Central Perk: 5 aug. 2014

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Housing Insanity Japanese Style: Record Number of Vacant Homes in Japan, Abe Wants to Stimulate Home Building
Household Demographics 2003 vs. 2013: Spotlight on Age of Head of Household
Russia Ponders Russian Airspace No-Fly Zone for EU Commercial and Passenger Jets
China Services PMI Lowest Since 2005 as Housing Slumps; Manufacturing Expands

Housing Insanity Japanese Style: Record Number of Vacant Homes in Japan, Abe Wants to Stimulate Home Building

Posted: 05 Aug 2014 10:28 PM PDT

Thanks to a rapidly aging population, record numbers of Japanese homes sit vacant according to the July 30, 2014 Asian Review report Vacant Homes in Japan Reach Record as Outlying Population Shrinks.

A record 13.5% of all homes in Japan were unoccupied as of last October, reflecting an exodus from outlying regions of the country and a general aversion to used homes.

Preliminary figures for a study on homes and land, conducted once every five years, were released on Tuesday by the Internal Affairs Ministry. The vacancy rate rose 0.4 percentage point from the previous survey. The number of empty homes grew by 630,000 to a record 8.2 million, and there were a record 60.63 million homes in all, an increase of 3.05 million.

Yamanashi Prefecture had the highest vacancy rate at 22%, largely due to a population outflow to Tokyo and other large cities. Nagano and Wakayama prefectures followed at 19.8% and 18.1%, with the four prefectures in Shikoku all at the 17% level.

The concept of renovating homes to make them last longer is not firmly established in Japan, according to a ministry official. Real estate companies do not actively handle used homes because they are considered to have lower value than new homes.

An outdated tax system meant to promote construction of residences on farmland during Japan's high-growth era decades ago has been another obstacle. Landowners that tear down homes would see their fixed-asset taxes for that land roughly quadruple because a tax break would no longer apply. This has prompted many landowners to leave unoccupied homes as is.

Holes in Abenomics' Push for Housing

As is typical with Japanese economic absurdities, Abenomics is in the spotlight.

Flashback September 2013: Vacant Japan Homes Show Holes in Abenomics' Push for Housing

Broken wood pieces dangle and sway like autumn leaves from the window frames of vacant homes in Inariyato, part of Yokosuka in the greater-Tokyo urban area, where taped-over mailbox slots tell a story of abandonment.

More than 50 houses and apartments, almost 20 percent of the quaint residential neighborhood of narrow streets and stairway paths leading into green hills, are empty here, an hour's train ride south of Tokyo and 1,000 yards (900 meters) from the Yokosuka naval base, home of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. That hasn't stopped developers from building at least eight new apartment blocks in the same city in the past two years.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to boost the economy in part by reviving the housing market and encouraging new home construction is in conflict with Japan's demographics. Rural, suburban and less-desirable urban areas are becoming littered with empty homes as younger people moving to cities combines with one of the world's fastest-aging populations. At the same time, tax breaks on mortgages favoring new-home purchases, recently extended to 2017 and increased to 50 million yen from 30 million yen, are spurring demand for new properties.

"Even when the number of vacant homes is on the rise, more and more new homes are being built," said Hidetaka Yoneyama, a senior researcher at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo who has written at least five books on Japan's housing market. "That's absurd."

Absurdities

"That's Absurd" is a huge understatement, and not just for Japanese housing, but for Abenomics in general.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Household Demographics 2003 vs. 2013: Spotlight on Age of Head of Household

Posted: 05 Aug 2014 02:22 PM PDT

Here's a look at some interesting demographics, comparing 2003 vs. 2013.

Number of Households by Age of Head of Household 2013 vs. 2003

The next chart shows the change in number (in thousands), in the age of the head of household.

Change in Households by Age Group (2013 Minus 2003)

click on any chart for sharper view

I created the above charts from spreadsheet data reader Tim Wallace sent. The data is from the Census Department 213-page PDF 2013 Annual Social and Economic (ASEC) Supplement.

Two Key Points

3,516,000 more heads of households in age group 60-64 than in 2003
3,989,000 more heads of households in age group 65-74 than in 2003

And those are just heads-of-households, not individuals. The individual total would be much higher.

Aging boomers accounts for much but not all of the decline in labor force and participation rate. The recession made matters worse.

Finally, some of the semi-retired, only want to work part-time, explaining part of the surge in part-time employees.

We will have more charts of education levels, household wealth, and other items shortly.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Russia Ponders Russian Airspace No-Fly Zone for EU Commercial and Passenger Jets

Posted: 05 Aug 2014 11:01 AM PDT

The sanctions retaliation game took another big leap forward today with the EU in the spotlight:
Moscow May Force European Airlines to Fly Around Russia.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev threatened on Tuesday to retaliate for the grounding of a subsidiary of national airline Aeroflot because of EU sanctions, with one newspaper reporting that European flights to Asia over Siberia could be banned.

Low-cost carrier Dobrolyot, operated by Aeroflot, suspended all flights last week after its airline leasing agreement was cancelled under European Union sanctions because it flies to Crimea, a region Russia annexed from Ukraine in March.

The business daily Vedomosti reported that Russia may restrict or ban European airlines from flying over Siberia on Asian routes, a move that would impose costs on European carriers by making flights take longer and require more fuel.

Vedomosti quoted unnamed sources as saying the foreign and transport ministries were discussing the action, which would put European carriers at a disadvantage to Asian rivals but would also cost Russia money it collects in overflight fees.

At the height of the Cold War, most Western airlines were barred from flying through Russian airspace to Asian cities, and instead had to operate via the Gulf or the U.S. airport of Anchorage, Alaska on the polar route.

However, European carriers now fly over Siberia on their rapidly growing routes to countries such as China, Japan and South Korea, paying the fees which have been subject to a long dispute between Brussels and Moscow.

The daily quoted one source as saying a ban could cost carriers including Lufthansa, British Airways and Air France 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) over three months.

However, state-controlled Aeroflot would also be hurt if it lost the fees. Aeroflot was the worst performing stock in Moscow on Tuesday, closing down 5.9 pct compared with a 1.4 percent drop on the broad index.

Lufthansa said it operates about 180 flights a week through Siberian airspace but declined further comment, as did British Airways.

Estimated Losses

Greek tourism expects the move to cost $400 million.
Travel from Ukraine down 50%
Lufthansa, British Airways and Air France expect 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) over three months
Russian controlled Aeroflot would lose $300 million in flight fees it collects for flights over Russia

Lose-Lose Game

The nature of this lose-lose game is to inflict more damage on the other side than it costs your side.

Take that! No, you take that! Sanctions and retaliations are much like children pushing and shoving, and calling each other names on a school play lot.

Last week Russia struck at Poland, banning fruit and vegetable sales from that country. Russians will pay more for fruit, but Poland is the largest apple producer in the world, and 50% of that crop goes to Russia.

See How About Them Apples? for further discussion.

One would hope that bureaucrats would see the folly of sanctions, but EU bureaucrats egged on by president Obama are likely to do even stupider stuff than we have seen so far.

Russia may very well shut off natural gas to Europe this winter if sanction madness escalates out of control.

Simple Proposal

Isn't it time to have serious cease-fire discussions with all sides at the table instead of war, killing, and sanctions?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

China Services PMI Lowest Since 2005 as Housing Slumps; Manufacturing Expands

Posted: 05 Aug 2014 01:00 AM PDT

An interesting divergence is underway in China with manufacturing in expansion while the service sector is at the lowest reading since November 2005 according to HSBC China Composite PMI

HSBC China Composite PMI™ data (which covers both manufacturing and services) signalled a third consecutive monthly expansion of Chinese business activity in July. That said, the rate of increase eased from June‟s 15-month high and was moderate overall. This was signalled by the HSBC Composite Output Index posting at 51.6 in July, down from 52.4 in the previous month. The latest expansion of composite output was led by manufacturers, as business activity at service providers was unchanged from the previous month. Furthermore, it was the strongest expansion of manufacturing output in 16 months. This contrasted with a stagnation of services activity, which was signalled by the HSBC China Services Business Activity Index posting at the no-change mark of 50.0 in July. This was down from 53.1 in June and the lowest index reading in the near nine-year series history.

Comment Commenting on the China Services and Composite PMI™ data, Hongbin Qu, Chief Economist, China & Co-Head of Asian Economic Research at HSBC said: "The headline HSBC China Services PMI came in at 50.0 in July, the lowest reading since the series began in November 2005. Both the new business and outstanding business indices declined from their levels in June. The weakness in the headline number likely reflects the impact of the ongoing property slowdown in many cities as property related activity, such as agencies and residential services, see less business. Meanwhile, the employment and business sentiment indices remain stable. In the coming months, we think the service sector may get some support from the recovery in investment. But today's data points to the need of continued policy support to offset the drag from the property correction and consolidate the economic recovery."

Clamoring for "Policy Support"

It's amusing to hear the continuous parade of chants for "policy support" that have fueled asset bubbles worldwide.

In China, the primary asset bubble is real estate, in the US, the primary asset bubbles are equities and junk bonds.

When the bubbles burst, people will want central banks to "do something".

Unfortunately, they already did, multiple times, which is precisely why the world has witnessed serial asset boom-bust bubbles of increasing amplitude in the last decade

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com.

Why You Should Avoid Numbers in Your URL Graywolf's SEO Blog

Why You Should Avoid Numbers in Your URL

Posted: 05 Aug 2014 06:47 AM PDT

While linkbait posts aren’t as popular as they once were, top 10 lists have been popular ever since Moses came down from the mount with his top 10 list of “thou shalt nots.” Magazines like Rolling Stone will always have top 500 playlists and AFI will always publish top 100 movies lists. However, as a responsible publisher, marketer, and SEO ... [Continue reading Why You Should Avoid Numbers in Your URL]

The post Why You Should Avoid Numbers in Your URL appeared first on Graywolf's SEO Blog.

"A Legend at the White House"

Featured

"A Legend at the White House"

Yesterday, former White House Press Secretary James Brady passed away in Alexandria, Virginia at the age of 73.

After being shot and almost killed in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981, Brady recovered and became a symbol of the ongoing fight against gun violence. In a statement yesterday afternoon, President Obama expressed his condolences to Brady's family, calling him a "legend at the White House."

The Vice President also released a statement -- and later in the afternoon, current Press Secretary Josh Earnest and 11 of his predecessors penned a joint statement on the passing of James Brady.

Read the statements, and find out more about the passing of a White House legend.

President Barack Obama stops by Press Secretary Jay Carney's meeting with James Brady in Carney's West Wing office at the White House, March 30, 2011. Brady was former President Ronald Reagan's press secretary during the assassination attempt on President Reagan thirty years ago. Brady's wife Sarah, right, and son Scott, center, joined him for the meeting. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The cost of inaction

Hey, everyone --

The facts are in. The science is definitive. The question is no longer whether climate change is happening, but whether we can afford not to act.

In the western United States, changes in our climate are fueling wildfire seasons that are longer and more intense -- putting people, communities, and businesses at risk.

As we're seeing right now, wildfires unquestionably have devastating impacts on the lives of many Americans. This weekend, California declared a state of emergency as two major wildfires scorched acres of land, threatening towns and forcing many to evacuate. These are just two of the 14 fires that are currently burning throughout the state.

Make no mistake: The cost of inaction on wildfires and climate change is too high a price for Americans to pay, particularly when we have a chance to address this right now.

Watch as President Obama's Science Advisor Dr. John Holdren breaks down exactly why this is a problem that we must meet head-on -- and pass it along to someone who needs to see it.

As a new report from the Council of Economic Advisors points out, the consequences of climate change reach beyond our environment. The impacts of climate change threaten our homes, our health, and our economic prosperity. In fact, delaying action for a decade would increase the cost of responding to climate change by 40 percent.

President Obama has been taking action on all fronts to reduce the harmful greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our planet, to make our communities more resilient to climate impacts, and to take the lead on the international stage. In June, he announced a competition to help Americans build a stronger capacity to protect their homes and neighborhoods from natural disasters.

If the question is, "Do we protect the lives, the economy, and the future of the American people?", the answer should always be a resounding "yes."

Check out the President's action plan to learn more about what we can do to take the lead on addressing global climate change:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/climate-change

Thanks,

John

John Podesta
Counselor to the President
The White House
@Podesta44

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What Happened after Google Pulled Author and Video Snippets: A Moz Case Study

Posted: 04 Aug 2014 05:12 PM PDT

Posted by Cyrus-Shepard

In the past 2 months Google made big changes to its search results.

Webmasters saw disappearing Google authorship photos, reduced video snippets, changes to local packs and in-depth articles, and more.

Here at Moz, we've closely monitored our own URLs to measure the effect of these changes on our actual traffic. The results surprised us.

Authorship traffic—surprising results

In the early days of authorship, many webmasters worked hard to get their photo in Google search results. I confess, I doubt anyone worked harder at author snippets than me.

Search results soon became crowded with smiling faces staring back at us. Authors hired professional photographers. Publishers worked to correctly follow Google's guidelines to set up authorship for thousands of authors.

The race for more clicks was on.

Then on June 28th, Google cleared the page. No more author photos.

To gauge the effect on traffic, we examined eight weeks' worth of data from Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, before and after the change. We then examined our top 15 authorship URLs (where author photos were known to show consistently) compared to non-authorship URLs.

The results broke down like this:

Change in Google organic traffic to Moz

Total Site: -1.76%
Top 15 Non-Authorship URLs: -5.96%
Top 15 Authorship URLs: -2.86%

Surprisingly, authorship URLs performed as well as non-authorship URLs in terms of traffic. Even though Moz was highly optimized for authors, traffic didn't significantly change.

On an individual level, things looked much different. We actually observed big changes in traffic with authorship URLs increasing or decreasing in traffic by as much as 45%. There is no clear pattern: Some went up, some went down—exactly like any URL would over an extended time.

Authorship photos don't exist in a vacuum; each photo on the page competed for attention with all the other photos on the page. Each search result is as unique as a fingerprint. What worked for one result didn't work for another.

Consider what happens visually when multiple author photos exist in the same search result:

One hypothesis speculates that more photos has the effect of drawing eyes down the page. In the absence of rich snippets, search click-through rates might follow more closely studied models, which dictate that results closer to the top earn more clicks.

In the absence of author photos, it's likely click-through rate expectations have once again become more standardized.

Video snippets: a complex tale

Shortly after Google removed author photos, they took aim at video snippets as well. On July 17th, MozCast reported a sharp decline in video thumbnails.

Most sites, Moz included, lost 100% of their video results. Other sites appeared to be "white-listed" as reported by former Mozzer Casey Henry at Wistia.

A few of the sites Casey found where Google continues to show video thumbnails:

youtube.com
vimeo.com
vevo.com
ted.com
today.com
discovery.com

Aside from these "giants," most webmasters, even very large publishers at the top of the industry, saw their video snippets vanish in search results.

How did this loss affect traffic for our URLs with embedded videos? Fortunately, here at Moz we have a large collection of ready-made video URLs we could easily study: our Whiteboard Friday videos, which we produce every, well, Friday.

To our surprise, most URLs actually saw more traffic.

On average, our Whiteboard Friday videos saw a 10% jump in organic traffic after losing video snippets.

A few other with video saw dramatic increases:

Domain Authority: +157%
MozBar: +77%
Learn SEO: +43%

The last example, the Learn SEO page, didn't have an actual video on it, but a bug with Google caused them to display an older video thumbnail. (Several folks we've talked to speculate that Google removed video snippets simply to clean up their bugs in the system)

We witnessed a significant increase in traffic after losing video snippets. How did this happen?

Did Google change the way they rank and show video pages?

It turns out that many of our URLs that contained videos also saw a significant change in the number of search impressions at the exact same time.

According to Google, impressions for the majority of our video URLs shot up dramatically around July 14th.

Impressions for Whiteboard Friday URLs also rose 20% during this time. For Moz, most of the video URLs saw many more impressions, but for others, it appears rankings dropped.

While Moz saw video impressions rise, other publishers saw the opposite effect.

Casey Henry, our friend at video hosting company Wistia, reports seeing rankings drop for many video URLs that had thin or little content.

"...it's only pages hosting video with thin content... the pages that only had video and a little bit of text went down."
- Casey Henry

For a broader perspective, we talked to Marshall Simmonds, founder of Define Media Group, who monitors traffic to millions of daily video pageviews for large publishers.

Marshall found that despite the fact that most of the sites they monitor lost video snippets, they observed no visible change in either traffic or pageviews across hundreds of millions of visits.

Define Media Group also recently released its 2014 Mid-Year Digital Traffic Report which sheds fascinating light on current web traffic trends.

What does it all mean?

While we have anecdotal evidence of ranking and impression changes for video URLs on individual sites, on the grand scale across all Google search results these differences aren't visible.

If you have video content, the evidence suggests it's now worth more than ever to follow video SEO best practices: (taken from video SEO expert Phil Nottingham)

Use a crawlable player (all the major video hosting platforms use these today)
Surround the video with supporting information (caption files and transcripts work great)
Include schema.org video markup

SEO finds a way

For the past several years web marketers competed for image and video snippets, and it's with a sense of sadness that they've been taken away.

The smart strategy follows the data, which suggest that more traditional click-through rate optimization techniques and strategies could now be more effective. This means strong titles, meta descriptions, rich snippets (those that remain), brand building and traditional ranking signals.

What happened to your site when Google removed author photos and video snippets? Let us know in the comments below.

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Why and how to create great content: part 2

Posted: 05 Aug 2014 01:00 AM PDT

Hello again – you must be back here because you read part 1 of this blog post a couple of weeks ago. Undoubtedly you will have been waiting patiently to learn about some of the processes we use here at White.net when looking at content creation and strategy, and luckily for you that is exactly what I'll be talking about today! (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I recommend that you take a short detour to catch up on my first post on this topic, before continuing on here)

Now for the good stuff – let’s talk about preparation, research and reason. Start by asking yourself this question:

Why am I creating a content marketing piece?

If you think you have a good answer, let’s put it to the test by delving a little bit deeper…

What are your goals?

It’s amazing how many people jump straight into the idea generation stage without setting out the reasons for creating a content marketing piece in the first place. If clients had infinite budgets, this might not be such a problem – but this isn’t usually the case! Instead it is important to identify the goals associated with the project; some of these may be broad and others might be more specific.

Here are a few suggestions to get you thinking:

Grow number of sign-ups or subscriptions
Reach a target number of downloads
Increase number of sales
Boost visits and/or engagement
Increase number of referring domains to your site

Once you have come up with the most logical goals (which should hopefully align with the overall business and marketing strategies), make sure to identify metrics that you can track to analyse levels of success upon, and after the launch of your content.

Now you will be able to properly answer the question asked above:

Why am I creating a content marketing piece?

Now that you have the “why” solved, it’s time to look at “how” to create great content. It would be amazing if there was some magic formula that worked perfectly for each and every person, but the fact remains that some people have creativity skills on their side, whilst others can boast an analytical mind. This is why teamwork is so important.

Tenacious D know all about teamwork

A team made up of people with different personalities, preferences and skills is really important in my opinion. Having recently done the Myers-Briggs type indicator test, I know much more about my own preferences than I did before. I found out that I tend to look at the ‘big picture’, so I can bring something different to the table than someone who looks at individual elements of a project. That’s why it makes sense to join forces with at least one other person; ideas can be built up more effectively than when tackled alone.

Hold your horses though, there is still another important step to cover before you start thinking of the actual content marketing piece! Don’t worry, it’ll help you to make your actual concept more targeted and successful.

Perform a scan

Here’s the part where you consider a few things to do with your company, your competitors and your customers. A few things to think about include:

Product truth
Product pain points
Main unique selling point
What competitors are saying
Customer personas / target market / demographics

How you actually go about documenting this is up to you; it could be anything from a scrawl on a whiteboard to an extensively researched PDF. Whatever you do, just make sure you don’t skip this step as it can remind you of the goals that you thought of at the beginning of the project.

Get thinking

Hurrah, you have reached the creative part of the process! At this point you will want to fetch paper and pens, or at least position yourself in front of a fairly large whiteboard. At White.net we actually have a comfy creative room with the helpful addition of a whiteboard wall; all of our best work is done in there!

We like to start off with a bit of word association by creating a map like the one below. It helps to take one or more steps away from the product offering, which can introduce some interesting content ideas to the mix.

We then take time to look at different categories of content, so we can follow the route that will keep us most aligned to the campaign goals. Here are the ones we take into consideration:

Timely
Useful
Personal
Entertaining
Inspiring

We always endeavor to come up with multiple ideas for each of these categories so we can develop those that have potential, or discount those that clearly don’t fit the brief. In line with this, we also think about how each of the ideas would work within the framework shown below. These go hand-in-hand with the goals that I keep referring back to.

Share ideas

At this stage it is easy to get ahead of yourself and spend hours doing research and design mock-ups, but it can save you a lot of time and money if you wait for ideas to be discussed, analysed and signed off first. Decision makers (whether clients or management) may have something else in mind, or may not have yet disclosed an expected budget with you yet. You need to get this feedback in order to tweak your ideas, or as a cue to head back to the drawing board.

Create, share and analyse

Now that you’ve got your idea and it has been given the green light, go forth and create your vision. Don’t forget to come up with a robust plan when it comes to actually publishing it! When everything is up and running, you will want to revisit those goals that you created originally in order to track how successful your content marketing piece was. It should provide you with food for thought for your next project, as well as helping you to see exactly where the return on investment is in your business or for your clients.

Sources