most scientific test but surely google must be using these variables and a ranking factor?

Anyone seen something along these lines or have thoughts on it?