Google has tons of search ranking factors but currently email newsletter metrics are not one of them.

Jake Ludington posted a wild theory at Lockergnome titled Email Reputation Causes Penalties in Google Search Results. He was under the impression that his rankings tanked because of his e-mail newsletter. He said that a Google told him that his email newsletter metrics, open rates, bounce rates, click rates on the links within the newsletter is causing his bad rankings – so he cleaned up his newsletter and purged out subscribers and then submitted a reconsideration request. He was approved and thus felt it had to do with his newsletter.

Matt Cutts had to come in a debunk the wild theory. Matt said in a comment (although he had to post it several places and several different ways):

I’ve heard of some wild theories but this one is pretty interesting.

Anyway, it is also interesting to read the SEO thoughts on this during and after Matt’s debunking.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.