macavity - 3:27 am on Mar 8, 2012 (gmt 0)

We've been hit by the the same thing. Starting Feb 21st/22nd homepage visits (direct traffic) on one of our sites went from a few hundred to near enough 10,000. There was a drop off over the next week but the figure's still holding steady at around 3,600 extra visits per day.

Glad to have found this thread.