tedster - 4:00 am on Dec 17, 2012 (gmt 0)

Hoping to clarify things a bit. Is the idea here that:

1. some bots are first doing an automated Google Search
2. then requesting the links that Google publishes
3. and that means including query terms in their referrer
4. and they are doing it for hours at a time

If that's the case, how might the total Google Search traffic end up being almost constant? Even if they are just storing the search result links once (so Google doesn't block them) it seems to me that on-and-off bot traffic would also make for up-and-down totals