There's a lot of talk about new sites in Google and the initial 'honeymoon' period. Here's what I've observed from the last 3 sites I've built. Each site has between 200-600 pages. Loads of unique content, some product feeds occasionally mixed in but with many product descriptions re-written. Decent incoming links over time from highly relevant authority sites including a couple of .gov, well known magazines etc. Gradual incoming links and not accrued all at once. These are long term projects and are updated constantly with new content.

Each site experienced a 2/3 drop in Google traffic almost exactly 4 months to the day since receiving the first visitors from google. As this drop occurred, traffic from Yahoo started to increase. Five months on, SE traffic was split 50/50 Google/Yahoo. The next 5 months sees a gradual comeback to the point where 80% of traffic is from Google, the rest Yahoo/MSN//etc

I'd be interested to know what other folks have observed with new sites and in particular the timing of the first drop (if at all) and if certain keywords were affected more than others.

Thanks