Eliathah - I agree.  Blog commenting is extremely inefficient use of time. I wonder how many of the people who promote blog commenting as a method to obtain traffic would pay someone else to put "meaningful comments" on relevant (no-follow) blogs.  I wouldn't and I doubt many people would.

Carl - A couple of peple have questioned whether their listings in local caused declines in non-local results.

You mentioned that the problem you described coincided with a Penquin update.    Penguin appears to be penalize the keywords contained in the offending links as well as set a sitewide ceiling on organic referrals per day.

Is there a reasonable chance the site is penalized by Penguinn?  If so, are the offending keywords the non-local or local variety?   You've probably done so, but I'd inspect the IBL's carefully before I'd delete any reputable links.

Jest - It's not necessarily the volume of traffic but the quality of the traffic.  Most of these auto-completed (or "suggested") searches contain long tail terms which indicate the user is much more likely to convert to a customer.   My $ .02

Jest - It's not necessarily the volume of traffic but the quality of the traffic.  Most of these auto-completed (or "suggested") searches contain long tail terms which indicate the user is much more likely to convert to a customer.   My $ .02

Eliathah - I agree.  Blog commenting is extremely inefficient use of time. I wonder how many of the people who promote blog commenting as a method to obtain traffic would pay someone else to put "meaningful comments" on relevant (no-follow) blogs.  I wouldn't and I doubt many people would.