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I went back and checked our messages from that time. I accepted your assessment because I had no reason to do otherwise. However, a lot of sites lost traffic when Panda came around simply because...

You are mistaken. That you had a problem I don't doubt. That you most likely fixed the problem I don't doubt, either. Your solution was a common one for a common issue.

No one has ever fixed a...

A lot of things happened around the time of the Panda refresh dates. Panda was not going after sites with 404 problems. It sounds like you created a technical mess gradually over time and then...

No one is always right. However, if you fixed a problem that was depressing your search referral traffic and you saw a quick recovery (less than 6 weeks) then whatever the problem was it wasn't...

Yes, and whereas they struggled with Panda for two years before starting to follow my advice, I pretty much fixed my Panda problem and other people's right away.

At some point you're going to have...

So Googlers have long advised people to use the social signals as a metric for corroborating the quality of your Website in the eyes of users. That is not the same thing as a search engine using...

Google does not use toolbar data or Chrome data for organic rankings
Source: Google Says They Don't Use Chrome Data For Search Rankings (August, 2012)

Google does not use "bounce rate" for...

Do you mind sharing a name for that email? I would love to ask Matt Cutts about it. Because so far everything come out of Google about "user engagement" and "social signals" boils down to "we don't...

I published the sources here:
How the Google Panda Algorithm Works | SEO Theory

Panda was/is about Website presentation (design and content), not about user engagement. People got confused about that because, well, I guess because people got confused about it and passed the...

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but that is what I charge for. :)

I've written in fairly general terms about Panda before now on the SEO Theory blog.

And I have shared some research...

User signals to Google are very different from user signals to Web marketers. All the SEO arguments in favor of bounce rates, time on site, and social signals have been debunked.

They compared the user blocks against the Panda algorithm selections but they said the user blocking never figured directly into the algorithm. At that point a lot of SEOs started talking about ways...

I have been debating bounce rates with the SEO community for two years. In all that time no one has produced one shred of scientific, credible evidence to show that Google is using bounce rates to...

Well, I still have very high return-to-SERP rates (above 80%) for most of my blogs and I'm just not worried about it.

It's highly doubtful that Google is tracking user signals for general Web search rankings.

They have confirmed that user signals impact the search results you see when you are logged in.

And...