walkman - 5:15 am on Apr 19, 2011 (gmt 0)

I haven't seen anyone post this but did anyone see a huge spike in traffic before it dropped? on a few of my sites I saw a 30% increase in traffic for 2 days, april 5th on 1 site and april 12th on another. I was excited and thought yes finally google is recognizing the hard work I've put into unique content. Now for this past week those same sites have dropped 30% from my original traffic levels!

For as long as I can remember it has been this way. Filters come and go, SERPS shifts etc during an update. That's why people say wait till SERPS are settled.

Perhaps it's been postulated here before, but I think the surge may be designed to expose as many pages as possible to as many visitors as possible to gauge visitor behavior.

Sure but someone got 20-25% less traffic no, so they can't expose everyone's pages that much? Unless they do it for borderline sites alone.