caveman - 5:28 pm on Jun 27, 2004 (gmt 0)

TJ, we were, and are, an Adwords advertiser for this site.

I've read the suppositions that Adwords ads can hurt a site's rankings, but so far I still don't see conclusive proof of it, and our sites that advertise in Adsense have not been hurt in the SERP's.

I agree with HitProf's assessment. I view it as a short sighted strategy that would cause a nasty backlash if ever proven. I've worked in media for a very long time, and when a given media outlet, even a big one, becomes viewed as working against its own advertisers, it's a hard thing to recover from.

Also FWIW, this is not the first time (during updates) that we've seen traffic stay constant, rankings stay constant, but conversions temporarily drop. I honestly don't understand it. The only potential explanation that has made sense to me has been Sublime1's point that perhaps changes in titles/summaries is to blame. But even that theory is unlikely to me, since it has also been our experience that after a while, conversions return to normal. We just can't find the cause.