marți, 12 iunie 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Presidential Campaign Posters: 200 Years of Election Art

Posted: 12 Jun 2012 04:13 PM PDT

A new book, Presidential Campaign Posters: Two Hundred Years of Election Art has 100 U.S. political posters that are suitable for framing, going back, well, 200 years. See a sampling of 18 of the posters at Brain Pickings.




























1988: George H. W. Bush (Republican) v. Michael Dukakis (Democrat)


2008: Barack Obama (Democrat) v. John McCain (Republican)


2008: Barack Obama (Democrat) v. John McCain (Republican)


20 Most Expensive Houses in the World [Infographic]

Posted: 12 Jun 2012 11:42 AM PDT



With home prices in America lower than they've been in 10 years, it's definitely safe to say that 2012 is a perfect year to buy a home.

Yet, the home prices in these rebounding American markets pale in comparison to some of the most expensive homes around the world.

While entertainer Mariah Carey's $125,000,000 California mansion represents America on the list of "20 of the world's most expensive homes," there are homes on this list from ritzy regions all over world.

Here's a cool illustration from Tomorrow Finance detailing the price and location of 20 of the most expensive homes in the world. Check it out!

Click to Enlarge.


Vintage Mugshots Of Bad Girls

Posted: 11 Jun 2012 09:37 PM PDT

I don't know what these ladies did to get arrested, but their mugshots are incredible. Here are some awesome vintage mugshots of bad girls from the past from the collection of Least Wanted.














































Via Buzzfeed


Film Scenes: Kitty Edition

Posted: 11 Jun 2012 09:22 PM PDT

While watching Titanic "I wonder what the chemistry would look like between Leonardo DiCaprio and a cat"? From redditor haissam93, we get four iconic film images with a cat. He assures us the cat hated every minute of it, and if there are more photos to come, he and his sister will have to use a different cat.

American Beauty


Titanic


Psycho


HERE'S JOHNNY!


AdSense Newsletter - June 2012

To view this email as a web page, go here.

bubbles
June 2012
Publisher ID ca-pub-1492172262972996

Dear publisher,

Many of our product improvements aim to provide you with the most accurate and relevant information for more effective AdSense optimizations. In this edition's Tip of the Month, we'll explain how the redesigned crawler error notifications in your account can help you improve ad relevance and maximize your revenue. You'll also find information about:
  • Building a mobile-friendly site with DudaMobile
  • Testing your knowledge of our program policies
  • Learning from successful publishers: Concertboom.com
  • Enabling Gambling & Betting ads on your site
Kind regards,

Sophie
The Google AdSense Team

Tip of the Month

Fix your crawler errors for improved ad relevance

In last month's newsletter, we announced the redesign of the AdSense crawler errors notification area, which is improving in the way we convey crawler error information to you. Ensuring that the AdSense crawler can accurately crawl your site helps increase your ad relevance and ultimately your earnings.

Check the crawler errors report section in your account to see if any domains or subdomains are experiencing AdSense crawler errors. Click on the "How to fix" column to read more about how you can fix each of the different types of issues.

  Fix crawler errors  
Be sure to prioritize the domains or subdomains with the greatest number of errors first, as those will have the most substantial impact on your account. You can also expand each of the listed URLs to reveal a more specific list and even download them, if you want to.


Updates

AdSense success story: Concertboom.com

Concertboom.com increased their AdSense revenue by 400% by adding an additional ad unit to their site. Read more about Concertboom.com and how you can add new units while maintaining quality site content.



Increase your earnings with gambling & betting ads

Since October 2011 it's been possible to opt in to displaying online gambling and location-based betting ads on your site, under certain conditions. Visit our Help Center to learn about those types of ads, how and when you can opt in to showing them and when they may be displayed to users. 


Was this newsletter helpful? Share your feedback with us.

Mobile Ads

Build a free mobile site with GoMo and DudaMobile

To help you make your desktop website mobile-friendly we're now providing the do-it-yourself site builder from DudaMobile on our U.S. GoMo site. Please note that the site builder is currently only available in English. This tool creates your mobile-friendly site in five simple steps and allows you to add features like a click-to-call button, mobile maps and Google AdSense. Mobile sites created with the DudaMobile tool will be hosted free for one year.

Read more about this offer on our Inside AdSense blog.

Program Policies

Test your knowledge of our program policies

How well do you know the AdSense program policies? Find out by reviewing the updated AdSense Academy curriculum. It now includes everything you need to know about our policy guidelines as well as hot topics and top resources to ensure long-term revenue growth and a healthy, policy-compliant account.


AdSense Forum *Hot Topic* of the month: How effective are guest posts?

More about AdSense:

Inside AdSense Blog

AdSense Forum

AdSense Google+ Page

AdSense on YouTube


© 2012 Google Inc. 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043.

Email Preferences: We sent you this email because you have indicated that you are willing to receive occasional AdSense newsletters. If you do not wish to receive such emails in the future, you can opt out by clicking here: https://www.google.com/adsense/v3/unsubscribe?auth=aAN57ISWflZKlJi7WCBrjJ3df_HQeGu5OYd1aQ722AOnrakQflZOyDIzsCPRL3g1jVUKmkXV1ltl8ZAndGwuttU_VT0WiSLc0Jg==

The Bigfoot Update (AKA Dr. Pete Goes Crazy)

The Bigfoot Update (AKA Dr. Pete Goes Crazy)


The Bigfoot Update (AKA Dr. Pete Goes Crazy)

Posted: 11 Jun 2012 11:40 AM PDT

Posted by Dr. Pete

On June 5th of 2012, at around 9:00am Central Daylight Time, I spotted what appeared to be a major Google algorithm update in the wild. Unfortunately, I was alone… and the photos all turned out blurry… ok, and I had had a few beers. Still, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. This is the true story of an update that I honestly believe we missed, and why we’re just not as good at spotting them as we like to think.

The First Sighting

Let’s cut to the chase – this is an artist’s representation of what I saw that fateful morning (not a very talented artist, granted):

Graph of ranking change from May 26 to June 4

Please note that the Y-axis has been scaled to enhance differences. This is a graph of ten days of “Delta10” – I can’t fully explain what that is right now (come to MozCon to hear more), but the short version is that it’s a measure of 24-hour rankings fluctuations across a sample of top 10 Google results. The higher the Delta10, the more rankings changed over that 24 hours.

Delta10 theoretically goes from 0-10, but the practical range is much smaller. For reference, the Delta10 on the morning of June 5th (which really indicates activity on June 4th) was 3.24. The 30-day average just prior to this was 2.29. Over 60 days, June 4th had the 2nd highest Delta10 on record – the record is currently held by the “Penguin” update (3.32).

I spot-checked my data and confirmed it from a second tracking station – this wasn’t a fluke. So, I told the Twitterverse what I had seen…

Pete's tweet asking about Google changes

Replies ranged from “I didn’t see anything” to “Stop drinking, Dr. Pete!” to “Who are you?!” Clearly, the SEO community was unconvinced.

The Second Sighting

I was about to go back to the bottle, when a second sighting was confirmed by SERPmetrics:

SERPmetrics tweet confirming "flux"

While I don’t know the exact details of their tracking system (or how it compares to mine), it also measures ranking fluctuations. So, I asked the burning question: “How big was it?” and got back this:

SERPmetrics follow-up tweet

If I was crazy, at least there were two of us. Was it an authentic Sasquatch, though, or just a hairy, naked dude taking a walk in the forest? It was time to go CSI on the data…

Clues in the SERPs

One of the plusses of my system is that it stores the top 10 URLs for the tracked keywords, so I can see how any given SERP changed. The tough part, as I’m learning, is that many SERPs change every day, so you have to learn to separate out “normal” volatility from unusual change. As I went through the SERPs that changed the most from 6/4 to 6/5, I came across one that seemed pretty quiet in the preceding week. This is the top 10 for “bjs menu” on the morning of 6/4:

  1. http://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/menu
  2. http://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/
  3. http://bjsrestaurants.com/restaurants_page/restaurant_menu.html
  4. http://byjoomla.com/joomla-extensions/list-menu
  5. http://www.bjsbbq.com/menu/default.asp
  6. http://www.bjs.com/deli-bakery.content.services_deli_bakery.A.services
  7. http://www.allmenus.com/nv/las-vegas/38881-bjs-restaurant--brewhouse/menu/
  8. http://www.bjclancys.com/
  9. http://dineries.com/ca/lagunabeach/bjs/280pacificcoasthwy
  10. http://pub.bjwillys.com/our-menus/

I’ve color-coded the domains – for reference, there are nine root domains in this SERP. Here’s where it gets interesting – look at the data for the morning of 6/5:

  1. http://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/menu
  2. http://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/
  3. http://www.bjsbrewhouse.com/about-us/faqs
  4. http://bjsrestaurants.com/restaurants_page/restaurant_menu.html
  5. http://www.bjsrestaurants.com/menus/desserts
  6. http://www.bjsrestaurants.com/locations/ca/bjs-grill-anaheim-hills
  7. http://www.bjsrestaurants.com/locations/fl/gainesville
  8. http://byjoomla.com/joomla-extensions/list-menu
  9. http://www.bjsbbq.com/menu/default.asp
  10. http://www.bjs.com/deli-bakery.content.services_deli_bakery.A.services

The number of root domains in the top 10 dropped from nine to only five – BJsBrewhouse.com grew from two to three listings, and BJSRestaurants.com expanded from one to four listings. By itself, this could mean anything, but I started to see the same pattern repeated as I dug into more and more individual SERPs.

Here’s another example – a search for “kohl store locator”. On 6/4, the top 10 included seven different domains:

  1. http://www.kohlscorporation.com/maps/html/store_locator.htm
  2. http://www.kohlscorporation.com/maps/siteadvantage/advantage.asp
  3. http://www.kohls.com/
  4. http://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/homepage.jsp
  5. http://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/womens.jsp
  6. http://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/TX/Dallas/Kohls
  7. http://www.weusecoupons.com/upload/kohls/268041-kohls-store-locator.html
  8. http://find.mapmuse.com/brand/kohls
  9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohl's
  10. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kohls/id472014516?mt=8

On the morning of 6/5, only four domains were left standing:

  1. http://www.kohlscorporation.com/maps/html/store_locator.htm
  2. http://www.kohlscorporation.com/maps/siteadvantage/advantage.asp
  3. http://www.kohls.com/
  4. http://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/landingpages/lclaurenconrad.jsp
  5. http://www.kohls.com/kohlsStore/ourbrands/jenniferlopez.jsp
  6. http://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/TX/Dallas/Kohls
  7. http://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/CA/Los-Angeles/Kohls
  8. http://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/TX/Houston/Kohls
  9. http://www.whitepages.com/store-locator/TX/San-Antonio/Kohls
  10. http://find.mapmuse.com/brand/kohls

Although this is only one result, there are a couple of interesting things to note here. First, this wasn’t simply a change in exact-match domain handling or brand power. Kohl’s sites didn’t expand, and power domains like Wikipedia lost ranking – meanwhile, WhitePages.com jumped from one listing to four. It’s also interesting to note that two previous, broad Kohls.com pages were replaced with specific landing pages. Of course, it’s possible that was just a change on the Kohl’s site and not a Google tweak.

Clues in Domain Diversity

Of course, these single SERPs are anecdotal at best. I needed a larger-scale metric, so I decided to run some numbers on domain diversity across the entire data set (1,000 SERPs = 10,000 URLs). Put simply, across the 10K URLs, how many domains were in play? To simplify the data processing, I treated each sub-domain as unique. Here’s what I saw over the ten days from 5/28 to 6/6 (in this case, 6/5 is the critical day):

Domain diversity graph (dropped on June 5)

Again, I’m cheating a little on the Y-axis here – for the record, domain diversity decreased 2.6% on June 5th, from 5,802 domains on 6/4 to 5,654 on 6/5. I included 6/6 to show that the change seems to have stuck, at least temporarily. While 2.6% isn’t a huge change, the numbers appear to have been very steady prior to 6/5, and this data does match the pattern shown in the example queries.

It’s interesting to note that Google’s April Search Highlights included a change that was supposed to increase domain diversity in the SERPs:

More domain diversity. [launch codename "Horde", project codename "Domain Crowding"] Sometimes search returns too many results from the same domain. This change helps surface content from a more diverse set of domains.”

So, I decided to run out the domain diversity calculation over the full data set (which goes back to 4/5). What I saw was the following…

Long-term domain diversity graph

Keep in mind that more sub-domains across the 10K URLs equal more diversity. Not only can I find no clear evidence of Google’s “Horde” update in April, but the data suggests that domain diversity has steadily declined over the past two months. There are, in fact, two steep drop-offs.  The second drop-off is the one being discussed in this post and shown in the previous graph. The first drop-off is the Penguin update.

Of course, it’s important to note that this is a hand-selected sample of 1,000 keywords and only measures the top 10 rankings. While the domain diversity patterns across the data set are interesting, they don’t necessarily reflect the entire population of Google’s rankings.

Entity Detection Changes

After my initial Tweet on 6/4, SEO patent guru Bill Slawski turned me on to a Google patent published on 5/31 (although it was filed back in February). Interpreting patents, let alone if and when they enter the algorithm is a tricky business, and I’m not 5% as adept at it as Bill, but the patent essentially covers how Google matches queries to entities. In particular, note Claim 28, which describes how a term could be matched to “a plurality of domains”. Or, as Bill noted:

Entity detection tweet from Bill Slawski

This is highly speculative, and I don’t want to put words in Bill’s mouth or over-simplify a long conversation, but if this reflects a general change in capability on Google’s part, it does match the pattern somewhat. If Google could match an entity like Kohls to not only Kohls.com, but it’s listings on WhitePages.com, the algorithm could give more weight to those non-brand domains, in theory.

Could I Be Wrong?

NO!! KHAN!!!! *shakes fist at sky*

Ok, yes, I could. At this point, I think the fluctuation data is reliable – I’ve confirmed it wasn’t a bug, and the SERPmetrics numbers back me up. Of course, fluctuations in the rankings are just one way of looking at things, and the tougher question is: What was the impact? If you look at the sample queries, you can see that many of the changes happened in the bottom 5 of the top 10. For my metric (Delta10), a change from #6 to #7 is the same as a change from #2 to #3, or, for that matter, a change from #7 to #6. Maybe, fluctuations were high but occurred almost entirely in lower-impact positions.

There’s another possibility, though – maybe the fluctuations occurred in rankings that do matter (in the aggregate) but that most of us aren’t watching. How many of us take notice when a few long-tail keywords drop from #6 to #7? By themselves, they don’t mean much, but across hundreds of keywords, I suspect some sites experienced significant traffic changes.

Does Bigfoot Have a Brother?

Or possibly a sister – I’m not getting close enough to check. Just as I had almost finished this post, weekend monster sightings were off the charts. Although Google is officially confirming Panda 3.7 and an impact of <1% of queries, ranking fluctuations over the weekend were massive. Here’s an updated graph that includes June 4th:

Delta10s from June 1 to June 10

The original “Bigfoot” (I owe Dave Snyder a hat tip for the name, even if he was kidding) was June 4th (Delta10 = 3.24), but that was followed up by an unusually active weekend, including a peak Saturday of Delta10 = 3.62. Keep in mind, Saturday topped not only the first Penguin update, but dwarfed Panda 3.5 and 3.6.

My gut reaction is that something bigger happened here than just a Panda data refresh, but I honestly can’t prove that. Keep in mind that weekends are also normally pretty quiet, so relative to a typical Saturday/Sunday, these numbers are even more unusual. It’s possible that Panda 3.7 impacted more sites than 3.5 or 3.6, or that Google had to make adjustments on the fly, or that Panda 3.7 rolled out in addition to other updates.

Unfortunately, the timing of this post made a full analysis of Panda 3.7 tricky and the pattern of change over the weekend isn’t clear, but I pulled a couple of numbers. First of all, the domain diversity drop I’ve documented leading up to June 4th has not reversed. June 8-10 was not simply a rollback of June 4, as far as I can tell. These were separate events. It is entirely likely that June 8-10 were related to each other (you can see a pretty clear ramp-up into the weekend).

It also appears that the weekend was not simply a matter of a big change that got reversed. Let’s say, for example, that every URL moved on Saturday and then moved back on Sunday to its original position. Each day would show high Delta10s, but the two-day change would be zero. Looking at Sunday vs. Friday, the two-day change here is 3.91 (compared to a 24-hour change of 3.44). Although multi-day changes can be very tough to interpret, the evidence suggests that the changes from this past week are here to stay, at least for a while.

What’s in a Name?

I’m almost sorry Panda 3.7 came along before this post went live, because it painfully illustrates a fundamental problem in SEO right now – we’re letting Google define what we pay attention to. By my numbers, Penguin 1.0 was big, and Panda 3.7 was bigger, but many recent Panda updates have been barely blips on the radar (just above average), and I’ve tracked a half-dozen events in the past 60 days that are as bigger or bigger than Panda 3.5 and 3.6.

Google has stated publicly (under oath, in fact) that they made 516 updates in 2010. The numbers for 2011 and 2012 appear to be on par with that. On average, that’s 1.4 updates every day. We’re chasing two runaway animals while an entire zoo is stampeding toward Grandma’s house, and we’re too often doing bad SEO along the way.

I’m not asking you to chase the algorithm – my obsession shouldn’t become yours. I’m asking you to pay attention and stop waiting for official confirmation that something changed. Think long-term, pay attention to your traffic, and watch the numbers that matter to you. The picture of rapid change I’m painting doesn’t even count localization, personalization, rich results, vertical results, etc. You have to know your own niche, and if you want to succeed, you’d better watch it like a hawk. Don’t rely on Google to tell you which changes are important.


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A Golden Girl in the Oval Office

The White House

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, June 12, 2012

 

A Golden Girl in the Oval Office

President Barack Obama talks with Betty White in the Oval Office, June 11, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama talks with Betty White in the Oval Office, June 11, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog:

White House Rural Council Celebrates Its One Year Anniversary
Yesterday President Obama announced new investments to help rural small businesses expand and hire.

New Guide Highlights Best Practices and Innovations in Helping Veterans Thrive in the Private Sector
More than 30 companies and organizations from America’s private sector share lessons learned in effective recruitment, assimilation, retention, and development of veterans in the civilian workforce.

My First Job: Chris Lu
The Cabinet Secretary at the White House talks about the lessons he learned on his first summer job, many of which still apply in the work he does today.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

11:00 AM: The President receives The Presidential Daily Briefing

11:45 AM: The President departs the White House en route Baltimore, Maryland

1:20 PM: The President delivers remarks at a campaign event

2:35 PM: The President attends a campaign event

3:45 PM: The President delivers remarks at a campaign event

4:45 PM: The President departs Baltimore, Maryland

5:20 PM: The President arrives Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

6:10 PM: The President attends a campaign event

7:45 PM: The President delivers remarks at a campaign event

9:05 PM: The President delivers remarks at a campaign event

10:20 PM: The President departs Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

11:05 PM: The President arrives Joint Base Andrews

11:20 PM: The President arrives the White House

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Seth's Blog : Either, not both

Either, not both

Stand out or fit in.

Not all the time, and never at the same time, but it's always a choice.

Those that choose to fit in should expect to avoid criticism (and be ignored). That that stand out should expect neither.



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