It first began when a variety of webmasters began to notice significant changes in their website traffic especially where long-tail keywords were concerned.

One site saw it’s traffic drop 50% over the course of a few days.

Another site saw 90% of it’s traffic disappear.

Some had smaller drops in traffic of around 10% while others saw no significant difference.

So what happened?

Initially when this was first discussed, it was simply a “theory” – but because it was happening on such a massive scale to so many sites, it soon became clear that something was happening although there wasn’t any official word from Google on what was actually going on.

Finally, after a few weeks, Google’s Matt Cutt’s did in fact, disclose that yes, there was an update to their algorithm that affected long-tail keywords and that this was a permanent algorithm change and it will not be rolled back.

Google doesn’t exactly tell us why some sites were affected and why some were not but Matt did re-iterate the same information he’s been giving for years. (see video below)

Matt states in his video “If you were affected by MayDay the sort of thing to think about is to go back and ask yourself ‘Have I got the highest quality site?’, ‘Am I showing up for the most relevant searches?’, ‘What sort of things can I do in terms of adding great content?’, ‘Am I making sure that people consider me an authority?’, that I’m not just matching something that’s off-topic or that users won’t find all that useful.”

So if you happened to see your site drop in rankings for some long-tail keyword search queries, take a look at who may be showing up for those search queries now.

• What are they doing differently that you could implement?
• Do they have more content?
• If so, what kind of content do they have?
• Where are they optimizing these long-tail keyword search phrases? And so on.

Make some changes on your own pages that you see some of your competitors doing and you might just see your listings start moving upwards yet again.

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Here’s a video on where to find it, how to install it and how to use it.

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Quick Update: It was noted in the comments (see below) that at least one person was not able to view the new Google layout.  The video below was shot using the Chrome browser but I also tested in Firefox and Safari – in both instances I WAS able to see the new layout.  However, I could NOT see it when testing it in Internet Explorer.  I’ll be interested to see if any of you notice the same thing.

Quick Update #2: Just after posting the update above I went back to Chrome, and searched yet again using the same topic of “coffee”.  And I was NOT able to see the navigation.  However, I CAN in Safari.  So I’m wondering if this is just a quick test or if they’re just rolling it out in some areas?  Curious indeed and just a little more than disappointed that I can’t *now* re-create it.  I’ll keep checking during the day to see if it shows up again.

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Here’s what Google had to say:

We’re currently testing a feature with a small number of advertisers in which a phone number can be included within the ad to help them more effectively engage with customers who prefer to connect over the phone.

Obviously this makes the ad stand out just a little bit more – and because it’s placed above the actual text of the ad it affords more room to get your message across unlike the ad below it which had to take up valuable advertising space in order to add their phone number.

It will be interesting to see where this leads in the future.

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You can read the full story here: http://blog.ning.com/2010/04/an-update-from-ning.html

Many people are on the lookout for alternatives to Ning and so what I’ve done is create a list that you can reference that gives you alternatives to Ning.

Enjoy!

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What I did find interesting, and something that I liked very much was that it allows you to filter the keywords by:

• Ad Share
• Competition
• Local Monthly Searches
• Global Monthly Searches
• Estimated Average CPC and
• Search Share

Here’s the video in its entirety.  Enjoy!

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One of the biggest obstacles many online marketers face, both new and seasoned, is getting website traffic.  There’s a lot to do and not a whole lot of time to do it.

Consider for a moment that to get that site traffic you want you need to:

1. Submit Articles to article directories.
2. Submit videos to video directories.
3. Submit to social bookmarking websites.
4. Fill out all those CAPCHA forms (and we all know how easy those are to read right?)
5. Keep records of where you’ve submitted your content.
6. Optimize your content.
7. And guess what?  You have to do this every-single-day.

Miracle Traffic Bot

Click here to visit Miracle Traffic Bot’s Website

This is selling like crazy (over 600 sales in this past week per Clickbank) and here’s what it says it can do for you:

• Get massive website traffic without paying for it. This is the ideal situation.  Costs to advertise using PPC have gone through the roof!  Anymore it’s not difficult to spend $100 a day in PPC advertising.  Free website traffic is the “holy grail” – literally.
• Dominate the search engines without wasting your money and your time.
• Get hundreds of backlinks without using SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  Now to be quite honest, I’m a big fan of SEO and know that it works – so I am a little unsure about this claim.
• Zero risk is involved.

Here’s the details:

• It will instantly submit your videos, your websites and your affiliate links to authority video sharing sites.
• It will get you backlinks from major bookmarking sites.  On autopilot.
• It will submit your articles for you.
• It does it quickly.
• It solves CAPCHA’s for you.
• It claims 100% hands free automation & SPAM protection.
• You can set it up so that you can schedule your content to go out.
• It will save a record of where you’ve submitted your content (this is HUGE because it’s very time-consuming to do this on your own).

Miracle Traffic Bot is a desktop software that installs on your computer.

It’s created by Paul Ponna who has other product successes like:

• Copy n Paste Systems
• Disk Mojo
• Auction Acrobat
• Magic List Bot
• and more.

Now for the Cons

I have not personally used the program but there are many who have.  Here’s what I’ve learned:

• $77 one-time fee with a $39.00 monthly fee.
• Submits to 10 article sites (without the premium option)
• Submits to 10 social bookmarking sites (without the premium option)
• Submits to 10 video sites (without the premium option)
• If you remain a monthly member you get 2 more sites per month.
• No pinging services.
• Multiple refunds being requested by savvy internet marketers

To read in-depth information on people who have used this product already you’ll want to visit the Warrior Forum.

Based on what I’ve read thus far, people are not impressed.  Use your own judgement but be sure you read the reviews of actual users.

SENuke

Click here to visit the SENuke Website

In the same set of posts I mentioned before there is a lot of praise for SENuke.  Now, SENuke has been out for a lot longer but here’s what SENuke offers:

• Notifies 65 of the Internet’s most visited Web 2.0 sites.  (Including video sites, RSS sites & social bookmarking sites).
• Let’s you find the easiest keyword to rank well for.
• Automatically create blogs, hubs, articles and wikis at 13 high PR (PageRank), high authority sites.
• Allows you to re-post to blogs/wikis/and hubs created by SENuke as many times as you want.
• Create hundreds of article variations with one seed article.
• Link all of your submissions together with one click.
• Instant video submission to the top 14 and growing video websites online.
• You don’t have to know how to create a video (this is HUGE for a lot of people).
• Software is constantly updated.
• Live forum exists where you can interact with other users to get tips & such.
• And much, much more.

My opinion?  If you need to choose a one-stop option, choose SENuke.  It has a great track-record and lots of very loyal fans who swear by the software.

Watch their video here:

Click here to go to SENuke’s Website

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Cost	$147 / Month UPDATE: As of 4/16/10 the price has gone up to $197 / Month.	$150 (one-time cost at the time of this writing)
Refund Policy	7 Days	30 Days
LINK	Click to Visit IMeye	Click to visit Market Samurai
Shows number of searches
Shows number of competing pages in Google
Shows number of "intitle" competing pages in Google
Shows number of words in the keyword phrase
Shows AdWords bid estimates	, 2
Shows the top 10 sites in the Google SERPs
Shows AdWords ads that are running for the keyword
Shows which Clickbank products have been promoted using that keyword?
Shows which affiliate offer categories have been promoted using that keyword.
Identifies if physical goods are being sold for that keyword.	, with flags
Shows if there are any exact domain matches present in the top 10 of the SERPs	, with flags
Shows if any EzineArticles are in the top 10 of the SERPs	, with flags
Shows if any YouTube videos are in the top 10 of SERPs	, with flags
Shows if Amazon in the top 10 of SERPs	, with flags
Shows if Yahoo! Answers in the top 10 of SERPs	, with flags
Shows if Squidoo, Hubpages or Blogspot in the top 10 of SERPs	, with flags
Can specify monthly search volume
Can specify number of competing pages
Can specify intitle competing pages
Can specify no exact domains in the top 10 SERPs
Can specify no YouTube videos in the top 10 SERPs
Can specify no Squidoo lenses in the top 10 SERPs
Can specify no Hubpages, or Blogspot in the top 10 SERPs
Can specify AdWords high bid estimate
Can Track Rankings of Keywords in the SERPs
Can Find Content related to your keyword
Can find words that indicate commerciality?
Shows you Domain Age of competitors for keyword.
Shows you PR (PageRank) of competitors for keyword
Shows you how many pages a site has indexed in Google.
Shows you how many pages a site has indexed in Google
Shows you how many backlinks are coming to a page
Shows how many backlinks are coming into a DOMAIN
Shows you how many backlinks are from .edu or .gov sites
Shows you if a competitor is in the DMOZ or Yahoo Directories?
Shows you if the keyword is in the title?
Shows you if the keyword is in the URL?
Shows you if the keyword is in the description?
Shows you if the keyword is in a header tag on the page?
Shows you the number of days since Google visited a page?
Finds products you can promote for the keyword from Clickbank?
Finds products you can promote for the keyword from PayDotCom?
Finds products you can promote for the keyword from Commission Junction?
Finds products you can promote for the keyword from Amazon?
Let's you publish content directly to your blog from the program?
Finds content for you based on your keyword selection?
Finds you ways to promote your site for your keyword?
Can specify the amount of competition?
Databases Used	Proprietary	Google
Videos on each product	Click here to view the IMeye Video	Click here to view videos for Market Samurai (also be sure to check the "Dojo" section at the top of the page for more videos.)
Keyword research begins with...	A monetization idea (AdSense, Affiliate Marketing, PPC, CPA)	A seed keyword

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Now, Errioxa’s native language is Spanish but in his post he did a tremendous job of trying to convey the information he discovered.  And here, I’ll try and lay it out for you the best that I can so that you can start using (and testing) this idea yourself.

Essentially what it comes down to is that if you have multiple links on your web page, using link anchors for those links (instead of just a basic static link with nothing more than just anchor text), will generate a unique listing of your site within the search results.

So let’s say you had a website about “weather”.  And on that site you had different sections about:

• Rain
• Snow
• Sun

One of your web pages contained three links.

1. A link to the page about Rain.
2. A link to the page about Snow.
3. A link to the page about Sun.

Links to these pages might look like this:

An example (simple anchor text link):

<a href=”http://www.WeatherSite.com/rain.html”>Rain </a>

Example of using link anchors:

<a href=http://www.WeatherSite.com/snow.html#SNOW“>Snow</a>

<a href=”http://www.WeatherSite.com/sun.html#SUN“>Sun</a>

What Errioxa discovered was that by using the link anchors (bolded in the examples above), those pages showed up within the Google search results as an individually targeted and indented page.

I suggest that you try this out for yourself and where you can, add in some link anchors to your own site and see what happens.

For more details, visit the original post at SEOMoz.

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Google has released AdWords for Mobile.

They do forewarn you to first login to your AdWords account from your desktop and then choose the parts of your account you want to keep a close eye on.

Things such as setting up custom alerts when certain events happen such as when your campaign is getting close to it’s daily budget, or when your traffic drops substantially as well as saved filters that will flag your most important keywords and campaigns.  These filters and alerts will then show up on your AdWords for mobile screen.

(Click to see a sample mobile phone screen)

You can also view and make basic edits to campaigns and keywords.  However, if you need to access other parts of your account like ads or campaign settings, you’ll need to switch to the desktop version of AdWords through a link that they’ll give you at the bottom of your screen.

Currently it’s being used by a small percentage of English language advertisers and they are working on enabling these features for other advertisers and languages.

To access the application, visit:  http://adwords.google.com/dashboard/Dashboard

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