Back on January 13th, 2005, I created a thread over at SEO Chat, entitled Kooky Theory. In it, I said (paraphrased), I have a handful of seasonal sites. These sites are ones that people generally don't go to unless the time is right - and of course the searches are seasonal too. The odd thing I've noticed is that when the season hits, and I start getting traffic to them (say, from yahoo and msn), my google rankings for those sites go up too. As soon as the season is over, the google rankings fall to barely nothing. The backlinks don't change appreciably during the season (maybe a handful more than usual). And yahoo and msn rankings don't fluctuate the same way. Only google. It almost feels like Google is using alexa traffic ranks in its algo. If a lot of people are going to a site, then let's rank it better. If no one is going to a site, then let's drop it. Now, I realize this is a kooky theory, and I'm sure it could be shot down in any number of ways, but for the last 3 holidays, I've seen this exact same pattern with Google. Of course, my non-holiday sites don't have such big spikes during the year, so I can't evaluate them the same way. Anyway, just thought I'd throw out the kooky theory for the day for everyone to poke holes in.
Guess what? The exact same thing happened this year with my Christmas site. Great rankings all the way through Christmas, and today, the rankings have gone bye-bye. Makes you go hmmmmm......
Oh, and someone just mentioned a similar thing over at WMW (message 138).