crobb305 - 8:02 pm on Mar 11, 2011 (gmt 0)

Ok, I can't resist this because this is no joke, but my site was spanked by Google yesterday (probably the Panda update), and I lost 60% of my traffic -- the same day as the Japan earthquake. Last year, my site was hit with a -50 on the SAME DAY as the Haitian earthquake. Not exaggerating. So when we say Google is shaking things up, we mean it lol

So to answer your question, yes, in my analyses, earthquakes do affect Google traffic :)