Since the Mayday update I've been tracking the effects of various changes and comparing pre update with post update data.
One statistic that is jumping out like a sore thumb is that sites with a high percentage of traffic coming from search engines pre-mayday update seems to have fared much worse in Google than similar sites which receive at least 20% of traffic from a source other than search. Comparing only Google traffic between these two sets of sites shows that having other sources of traffic may have contributed to Google reducing traffic by a lesser amount.
Of course it could be a cause and effect issue, getting traffic from other sources generally required paying for it or being perceived an authority and earning it.
Still, the data is saying that having 80%+ of a sites traffic come from search led to a greater falloff from Google. Alexa tracks and reports this data for websites but I'm not sure how accurate it is and not enough time has gone by to start evaluating other websites.
Your thoughts on whether or not the Mayday traffic decrease had anything to do with % of traffic from search would be appreciated.
