Can a tracking code influence rankings?

[followgreg]

Very weird thing:

Just added a tracking code (a noscript on https) on one of our sites and the site totally dropped this morning.

Site doesn't rank at all for most major keywords.

This was basically the only change made, the site was super stable for years.

Did someone experience that as well?
Or is it google forcing to use their analytics product or die?

....

[stakaman]

I find this highly unlikely. Did you try to undo all the recent changes and if so did your rankings return?

[followgreg]

No changes at all, I found very unlikely to influence rankings. But the fact is it did, results from latest crawl.
We will see in the long run, it's strange although it might be caused by something no under our control.
Usually sites that are stable come back in a matter of days, hopefully this one will.

[bpcombs]

I find it unlikely that installing a tracking script effected your rankings. It's more likely that it was some factor external to your site.

Brian