First - there was a dip because that's just how markets work. After large rises, a retreat in price is practically guaranteed. Traders want to take profits and buyers want to get a better entry price.

As far as the correlation with search traffic - I imagine that a lot of that is from people who are interested due to the price/payouts. Most of that traffic could just be from people in the crypto world who see the increases and decide to visit the site to see what's happening. As prices rise and fall, so does the user base (at least that has been the trend here so far).

Yes..."free money" is always a great lure. It's unfortunate that there isn't much else to offer right now. I hope that the dev teams at Steemit, Inc. have some bigger plans that they're about to execute. You don't want to miss the influx of interest/hype for a second time.