Noticable Changes in Traffic After WP and Plugin Updates

Anyone else notice this?

[mhansen]

Is it just me... or does anyone else notice peaks and valleys in their traffic referrals from search within a few days of WordPress core, or Plugin Updates?

- Last 10-15 days, steady and climbing traffic on a site. (exception of holiday)
- Yesterday, Updated WP core and W3cache and the only other 3-4 plugins used on the site. Traffic remained on trend.
- Today... Ghost town! (Down 60-70%)

Has anyone else been able to pin traffic changes on updates?

[bhartzer]

How are you looking at the traffic? Are you looking at the site's server log files or something like Google Analytics?

[mhansen]

Logfiles... as well as AwStats, and WP.com Stats on the site itself.

Uniques drop like a rock...
Pageviews per visit remains level.

I also prefer to watch for trends over periods of time rather than spikes or dips, but the correlation with WP updates is noticeable.

[lorax]

I manage about 30 installs and have not seen a correlation in updates to traffic levels. If anything, they're all growing nice a steady (barring the normal peaks and valleys).

[mhansen]

Thanks All... Today, 1-2 days after flushing and refreshing the W3 cache, traffic is trending back to the norm. I will have to note it all in the site-book and check it again on the next refresh as well.