Patricio Robles summarizes a TechCrunch report where Trip Adler, CEO for the online document sharing service Scribd, says the company knowingly made some changes to its too-aggressive, SEO strategy that it expected would decrease traffic. Well, traffic fell nearly 50% since June. Robles calls the decline the "SEO equivalent of a stock market crash." Robles notes, "It's unclear whether Scribd voluntarily made changes that have caused traffic to halve or whether it was smacked by Google (or knew a smackdown was in the offing). Personally, I think the latter is more likely. After all, Scribd's tactics and …

Search marketing tool company AdGooRoo launched Budget Analyzer. One of its features, SEM Insight tool, enables search marketers to track and respond to competitors' paid search impressions, clicks, click through rates and total spend, according to Loren Baker. Baker also explains AdGooRoo introduced Traffic Estimator. The tool lets marketers gain estimates for competitors' organic search clicks and click-through rates to track and compare their organic search traffic with competitors'.

Eric Enge instructs SEO professionals in completing a site audit in an hour. The 11-step process begins by logging into Google Webmaster Tools and a Web analytics package for the site. Among the other steps Enge suggests, there's checking the number of indexed pages, reviewing the information architecture, and walking through the site to see the way search engines spider the content. He also suggests SEO professionals look for duplicate content to keep the number of indexed pages in check, and check the XML sitemap file to ensure content recently added shows up.

Marketing Sherpa interviews Rank-Mobile.com CEO Cindy Krum on what marketers can do to get their content in front of more mobile searchers. Content not optimized for the mobile Web not only doesn't render correctly, but search engines cannot index it and mobile users are unlikely to find it. Krum details strategies to get Web sites in shape, and discusses why relying only on optimized HTML content isn't a good idea. Topics she discusses include knowing your applications, optimizing more types of content, signaling your location, optimizing your current site, and keeping sites simple.

The site bMighty.com posts an excerpt from Kevin Lee's book "The Truth About Pay-Per-Click Search Advertising." In Chapter 32, Lee discusses how search marketing has evolved to create, influence, capture and harvest demand. Lee suggests taking into account more than keywords that might be an indicator of consumer intent when making a list of post-click behaviors considered important in the creation or influence on consumer demand. "The consumer audience we can target in PPC search, and particularly in contextual and behavioral media, can be selected based on many of a media buyer's tried-and-true targeting options: age, gender, geography, …

Michael Gray provides tips on turning off personalized search in the browser Google Chrome. Instructions and screen shots walk through the process, beginning with clicking on the wrench icon in the Chrome toolbar. Along with instructions, Gray provides the snippet of code you will need to insert at the end of the string in the "Edit Search Engine" filed. Altering the code allows Gray to keep his searches non-personalized. For whatever reason, he prefers it that way.

Rand Fishkin has a formula for getting a Twitter post retweeted. In a Whiteboard Friday video, he covers the topic after noticing Twitter has been driving more traffic to Web sites. He "strongly" suspects Google and other engines pull down Twitter's full feed to help people find content quickly, rather then use the information for rankings. Fishkin provides other tips, such as the best way to phrase information, as well as the best time of day to tweet -- which by the way is between 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Pacific time. That's because many users are …

What should a SEM professional do when competitors buy links and gain an advantage on search engines? Certainly, not tattle, Raw Hoffman writes. The topic came up for discussion during a SMX Advanced panel. Tattling never pays off, she writes, reminding us that search engine reps, such as Matt Cutts, might be good people, but he "isn't Google -- and Google is not your friend." Consider looking at your own SEO practices to find the answers, Hoffman writes. "Are you using nofollow heavily? Do you have your keywords repeated on the page one too many times? Do you …

If you own an iPhone, take a look at the pay-per-click (PPC) calculator application on iTunes. It's called PPC Calc, according to Cesar Serna. "Using simple sliders to control your affiliate payout, cost per click, conversion percentage and total clicks you can quickly see if your Pay Per Click campaign is headed for major profit or major loss!" he writes. The tool provides information on out-of-pocket budgets, number of conversions required before seeing a return on investment, and net income.

Virginia Nussey caught up with Kelsey Group Senior Analyst Michael Boland to discuss the convergence of phones and local search during a panel at Search Engine Strategies. Making it more interesting is that on mobile phones, people look for physical locations, rather than online destinations, she writes. Nussey also talks with Borland about the movement of desktop to Web-based applications, which allows easy access from mobile smart phones. Borland calls it "mobile Web 2.0." He says "more capable Web browsers" will drive the shift, pointing to the iPhone V3.0 software, which came with a more functional version …