Updated Ezine Article Spying

After the Google Panda update Ezine Articles made several changes not only to their submission rules but also to their page layouts.  If you read my previous post, Ezine Article Spying, you may have noticed that the code parameters you enter into Google no longer work.  This is directly due to how Ezine Articles labels each article now and it not longer uses the same wording at the bottom of each page.

What has changed?  Well lets look at the old code,
Dating site:ezinearticles.com "This article has been viewed 2000..199999" "Article Submitted On: * *, 2012"

Now compare that to the new code that does give results within Google,

Dating site:ezinearticles.com "viewed 2000..199999" "Submitted On: * *, 2011"

As you can see Ezine Articles has removed "This article has been" and "Article" from each phrase at the bottom of every article.  We can now even search for a specific word count threshold by using this code,

Dating site:ezinearticles.com "viewed 2000..199999" "Submitted On: * *, 2011" "Word Count: 500..1000"

When you enter this code it will only bring up articles that have at least 500 to 1000 words.  This is great for finding higher quality content.

So how can we really use this code to help us?

1. Hot Trends - We can begin doing searches for keywords of broad categories and easily see what recent articles are getting a lot of views.
2. Micro Niche Research - If you are into building micro niche blog sites then this type of research is invaluable.  Look at the article titles, are they ranking well for their keywords?  Could you easily rank for these keywords in Google SERPs?
3. Content is King - Let's be honest, if you're not outsourcing your article writing then you have to be writing it yourself.  We can't all be experts at everything so Ezine Articles can be great for inspiration and finding good content to write in your own words and add your own information too.

Why do all the hard work when others are already doing it for you?  Heck, if you find hot articles you can even setup some Google alerts for the main keywords and see what other people are posting on the web.  You might find some great places to get backlinks too!