vineri, 2 ianuarie 2015

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


People That Overdid it on New Years Eve

Posted: 02 Jan 2015 05:05 PM PST

























Mum Shields Her Adult Son From Seeing Boobs On TV, And Becomes An Internet Meme

Posted: 02 Jan 2015 09:20 AM PST

This mother was being all motherly as she was watching TV with her son. A scene came on TV that featured boobs on display so she decided to cover it up. The problem is her son is 22 years old and gay. Now the jokes on her as she's become an Internet sensation over night.






















via reddit

Discuss: Can You Disavow out of Penguin? - Whiteboard Friday

Discuss: Can You Disavow out of Penguin? - Whiteboard Friday


Discuss: Can You Disavow out of Penguin? - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 01 Jan 2015 04:17 PM PST

Posted by josh_bachynski

Penguin is back at the forefront of many marketers' minds now that the third iteration of the algorithm update has been released, and a rumor has begun circulating that you can weasel your way out of a Penguin penalty by simply submitting a disavow file. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Josh Bachynski breaks down that argument and starts a realistic discussion to find the answer. While we (and, as you'll see, Josh) don't have definitive answers, we hope you'll join in with your thoughts in the comments!

For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!

Can You Disavow Out of Penguin Whiteboard

Video transcription

Hi. Welcome to Whiteboard Friday, and I'm your guest host for this week, Josh Bachynski. This week I'd like to talk about whether or not it is true that you can disavow your way out of the dreaded Penguin algorithm.

So there is a hypothesis going around the SEO community that it is possible that you can just use a disavow file to get out of Penguin. Now, for those of you who don't know, the disavow file is a feature that Google implemented a couple years ago where you can upload your spammy links into a file, very similar to robots.txt, and they will apparently remove those links out of your link graph or have them not count against you or something along those lines.

However, the hypothesis is -- and Google has confirmed this both by John Mueller and Matt Cutts -- that apparently if someone sends you bad links or you make bad links, however the link showed up, you can just disavow those links, you can put them in your disavow file, and this will help you get out of the Penguin algorithm.

So this is the hypothesis, and not only does Google claim this is the case, but many SEOs claim this is the case as well. In fact, they go so far as to claim to have succeeded doing this for themselves or for clients, that they have just taken links and put them in the disavow file and those clients, on a Penguin refresh, have been saved from the terrible Penguin.

It would be a large problem if this was not the case, because, as I mentioned, it is possible for people to simply buy a Fiverr blast -- I don't want to list off too many options to give you negative SEO ideas -- but you could imagine scenarios where it's pretty easy to build these spammy links pointing at sites and possibly get Google to notice them and then to milk those sites when Penguin 3 comes around or Penguin 4, the next iteration of Penguin.

It would be very good if the disavow file worked. Personally, I'd like the disavow file to work if I could prove that it did. It is a problem, in a lot of ways, that it's not, which I'll get to in a second.

However, if this is true, then there should be no recovery with link loss. For example, if this is true, that you can just disavow your way out of Penguin, then we should be able to find sites that escape on the Penguin date, but have deleted no links or we can tell have had no link loss whatsoever. That way, we can know that it was just a disavow file and not some combination of either deleting links on the disavow file or something else entirely. So if that is the case, that this hypothesis is true, then we can use a scientific method to determine that we should be able to find exemplars of the hypothesis.

On the last Penguin 3, when it was released October 18th, for those people who claimed that they recovered and claim they did it only from a disavow file, I asked them to send me examples. I said, "Fine. Send me your URL, and I'd like to check it." I tested over 12 sites altogether who claimed to have both recovered from Penguin on that date and to only use the disavow file or claimed to only use disavow file to do so.

However, I found something rather striking, that every single one that I checked, they all had link loss. In either Majestic or Ahrefs or using the Moz tools, I found that they all had links that they lost a few months prior to the release of Penguin.

Now whether they deleted the links and just lied to me, or whether they forgot they deleted the links, or whether the links just dropped off the link graph because, of course, web pages on the Internet change. For all we know, these could have been just scraper sites scraping them, giving them links that they didn't even want, and those sites just disappear. However the links were lost, the links were lost.

So, what does that tell us? Well, unfortunately, it tells us that I cannot confirm the hypothesis. After 12 tries, the hypothesis that you can just use the disavow file to escape Penguin, I was not able to confirm that hypothesis. The examples, the evidence that people sent me trying to prove this hypothesis proved to be false. So I say myth busted or at the very least myth not confirmed. I was not able to confirm it after 12 plus tries to do so.

At best, all I can say after doing the testing and, of course, I just want to add this note in now, if anybody out there, anybody seeing this video claims to have recovered from Penguin and just done it solely from the disavow file and they didn't delete any links and they didn't lose any links, please, by all means, send it to me, because as I said, it'd be lovely. It'd be wonderful if that's the way it worked, because then if someone is sending you a negative SEO attack, all you have to do is watch your backlinks on a daily basis and throw in there any ones that seems suspect.

But as I said, I could not confirm that's the way it works. At best, all I can confirm is that deletion of links or loss of links still apparently has to be required in some way, and then two, this experiment, of course, has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the manual penalty process, which I won't even get into, which the disavow file may or may not help with. I'm not talking about that for this Whiteboard Friday.

The question then you'll ask me is, "Josh, why, why, why, oh why, do people perpetuate this myth?" Well, I'm afraid there is a number of plausible reasons why they might perpetuate this myth, both Google and other SEOs. One is because it's easy. An SEO who knows half of what they're doing can get a list of links and put them in a disavow file and give them to a client in about five minutes to upload. In fact, there are programs that will do it for you very quickly. Are they selling snake oil? I don't know, but I could not prove that the disavow file helped in any way, shape, or form for trying to get out of Penguin.

Two, there is another reason why Google might possibly -- I'm just putting it out there for your consideration -- perpetuate the myth -- as far as I can tell it's a myth -- that the disavow file will help you escape from Penguin is because you're feeding their machine learning. Every link you put in there, it's entirely possible they can run through their algorithms, which Matt Cutts has admitted, at SMX Advanced 2013, they might just think of doing at some point in future, so they can tell what these badder spammy links are.

And finally, propaganda. People are very afraid of negative SEO, with good reason. Whether or not it works or not, it definitely is a scary concept, and so it would be very reassuring for Google to tell people that, "Hey, we have this nifty disavow file. So if you get scared, if you see some suspect links pointing to you, all you have to do is put them in your disavow file, and you don't have to worry about it at all whatsoever."

However, I'd love that to be true, but I was not able to prove that being the case. So I'm going to say that I think the myth is busted. If anybody has any counter evidence to send to me, by all means I am all ears to look at it. All I need to do is plug it into a Majestic SEO or Ahrefs and see if there are any deleted links before the last Penguin release and say, "No, you lost links, and so we cannot say that it is the disavow alone."

To confirm that hypothesis, I would have to see no links lost in Majestic and no links lost in Ahrefs whatsoever, and, of course, I'd have to see an uptick on a declared Penguin date for me to say, "Well, jeez, the evidence looks like they have released on Penguin, and they had no deleted links." Then I'll take your word for it that you submitted a disavow file, because, of course, I can't see that. Only the site owner can see that, or you can give me your login whatever. You can trust me.

Until that time, I'm saying the myth is busted. The disavow file alone does not help you escape from Penguin, maybe in combination with deleting links, I'm not sure. I'm saying the disavow file is, unfortunately, the opiate of the masses. It is a safe myth we believe in because it makes us feel warm and snuggly at night. But I'm afraid that, after scientific testing, I cannot prove that that is case.

I've come away from that with two more suggestions that I would recommend. One, I would stop paying for it. I would stop buying it. I would stop paying people to simply make you a disavow file and upload it. I would tell SEOs to stop selling that as a service alone. Of course, in conjunction with other services, fine. But that as a tactic alone, that's not going to do anything at all, because the evidence, so far that I've seen, doesn't suggest that it will.

Furthermore, a more general point, it might be a good idea to think about stop selling and stop buying from-the-hip SEO, where SEOs are selling services based merely on hearsay and as much as we can, in our industry, triangle more for science based SEO or data based SEO.

If anyone recommends any service to you or any suggestion or any SEO tactic to you, the first question you should ask is, "Where did you come by this information? Do you have any data to prove that this is a good thing to do?"

That is my Whiteboard Friday for this week. If you have any questions at all or you want to e-mail me, yell at me, contradict me by all means, or please send me more sites I can test that may have sites that didn't delete any links, but did see an uptick on Penguin. By all means, join in the comments below, or e-mail me at JoshBachynski@gmail.com with that or any other questions. With that, I bid you adieu, and we'll see you again next time. Bye-bye.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com


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Seth's Blog : Unprepared

Unprepared

Is there anything worse we can say about you and your work? "You are unprepared."

But the word "unprepared" means two things, not just one. There is the unprepared of the quiz at school, of forgetting your lines, of showing up to a gunfight with a knife… this is the unprepared of the industrial world, the unprepared of being an industrial cog in an industrial system, a cog that is out-of-whack, disconnected and poorly maintained.

What about the other kind, though?

We are unprepared to do something for the first time, always.

We are unprepared to create a new kind of beauty, to connect with another human in a way that we’ve never connected before.

We are unprepared for our first bestseller, or for a massive failure unlike any we’ve ever seen before. We are unprepared to fall in love, and to be loved.

We are unprepared for the reaction when we surprise and delight someone, and unprepared, we must be unprepared, for the next breakthrough. 

We've been so terrified into the importance of preparation, it's spilled over into that other realm, the realm of life where we have no choice but to be unprepared.

If you demand that everything that happens be something you are adequately prepared for, I wonder if you’ve chosen never to leap in ways that we need you to leap. Once we embrace this chasm, then for the things for which we can never be prepared, we are of course, always prepared.

       

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joi, 1 ianuarie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


How Much Did Your Rent Go Up in 2014? What's Your Expectation for 2015?

Posted: 01 Jan 2015 09:41 PM PST

If you are a renter, how much did your rent go up this past year? What's your expectation for 2015?

Let's explore those questions starting with a chart on rent from the MarketWatch article Here's What Americans Spent on Rent this Year.

Cumulative Rent Growth



In isolation, the chart is misleading because it included growth in rent collected which varies by population increases. It does not reflect percentage increases in base rent.

Both MarketWatch and Zillow explain it that way, but one has to read carefully to pick that up.

Zillow says U.S. Renters Paid $441 Billion in Rent in 2014, Up Nearly $21 Billion Since 2013
Americans shelled out $20.6 billion more in rent in 2014 compared to 2013. Cumulatively, U.S. renters paid $441 billion in rent in 2014 compared to $420 billion last year, an increase of nearly five percent (4.9 percent), as both the number of renting households and the average rent rose nationally, according to a Zillow rentals analysisi.

Locally, the Bay Area, consisting of the San Jose and San Francisco metros, saw the largest jump in cumulative rent paid in 2014, up 14.4 and 13.5 percent respectively. Rent per household in the San Jose, Calif. metro rose by $197 per month, while rent in the San Francisco metro rose by $163 per month.
What Percentage Did Rents Really Go Up?

That looks like a shocking stat for San Jose and San Francisco. If one inaccurately places all of the increase on rising rent, the hike would be a whopping $2,364 per year!

However, Zillo explains "Nationally, the total number of renters is estimated to have grown 1.9 percent in 2014ii. Over the same time period, the median rent paid increased 2.9 percent."

Fair enough, but also consider this Zillow statement: "Over the past fourteen years, rents have grown at twice the pace of income due to weak income growth, burgeoning rental demand, and insufficient growth in the supply of rental housing."

Does income growth also factor in the rise in population? If not, it's a very invalid comparison.

Regardless, inquiring minds are probably interested in this question: In percentage terms, how much did rental prices really increase in San Jose, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago?

Zillow did not even say.

Instead Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries explains "Next year, we expect rents to rise even faster than home values, meaning that another increase in total rent paid similar to that seen this year isn't out of the question. In fact, it's probable."

Fred to the Rescue

The St. Louis Fed also keeps tracks of rent, albeit in the form of "Owners' Equivalent Rent".

There are four pages to scroll through. Instead of posting the raw index for each chart, I displayed percent change from a year ago in each of the following charts.

CPI Rent of Primary Residence All Urban Consumers



OER New York, Northern New Jersey, Long Island



OER Miami, FT. Lauderdale



OER Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange County



OER San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose



An increase of 5.1% for San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose is pretty steep, but nothing like the misleading Zillow-reported 13.5%.

To be fair, Fred added Oakland to the mix, but it's safe to assume rents did not rise anywhere close to 13.5%.

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

Disgusting Idea of the Day: Another Bush vs. Another Clinton

Posted: 01 Jan 2015 03:12 PM PST

A CNN/ORC Poll shows Bush surges to 2016 GOP frontrunner.

Bush took first place with 23% in a new nationwide poll, putting him 10 points ahead of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who tallied 13%. Physician Ben Carson comes in third, with 7% support, and Sen. Rand Paul and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee are both tied for fourth with 6%.

Bush Dumps Corporate Commitments

Jeb Bush has not yet formally announced he is running, but actions suggest a 100% likelihood.

Fearing a  backlash like Romney had with his ties to Bain Capital, Jeb Bush Resigned from All Boards, an action that will cost him as much as a million dollars a year.

I propose, if those board positions mattered ever, then they still matter now. Would it really have mattered if Romney shed all his ties with Bain Capital? Why would it?

If anything, dumping those corporate ties makes it look like there's some garbage that needs to be hidden. And if there is smelly garbage, it's 100% likely to surface.

But that's not how these guys see it.

Please consider Jeb Bush Sheds Corporate Commitments to Help 2016 Presidential Run.
Technically, Jeb Bush – son of President George Bush Sr and younger brother of President George W Bush – is still only "exploring" whether to seek the Republican nomination. But severing his many business ties means forgoing millions of dollars in consultancy earnings and is likely to prove almost as indicative of his determination to follow in family footsteps as did his announcement of a fundraising committee last month.

Disentangling the extensive business interests that Bush has built up since standing down as governor in 2007 has not been a simple exercise. His first major resignation – as an adviser to Barclays following its purchase of Lehman Brothers – was confirmed by the British bank three weeks ago, after questions were raised about whether it and other controversial relationships could prove his achilles heel.

He is also still reviewing what to do about some directly owned business interests such as the consulting firm Jeb Bush & Associates, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the latest news.

Various private equity investments in energy and aviation, made through a company called Britton Hill that is named after the highest point in Florida, were only disclosed last June. At the time, such investments were widely interpreted as a sign that Jeb might have decided to heed his mother Barbara's advice that there had already been enough Bushes in the White House.

But the Republican establishment is anxious for a well-known candidate to challenge more radical rivals such as senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, and the Bush name is seen as the most reliable rallying point for wealthy donors and the business community after the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, was tarnished by a political scandal in 2014.
Who Isn't Running?
"The more the merrier," said the Kentucky senator Rand Paul when Bush first announced he was "exploring" a run in December, one of many indications that Paul's participation in the contest is in as little doubt as that of his equally ambitious conservative colleague Ted Cruz.

The Florida senator Marco Rubio also announced in a New Year's Day radio interview that he was "spending the holidays thinking about his future".

The unusually early launch of team Bush was thought to be aimed partly at deterring other establishment competitors such as Rubio and the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, but their public prominence since and Mitt Romney's strong performance in polling suggests it may have only spurred them on.

And with governors from Indiana's Mike Pence to Rick Perry of Texas and Scott Walker of Wisconsin dropping similar hints in recent days, the easier question among top Republicans is who isn't running?
Republican Establishment Losers

And so the Republican establishment is already rallying around another loser just as they rallied around Mitt Romney.

When does the stupidity end? The next election, like the last, is highly likely to depend on independents, libertarians, and those who want change.

Neither Jeb Bush nor Hillary Clinton offers any change. That pairing would be one of the most disgusting ever.

I support Rand Paul as the only candidate possible to make a difference.

Admittedly it's too early to make any predictions, but Real Clear Politics shows Clinton beating Bush, Cruz, Paul, Huckabee, Christie, and Ryan, all by substantial margins.

One think Clinton has going for here is name recognition. There are a lot of people who do not know who some of the Republican candidates are. And there are many feminists who will vote for Hillary just to have a woman in the Whitehouse.

Name recognition will change with the passage of time and with the primaries. What may not change is the willingness of independents to rally behind Bush. I sure won't, but I won't vote for Hillary either.

Regardless, if Republicans nominate another Neanderthal instead of someone who represents change, expect to see "no change" another way, with Hillary Clinton as president.

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

Happy New Year!

Posted: 01 Jan 2015 01:37 PM PST

Happy New Year to you and all your loved ones. May 2015 be your best year ever. For those of you seeking a job or a better job, better health, or simply peace of mind, may you find it in 2015. Mish

Seth's Blog : Used to be

Used to be

This hotel used to be a bank.

That conference organizer used to be a travel agent.

This company used to make playing cards.

Perhaps you used to be hooked on keeping score, or used to be totally focused on avoiding the feeling of risk, or used to be the kind of person who needed to be picked...

"Used to be," is not necessarily a mark of failure or even obsolescence. It's more often a sign of bravery and progress.

If you were brave enough to leap, who would you choose to 'used to be'?

       

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