Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

---

• Aging Trucker Workforce Coupled With Increased Demand Provides Strong Incentive for Trucking Robots
• Baffled by Clear Picture; Sirens of Blackmail; Merkel's Alleged Revenge Will Backfire
• Tsipras Allegedly Caves In On Many Creditor Demands; No Vote Leads Polls but Yes Gaining

Aging Trucker Workforce Coupled With Increased Demand Provides Strong Incentive for Trucking Robots Posted: 01 Jul 2015 06:51 PM PDT Demand for truck drivers is on the rise. Yet, there are not enough young drivers who want that rough of a lifestyle. Supply Chain reports Aging Truck Driver Work Force - A Major Issue in Filling Demand & Empty Seats. With a combination of retirements and people exiting the industry, carriers need to recruit in roughly 100,000 drivers per year over the next decade to simply keep pace with projected United States freight needs. The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) released a fascinating white paper analyzing the age demographics of truck drivers. The bottom line is that the U.S. truck driver population is aging and there are not enough young drivers in the labor force to fill the empty seats that will be opened by the upcoming retirement of drivers. As I think about how to attack the driver shortage problem, I believe the answer is more than higher pay. Increasing Supply The primary shortage is for over-the-road TL drivers who spend weeks at a time away from home, sleeping in their trucks, showering and eating in truck stops, and enduring unnecessary hassles in getting unloaded in a timely fashion. Increasingly, we also hear about shortages in LTL and drayage capacity. Higher pay is the simplistic answer, but manufacturers and retailers can ill afford higher transportation rates so higher pay has to be associated with greater productivity. Getting 18-year olds into the industry is critical, but is limited by the CDL 21-year old age requirements. Immigration can be part of the solution to the driver shortage, just as it is for high tech workers. Higher Pay? In addition to higher pay, Supply Chain also discussed reducing the legal age of truck drivers, automatic transmissions, using retirees, spousal teams and other related nonsense. Good Grief! Supply Chain missed the ballpark by a mile with that lame set of non-solutions. It is amazing how far off the mark the article is. Reader Tim Wallace who sent me the article accurately summed up the situation in a single statement: "They missed the main result of the trend - automation." Self-driving trucks are on the way, as I have discussed at least a dozen times. There will not be a need for 100,000 drivers a year for decade because robot drivers will eliminate five million jobs in the same span, if not before. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Baffled by Clear Picture; Sirens of Blackmail; Merkel's Alleged Revenge Will Backfire Posted: 01 Jul 2015 01:42 PM PDT Sirens of Blackmail Having already explained twice what is going on with Tsipris' ever changing statements, I find it amusing that eurozone nannycrats cannot figure things out. A few snips from the Financial Times article Tsipras Urges Greeks to Defy Creditor' "Blackmail" will explain what I mean. Greece's prime minister accused Europe's leaders of attempting to "blackmail" Greek voters, just hours after apparently holding out an olive branch to the country's creditors by accepting most of the terms of the economic reform plan they had tabled last weekend. Eurozone officials said they were baffled by the mixed messages coming from Greece, which this week missed a €1.5bn payment to the International Monetary Fund and has been forced to impose capital controls to avert a financial meltdown. In a nationally-televised address, Alexis Tsipras, the Greek premier, urged his countrymen to vote No in a referendum on whether they should accept tough terms for bailout aid, and accused EU leaders of threatening to drive Greece out of the euro. "The sirens of destruction are blackmailing you to say yes to everything without any prospect of exiting the crisis," Mr Tsipras said. Baffled by Clear Picture One has to be really dense to not understand Tsipras is saying and doing exactly what needs to be said and done to help sway a "no" vote on the referendum. One might argue that eurozone officials do understand but purposely sound like they don't, however, that idea has two major strikes against it. When stupidity is a clear choice, it is likely the right one. Occam's Razor suggests the simplest answer that works is the most likely answer, and what can be simpler than stupidity? It could be in the best interest of the eurozone offcials to make a statement that Tsipras is electioneering. Of course, the eurozone officials are also electioneering, so perhaps they simply feel trapped and have no idea what to do or say about Tsipras' moves. Merkel's Revenge Here's an amusing story that is equally clueless in nature: Angela Merkel Takes Revenge on Greek Prime Minister. Alexis Tsipras stunned Greece's creditors on Saturday by walking out of rescue talks and calling a national referendum on their last bailout offer. Now German Chancellor Angela Merkel is taking her revenge. She does not speak it, at least not in public. But with quiet determination she is making the Greek premier squirm — by refusing his desperate efforts to return to the negotiating table. Reflecting the desperation felt by some of Greece's creditors, French President François Hollande called on Wednesday for an "immediate accord". But Ms Merkel has stood apart, insisting that there can be no more talks until after Sunday's referendum — a stance she calmly reiterated to the German parliament on Wednesday. "She is squeezing Tsipras hard because he has tried to squeeze her [by calling the referendum], even if with limited effect," said Josef Janning, a Berlin-based fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank. Merkel's Alleged Revenge Will Backfire Reader "AC" hits the nail on the head again today with another well-reasoned thesis. "AC" explains why the alleged "squeeze" is counterproductive. Hello Mish Looking at the last developments, it seems to me that Germany is making errors in its negotiation strategy (if they have any). They basically closed the door to any discussion before the referendum. This is a driver to vote "no". The message is "we will sit again at the negotiation table after the referendum", but if "yes" wins there is no negotiation to do! The one that has the most to lose in deleting the the referendum is Tsipras. Tsipras on his side asked for what he needed the most and what he used the most so far: time. Time gives Greeks and their government ability to multiply the options and the negotiation power. Let's see what happens. AC Merkel Squeezed Three Ways It appears to me that Josef Janning's think tank is also baffled by a clear picture. The only one who is squeezed here is Merkel. The chancellor is squeezed between a referendum she does not want, a majority of Germans who are willing to say goodbye to Greece, and her own position of not wanting Greece to leave the eurozone on her watch. That's a tight squeeze conundrum with absolutely no answer. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Tsipras Allegedly Caves In On Many Creditor Demands; No Vote Leads Polls but Yes Gaining Posted: 01 Jul 2015 05:09 AM PDT Stock futures are up this morning on news that Alexis Tsipras Backs Down on Many Greece Bailout Demands. A reader asked me about Tsipras' cave in, but I responded it is nothing but a political ploy ahead of the July 5 referendum as to whether or not Greece should accept the creditor's take-it-or-leave-it offer. I am not the only one who sees it that way. In spite of numerous headlines that make it appear as if this was a significant breakthrough. Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's hardline finance minister, gave the latest Greek initiative short shrift, saying it was "no basis" for serious talks. Eurozone officials involved in the talks cautioned Mr Tsipras's remaining demands in the letter were "not a handful of minor changes" and would have "significant fiscal impact" and may not be acceptable to creditors. Gaming the Vote There was no cave in, this is merely electioneering by Tsipras to counteract the nonstop meddling and electioneering by Germany, France, Spain, and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. For details, please see Greece Rejects 25th Hour Request to Change Course; Tsipras Asks Eurozone for Third Bailout; Rajoy Seeks to Save His Own Ass. No Vote Lead Narrowing FXStreet reports Greek Referendum Poll Shows Lead for 'No' Vote Leading but 'Yes' Catching Up. Another Greek bailout referendum opinion poll is out, conducted by prorata polling institute for efimerida ton synatkton newspaper, with responses before bank closure showing yes 30 pct, no 57 pct, don't know 13 pct, while responses after bank closure have seen yes 37 pct, no 46 pct, don't know 17 pct. Rather than caving in, Tsipras' proposal was simply a means to influence votes. As I noted yesterday, "As pertains to game-playing, Greek leaders have run circles around the eurozone nannycrats." Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

You are subscribed to email updates from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States

Damn Cool Pics

---

Revealing Snapshots That Show How Much Really Changes over Time Posted: 01 Jul 2015 02:54 PM PDT

Lies All Web Designers Tell Their Clients Posted: 01 Jul 2015 02:41 PM PDT There's a big difference between what web designers tell you and what they actually mean.

You are subscribed to email updates from Damn Cool Pictures To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States

Big Data, Big Problems: 4 Major Link Indexes Compared - Moz Blog

Big Data, Big Problems: 4 Major Link Indexes Compared

Posted by russangular

Given this blog's readership, chances are good you will spend some time this week looking at backlinks in one of the growing number of link data tools. We know backlinks continue to be one of, if not the most important parts of Google's ranking algorithm. We tend to take these link data sets at face value, though, in part because they are all we have. But when your rankings are on the line, is there a better way to get at which data set is the best? How should we go about assessing these different link indexes like Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs and SEMrush for quality? Historically, there have been 4 common approaches to this question of index quality...

• Breadth: We might choose to look at the number of linking root domains any given service reports. We know that referring domains correlates strongly with search rankings, so it makes sense to judge a link index by how many unique domains it has discovered and indexed.
• Depth: We also might choose to look at how deep the web has been crawled, looking more at the total number of URLs in the index, rather than the diversity of referring domains.
• Link Overlap: A more sophisticated approach might count the number of links an index has in common with Google Webmaster Tools.
• Freshness: Finally, we might choose to look at the freshness of the index. What percentage of links in the index are still live?

There are a number of really good studies (some newer than others) using these techniques that are worth checking out when you get a chance:

• BuiltVisible analysis of Moz, Majestic, GWT, Ahrefs and Search Metrics
• SEOBook comparison of Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, and Ayima
• MatthewWoodward study of Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, Raven and SEO Spyglass
• Marketing Signals analysis of Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, and GWT
• RankAbove comparison of Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs and Link Research Tools
• StoneTemple study of Moz and Majestic

While these are all excellent at addressing the methodologies above, there is a particular limitation with all of them. They miss one of the most important metrics we need to determine the value of a link index: proportional representation to Google's link graph . So here at Angular Marketing, we decided to take a closer look.

Proportional representation to Google Search Console data

So, why is it important to determine proportional representation? Many of the most important and valued metrics we use are built on proportional models. PageRank, MozRank, CitationFlow and Ahrefs Rank are proportional in nature. The score of any one URL in the data set is relative to the other URLs in the data set. If the data set is biased, the results are biased.

A Visualization

Link graphs are biased by their crawl prioritization. Because there is no full representation of the Internet, every link graph, even Google's, is a biased sample of the web. Imagine for a second that the picture below is of the web. Each dot represents a page on the Internet, and the dots surrounded by green represent a fictitious index by Google of certain sections of the web.

Of course, Google isn't the only organization that crawls the web. Other organizations like Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, and SEMrush have their own crawl prioritizations which result in different link indexes.

In the example above, you can see different link providers trying to index the web like Google. Link data provider 1 (purple) does a good job of building a model that is similar to Google. It isn't very big, but it is proportional. Link data provider 2 (blue) has a much larger index, and likely has more links in common with Google that link data provider 1, but it is highly disproportional. So, how would we go about measuring this proportionality? And which data set is the most proportional to Google?

Methodology

The first step is to determine a measurement of relativity for analysis. Google doesn't give us very much information about their link graph. All we have is what is in Google Search Console. The best source we can use is referring domain counts. In particular, we want to look at what we call referring domain link pairs. A referring domain link pair would be something like ask.com->mlb.com: 9,444 which means that ask.com links to mlb.com 9,444 times.

Steps

1. Determine the root linking domain pairs and values to 100+ sites in Google Search Console
2. Determine the same for Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic Fresh, Majestic Historic, SEMrush
3. Compare the referring domain link pairs of each data set to Google, assuming a Poisson Distribution
4. Run simulations of each data set's performance against each other (ie: Moz vs Maj, Ahrefs vs SEMrush, Moz vs SEMrush, et al.)
5. Analyze the results

Results

When placed head-to-head, there seem to be some clear winners at first glance. In head-to-head, Moz edges out Ahrefs, but across the board, Moz and Ahrefs fare quite evenly. Moz, Ahrefs and SEMrush seem to be far better than Majestic Fresh and Majestic Historic. Is that really the case? And why?

It turns out there is an inversely proportional relationship between index size and proportional relevancy. This might seem counterintuitive, shouldn't the bigger indexes be closer to Google? Not Exactly.

What does this mean?

Each organization has to create a crawl prioritization strategy. When you discover millions of links, you have to prioritize which ones you might crawl next. Google has a crawl prioritization, so does Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs and SEMrush. There are lots of different things you might choose to prioritize...

• You might prioritize link discovery. If you want to build a very large index, you could prioritize crawling pages on sites that have historically provided new links.
• You might prioritize content uniqueness. If you want to build a search engine, you might prioritize finding pages that are unlike any you have seen before. You could choose to crawl domains that historically provide unique data and little duplicate content.
• You might prioritize content freshness. If you want to keep your search engine recent, you might prioritize crawling pages that change frequently.
• You might prioritize content value, crawling the most important URLs first based on the number of inbound links to that page.

Chances are, an organization's crawl priority will blend some of these features, but it's difficult to design one exactly like Google. Imagine for a moment that instead of crawling the web, you want to climb a tree. You have to come up with a tree climbing strategy.

• You decide to climb the longest branch you see at each intersection.
• One friend of yours decides to climb the first new branch he reaches, regardless of how long it is.
• Your other friend decides to climb the first new branch she reaches only if she sees another branch coming off of it.

Despite having different climb strategies, everyone chooses the same first branch, and everyone chooses the same second branch. There are only so many different options early on.

But as the climbers go further and further along, their choices eventually produce differing results. This is exactly the same for web crawlers like Google, Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs and SEMrush. The bigger the crawl, the more the crawl prioritization will cause disparities. This is not a deficiency; this is just the nature of the beast. However, we aren't completely lost. Once we know how index size is related to disparity, we can make some inferences about how similar a crawl priority may be to Google.

Unfortunately, we have to be careful in our conclusions. We only have a few data points with which to work, so it is very difficult to be certain regarding this part of the analysis. In particular, it seems strange that Majestic would get better relative to its index size as it grows, unless Google holds on to old data (which might be an important discovery in and of itself). It is most likely that at this point we can't make this level of conclusion.

So what do we do?

Let's say you have a list of domains or URLs for which you would like to know their relative values. Your process might look something like this...

• Check Open Site Explorer to see if all URLs are in their index. If so, you are looking metrics most likely to be proportional to Google's link graph.
• If any of the links do not occur in the index, move to Ahrefs and use their Ahrefs ranking if all you need is a single PageRank-like metric.
• If any of the links are missing from Ahrefs's index, or you need something related to trust, move on to Majestic Fresh.
• Finally, use Majestic Historic for (by leaps and bounds) the largest coverage available.

It is important to point out that the likelihood that all the URLs you want to check are in a single index increases as the accuracy of the metric decreases. Considering the size of Majestic's data, you can't ignore them because you are less likely to get null value answers from their data than the others. If anything rings true, it is that once again it makes sense to get data from as many sources as possible. You won't get the most proportional data without Moz, the broadest data without Majestic, or everything in-between without Ahrefs.

What about SEMrush? They are making progress, but they don't publish any relative statistics that would be useful in this particular case. Maybe we can hope to see more from them soon given their already promising index!

Recommendations for the link graphing industry

All we hear about these days is big data; we almost never hear about good data. I know that the teams at Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, SEMrush and others are interested in mimicking Google, but I would love to see some organization stand up against the allure of more data in favor of better data—data more like Google's. It could begin with testing various crawl strategies to see if they produce a result more similar to that of data shared in Google Search Console. Having the most Google-like data is certainly a crown worth winning.

Credits

Thanks to Diana Carter at Angular for assistance with data acquisition and Andrew Cron with statistical analysis. Thanks also to the representatives from Moz, Majestic, Ahrefs, and SEMrush for answering questions about their indices.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

You are subscribed to the Moz Blog newsletter sent from 1100 Second Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101 United States To stop receiving those e-mails, you can unsubscribe now.

Newsletter powered by FeedPress