I’ve done some testing related to this too – I’m not convinced that it’s the link to Google that helped you in the situation. It might have been the use of the word “slots” in an outbound link pointing to an external site. It might also have been just the single additional instance of the word “slots” on the page. I’ve seen good results by linking to 5-10 good resources for a keyword phrase and using that phrase in the anchor text for all of the links too.
BTW, nice to see you here Kevin11 – when are you coming to Texas to drink some beer and sing some karaoke with me man?