I agree with this. I have had many sites deindexed due to being thin affiliate sites using the same affiliate feeds that tons of other sites use. They still g

I agree with this. I have had many sites deindexed due to being thin affiliate sites using the same affiliate feeds that tons of other sites use. They still get crawled. Also, I have had sites go through a huge drop off in bot activity and still keep whatever rankings those sites had. Bot activity is cyclical. I don't think you can make a direct correlation between bot activity and ranking.