Adsense earnings affect Google serps?

from 1st to 160th

[jahfingers]

I have a page that received 40-50 pageviews/day, mostly from Google searches, for about a year with minor fluctuations in traffic. One term related to the page ranked #1 in Google and MSN, and #2 in Yahoo.

Last month the page received over 20,000 pageviews one day because of some news that was related to this search term. The next day the site received a little under 3000 pageviews, and the third the traffic was back to normal.

The weird thing is, is that the page for that particular search term dropped from 1st to 160 something in Google. Everything is the same in Yahoo and MSN. I'm wondering why, after a year or so in the top position on Google, would it just drop so dramatically after such a good day. Is it related to abnormal adsense earnings, abnormal traffic, or just a coincedence. That one good day earned about a year's worth of revenue for that page, so I'm not upset - just a little suspicious.

[NoLimits]

If there was a story on it, my bet is that publishers, and more than likely a good deal of scraper sites have created articles to compete with you on it.

Are there any "new" sites showing up above you?

[jahfingers]

I didn't really think about that NoLimits, but from what I remember, the serps look the same in the top ten, except maybe one different page (not scraped)and my page not being there. 1st to 160 because of some scrapers? I guess it could happen, never seen that before though.