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vineri, 5 iulie 2013

How Should Marketers React When Google's Search Results Have Dramatic Changes?

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 07:24 PM PDT

Late last month, Google made an update to its search algorithm that caused our MozCast to spike to an all-time high of more than 113 degrees. Our work as web marketers can be frustrating when we're aiming for a continuously moving target. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers how we can keep our cool and learn from those changes when they happen.

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

Reference photo of this week's whiteboard!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week, I want to talk a little bit about how marketers should be reacting when Google makes big, dramatic changes in their rankings and their algorithm. Now, this can be a challenging topic, right?

So we've seen, for example in the recent past, MozCast, which is Dr. Pete's project that monitors several thousand search results and sort of looks at changes in the top ten and what percent of them are churning in and out, and we saw one of the biggest spikes we've ever seen, bigger than Panda, bigger than Penguin, just hugely dramatic.

Dr. Pete represents those in MozCast with temperatures. So the average day temperature is 70 degrees. This one was 113 degrees. Very, very hot, meaning a dramatic amount of change. Lots of things in the first page of results on average moving out and being replaced by other things and lots of positions moving around too.

Now, the way I like to approach big algorithm updates is to look at, number one, what happened? What actually changed in the results? Because sometimes a dramatic variety of different things can be happening. So we see through MozCast and through monitoring lots of search results ourselves, for ourselves and for campaigns that we pay attention to, we can see that you've sort of got one, two, three, four ordering. That might shift over to be, oh wow, look. Almost everyone who is in the first page of results kind of fell down or fell out of those results, and now it's number 11, 19, 4, and 16 that are ranking in there. Wow, okay. That was a big algorithmic shakeup. Push a lot of people down, a lot of new people in.

Or it might just be a reordering. So, one, two, three, four went to four, two, six, eight. Well, okay. I mean, two and four are still in the top four. Six and eight are still in the top ten. But we've had some bouncing around. So this is a shift, but not nearly as dramatic as the prior one, and actually MozCast temperatures represent that because Dr. Pete looks at sort of where things are shifting to figure that out.

Or, and we also see a lot of this, Google has introduced new types of results. There's now a carousel at the top. There are now news results going in there. There are other things that are pushing results off of page one that are shaking things up, that are making things dramatically different, that are making essentially organic visibility quite different from how it used to be.

Those different types of results are of a vast variety, and Google rolls them out in tests all the time and then permanently when they like the results of those tests. Now, if you're observing these patterns in the change of types of results and observing the patterns in what's rising and falling, this can really help you get to the bottom of, "What should my strategy be? What tactics should I take?"

But the second question that I want to take you to before we get there is: What is Google saying about the update? Sometimes Google is very quiet and they don't say anything, and sometimes they'll give some information. Right?

So, for example, Google mentioned with regards to this big update that happened recently that there's a rolling update going on, meaning you can see spikes in values potentially over a period of time as they roll out the update, and it will be ending on or around July 4th.

Okay. That's potentially very interesting information. That might tell me, "You know what? Before I do a big, wholesale analysis of how this impacted me, I'm going to wait for this whole thing to roll out. Let me just give it a few more days, wait until the 4th of July and see what actually happens at the end of the shakeout." Gianluca Fiorelli asked Matt Cutts, he said, "Is this a global update or just U.S. or English results only?" Matt nicely replied, "Well, it's global."

So that is also helpful to observe and to know so that people can get this sense of, "Oh, wow. I'm targeting mostly Spanish language search results in Spain or in Mexico, or in South and Latin America. I guess I should be paying attention to whatever is going on with this update."

Third, I like to ask, "How has this update affected me?" Of course, because I'm a marketer who observes broad trends and runs a software company in the field, I like to see what those broad trends are and know about them. But I also really want to see how it affects me, and as a search marketer, that's certainly what you should be thinking about, too.

So being able to monitor this through data is really important, and there are three points of data that you can collect from your own analytics. Those are the number of pages that receive one or more visits from Google search, the number of keywords that send one or more visits from Google to your site, and the total amount of Google search traffic that you're receiving.

Then, if you want to get more granular, you can go down to the keyword level and look at what are individual keywords sending. Of course, remember that because of "not provided" a lot of that won't be trackable anymore, which is frustrating and challenging.

Then the last thing that you're going to need in order to see how this has impacted you is ranking position. So I like to collect rank position data in non-personalized, non-geographically biased results. This is not perfect. A lot of people are geographically biased, are searching on mobile phones or devices that are location-enabled, do have Google accounts that are biasing them personally. But this is the best that we're going to do, those non-personalized, non-geo biased results.

You can achieve that by going outside of your country code. So for example, if I'm in Google US, I'm going to go search "Google.co.uk/search?q=" whatever keyword I'm tracking, "&gl=US". That will bias me back to the U.S., but taking me to the U.K. and then saying U.S. will make it so that I'm not geo-personalized to just Seattle or just Washington, or just wherever I happen to be on the road where I'm searching.

Using "pws=0" will help remove personalization. This actually removes most of the personalization anyway. If you want, you can also log out or use a browser window that is non-personalized where you're not logged in. From this, you get the best picture we can really get as search marketers about what's going on and how the shift has impacted you, and you can see really different things.

I mean, if I see that my rankings haven't really changed, but the number of pages that are receiving one or more visits from Google has dropped dramatically and that's affecting my overall total traffic, I can presume, "Hey, you know what? This is probably an indexation problem for me."

Whatever update Google has been making, the way it's affected me is that I've lost pages that used to be in the search results. I'm no longer performing for them at all, and they weren't the ones that I was tracking. So probably it means my long tail is where this is impacted, and so that can inform my strategy and my tactics from there.

This is the last question that I like to visit whenever something like this has happened which is: Are there actions that I should be taking? Not just what actions, but are there actions? Sometimes I just kind of go, "Hey, it's cool. I'm going to let Google do what they're going to do, and I'm going to do what I'm going to do. I'm not going to worry about them."

But sometimes there are tactical actions like, "Hey, you know what? I need to bolster some individual keywords. We lost rankings on some keywords that are really important. Let's see if maybe we should produce new pages of content. Maybe we should update the existing content. Maybe we should redirect the old ones to the new ones. Maybe we should be trying to earn some new links and social signals and shares to that stuff, whatever that might be."

Or there might be more strategic level SEO types of things like, "Man, Google just introduced this big carousel across all these different types of hotel and travel results. I'm not sure that keyword phrase of city name plus hotels or city name plus places to stay is really going to help me anymore. Maybe I should start to consider whether I need to go earlier on in the keyword search funnel."

Maybe I need to get in here where people aren't yet searching for hotels, but they're searching for destinations or places, or those kinds of things, rather than targeting down here where it looks like Google is kind of dominating the search results themselves. That's a big strategic kind of shift that you'll have to make with your content and your website and your keyword targeting strategy.

But being able to ask these questions, all of them, and then getting down to the tactical and strategic can really help make you more reactive in an intelligent, considerate way to the big changes that Google might be making.

All right, everyone. I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we'll see you again next week. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Thinking Big: An Interview with #MozCon Speaker Kyle Rush

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 05:33 AM PDT

Posted by Erica McGillivray

Kyle Rush When we sat down in our big MozCon command room â€" think the Enterprise-D's swank Observation Lounge â€" we knew we wanted to bring someone who'd worked for the Obama re-election campaign to MozCon. Why? Because no matter your flavor of politics, the re-election campaign was full of internet marketing brilliance and used big data to connect with its audience in a way that affected the world. This is what we're all trying to do, right?

When we sent feelers out, Kyle Rush answered our call. He served as deputy director of frontend web development for the Obama for America campaign. Kyle's currently director of technology at The New Yorker, and he'll be speaking about how to "Win Through Optimization and Testing" at MozCon, July 8-10. You don't want to miss this advice about testing and conversion rate optimization. You can follow Kyle on Twitter @kylerush and on his blog.

How did you come to work for the Obama for America campaign?

I've always been interested in technology since a young age. In junior high, I would spend all of my free time on the family computer making websites. In my second year of undergrad, I got really into politics and changed my major from advertising to political science. I followed the '08 campaign closely and really admired how the campaign was able to innovate in the political field because political campaigns are notorious for deploying outdated and unusable technology, if any. After graduation, I worked for Blue State Digital which contributed to the '08 digital effort. My boss Teddy Goff left Blue State to become the Digital Director at the Obama campaign, and I asked if he needed an engineer. Two weeks later, I moved to Chicago.

What did you learn most about yourself as part of such an intense experience?

A lot of political staffers will tell you that working on a campaign is like building an airplane while you're flying it, and that's very much the case. I moved to Chicago, where I had never lived, on a two-week notice. We quickly hired some engineers and built out a team. During the last half of the campaign, we worked seven-day weeks and not less than 10-hour days. We saw all the work we were doing play out on TV every day. There were extreme highs like when we had a 90% chance to win the election a few weeks before the first debate. There were extreme lows like when we lost the first debate badly. We worked 18 months towards one night, and then we won. I think that we all learned that the limits we thought we had don't actually exist and that we can go as high and far as we want to.

What was your favorite win for the campaign?

The obvious favorite win is election day, which was one of the happiest days of my life. Aside from that, though, I would say the day we tested our "sequential" donate page. At that point, we had already optimized all the low-hanging fruit, and it was time to put some serious investment in a variation to try and beat our control donate page. We put in a lot of thinking, time, and effort, and we ended up beating the control by 5%. That was a huge win, because it taught us that even though you might think your page is optimized, there is always more you can do.

What win surprised you the most?

I don't know if it qualifies as a win, but the Democratic National Convention was by far the most surprising thing that happened during the campaign. The convention went perfectly, but the amount of traffic we received to the website during the convention was unreal. We blew through our entire test queue for donate pages and were just coming up with tests to do on the fly while the traffic was pouring in.

Kyle Rush at the Obama Headquarters

Okay, for those us who are political nerds, did you get to meet President Obama? What's he like?

We did get to meet the President! He came to the office several times during the campaign to talk and meet everyone at headquarters. For having the stature of the President of the United States, he is very human. The day after the election, he came and hugged everyone at headquarters. He is a great guy.

Switching gears from your past to your present, what's inspired you lately?

Web performance is always really inspiring to me because deep down it's what I care about on my engineering side. Specifically, I really like to read about the way that other engineers make web apps feel like native apps on mobile devices.

We're all a bunch of data geeks. What are some of your favorite metrics to dig into?

I'm a performance engineer at heart so I really like to look at metrics around page speed. My favorite metric is time-to-paint, which is the amount of time it takes for the browser to do its first render of a web page. This differs from the pageload metric in that the browser often paints the web page before all of the assets have loaded. For this reason, time-to-paint is a more valuable metric to me.

As an engineer obsessed with UX, I also like to focus on metrics that quantify user frustration. On the Obama campaign, I spent a lot of time measuring any form error from a validation error on a certain field to the number of validation errors that occurred for each for submission. On our donate forms, we found that the people most commonly had two errors on their form submission which were the employer/occupation fields. Then we wrote a script that measured if people were entering any data in them at all. Turns out people weren't entering any data, and we soon came up with solution to fix this problem. Once we solved the problem, our error rates plummeted.

MozCon attendees love to engage on social media with speakers. What's your favorite social media network?

Instagram is definitely my favorite social medium. It's beautifully simple, and it doesn't require a lot of attention, unlike Twitter. You can go a week without opening it and not feel like you missed a lot.

Finally, for some pure fun, what music have you been listening to lately?

I like pretty much all music, but I really like upbeat/dance-y music. Lately, I've been listening to Kanye's new album Yeezus non-stop. Typically though, I listen to house music at work and while working out. Over the past few days, I've been listening to songs like "Boy Oh Boy" by Diplo, "Play Hard" by David Guetta, and "Alive" by Krewella.

Thanks, Kyle, for sharing with us. Can't wait for your talk at MozCon. Follow Kyle on Twitter @kylerush and on his blog. We'll see the rest of you there!

Weekly Address: Celebrating Independence Day

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Weekly Address: Celebrating Independence Day

President Obama commemorates our nation’s Independence Day, and recognizes the generations of Americans— from farmers to teachers to entrepreneurs—who worked together to make the United States what it is today. The President also thanked the men and women of the military, who have given so much to defend the United States at home and abroad, and said that we are grateful for their service and sacrifice.

Watch this week's Weekly Address.

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joi, 4 iulie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Big Brother Français; Don't Worry It's Only "Alegal"; Mish Defiines "Alegal"
China Declares War on French Wine
Communication Only "Tool" Left

Big Brother Français; Don't Worry It's Only "Alegal"; Mish Defiines "Alegal"

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 10:20 PM PDT

It did not take too long to discover that France operates its own "Big Brother" network gathering systems after demanding explanations from the US.

The Financial Times reports Veil lifted on France's 'Big Brother' Network.

France operates an "immense" surveillance system of telephone, email and internet traffic similar to the US operation revealed last month by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Le Monde newspaper reported on Thursday.

Like the systems apparently operated by the National Security Agency in the US, the DGSE surveillance covers the identity, place, date, duration and "weight" of telephone calls, but not the content.

Similarly, the "metadata" of text messages, faxes, emails and "all internet activity" on networks run by companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Yahoo are collected, Le Monde said.

President François Hollande reacted sharply to Mr Snowden's allegations that the NSA had spied on EU and European offices, including the French embassy in Washington.

He said such activities were "unacceptable" and should "cease immediately". He has called for a full explanation from the US government, linking any progress on key EU-US trade talks due to start next week to full disclosure from Washington.

Paris insisted it does not spy on its allies, but Mr Hollande's outburst raised some sceptical eyebrows among the diplomatic community in the French capital.

Le Monde said the DGSE system was conducted with "complete discretion, at the margins of legality and outside all serious control".

It quoted Bernard Barbier, technical director of the DGSE, as saying at public seminars that France "probably has the biggest information centre in Europe after the English".

"Margins of Legality"

Let's turn our attention to a Google translation from Le Monde Révélations sur le Big Brother français.

If the revelations about the U.S. spying program Prism led a chorus of indignation in Europe , France, she did minor quibbles. For two good reasons: Paris already knew. And does the same thing.

The World is able to prove that the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE, the services special) systematically collect electromagnetic signals from computers or phones in France, as well as flows between French and abroad: all our communications are spied. All e-mails, text messages, telephone records, access to Facebook , Twitter , are then stored for years.

If this huge database was used by the DGSE who officiates as outside French borders, the case is already illegal. But six other intelligence services, including the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI), customs or Tracfin service fight against money laundering, including the data that draw interest daily. Discreetly on the sidelines of the legality and beyond serious control. Political know perfectly, but the secret is the rule.

An Illegal Device

This Big Brother French, brother of U.S. services is illegal. However, its existence appears discreetly in parliamentary documents.

The Target: "Metadata"

DGSE and collecting the phone records of millions of subscribers - the identifier of the calling and called the place, date, time, the weight of the message. Same for mail (with possibility to read the mail subject), SMS, fax ... And all Internet activity, which involves Google , Facebook, Microsoft , Apple , Yahoo! ... This is what the parliamentary delegation intelligence rightly calls "the signals intelligence" (SIGINT), translation of SIGINT (signal intelligence) of the NSA.

Supercomputer at Boulevard Mortier

DGSE and collecting trillions of data compressed and stored in Paris, on three levels, boulevard Mortier, in the basement of the headquarters of the DGSE.

Bernard Barber then spoke of the "development of a computer-based FPGAs" (programmable logic circuits), which is "probably the biggest center computer in Europe after the English ", able to handle tens of petabytes of data - that is to say tens of millions of gigabytes. The heat generated by the computers enough to heat buildings DGSE ...

Lack of Control

The device is completely illegal - "a-legal", corrects one of the bosses of the intelligence agencies "The legal regime for security intercepts prohibited implementation by the intelligence services of such a procedure. Prism that ensures the National Commission on Informatics and Liberties ( CNIL ). Each requisition for data or interception is targeted and can not be done on a massive scale, as quantitatively as temporally. Such practices would therefore legally unfounded.

Don't Worry It's Only "Alegal"

Inquiring minds just may be interested in the Meaning of Alegal.

According to the Urban Dictionary ...

An unambiguously wrong, disruptive and often deliberately committed act for which there is not yet a specific law making that act expressly illegal. (See Extralegal) Financial and white collar crimes, such as offshore banking, misrepresenting the value of investments and temporarily selling 'junk' assets to create cashflow are prime examples of "a"legal activities. Alegality is a corollary of the distinction between amoral and imoral reasoning as applied to legality.

Broker#1: We're putting together a portfolio of failing investments so we can sell it investors then short against it and make a killing.
Broker#2: Isn't that illegal?
Broker#1: Nope, just alegal... Now lets get some lattes.

Mish Definition of Alegal

A blatantly illegal action conducted with immunity, because perpetraitors understand they will never be prosecuted or held accountable in any way.

Over the Line

On very rare occasions someone like Ollie North steps way over the line and is prosecuted.

Please see the Iran Contra Indictments at the bottom of the above link for how prosecutions eventually pan out (numerous presidential pardons, convictions overturned, etc)

When the President Does It, That Means It's Not Illegal

In France as with the US, such spy activities are clearly illegal. But it's easy for the spies to do whatever the hell they want because none of them will ever be prosecuted for what they do.

In the US, such activities have the approval of the Obama administration (and the preceding Bush administration as well).

And as we all know "When the President Does It, That Means It's Not Illegal"

Please play the clip. It's only 4 seconds long.

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

China Declares War on French Wine

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 06:45 PM PDT

In retaliation for ridiculous EU tariffs on solar panels (sponsored mainly by France over the objections of Germany) China Declares War On Wine.

Via Mish-modified Google translate from El Economista ...

The Chinese government has decided to launch an investigation into the European wine sector with the later intention to apply a punitive tax if necessary, as China authorities accuse wine producers in the European Union (EU) of unfair trade tactics such as dumping and subsidies.

The temporary imposition of a tariff on Chinese solar panels by the EU started a trade war whose greatest victim is wine.

"This is a thorough research on European wines for export, in all formats, is bottled in barrels or in bulk," say sources familiar with the process, which warned that the wineries are going to have to face a complicated process and urgent administrative that could derail Asian exports. And that is bad news for an industry whose sales in their home markets is already complicated by the financial crisis.

Chinese authorities have given wine exporters 20 days to register as companies subject to investigation, and if they are not registered before July 21, China will automatically apply a punitive percentage.

No One Wins a Trade War

Should the EU be stupid enough to press the matter further, China would likely respond in kind.

For example China could threaten to place tariffs on cars from Germany or better yet Airbus planes (manufactured in a consortium of countries including France).

Strong retaliation might drive home the point, but don't count on it. Never underestimate the stupidity of EU bureaucrats who think they can impose their wishes on the market.

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

Communication Only "Tool" Left

Posted: 04 Jul 2013 11:22 AM PDT

The message on this 4th of July from Central Banks is "we will keep doing what hasn't worked and what won't ever work" until it does work.

Case Number One

In central bank case number one Draghi Says ECB Rate to Stay Low for 'Extended Period'

President Mario Draghi said the European Central Bank expects to keep interest rates low for an "extended period" as he tries to restrain market borrowing costs, in a new departure for an institution averse to setting policy in advance.

"The Governing Council expects the key ECB interest rates to remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time," Draghi said at a press conference in Frankfurt. "What the Governing Council did today was to inject a downward bias in interest rates for the foreseeable future. Our exit is very distant."

The ECB chose words over deeds after an "extensive discussion" about cutting interest rates, and the support for the new language was unanimous, according to Draghi. He said the bank kept an open mind on whether to cut the deposit rate below zero.

"The Governing Council had all options on the table this month and will keep them there in case things worsen again," said Christian Schulz, senior economist at Berenberg Bank in London. "This time, they decided against another rate cut and decided to stage a mini revolution by introducing forward guidance instead."

Historically, Draghi and predecessor Jean-Claude Trichet have said that the ECB "never precommits" to any future monetary policy.

Draghi said the reason for taking what he called an "unprecedented" step was the ECB's expectation that the subdued outlook for inflation will extend into the medium-term amid broad-based weakness in the 17-nation euro-area economy.

Case Number Two

In central bank case number two Pound Slumps Most Since 2011 as BOE Signals Rates to Stay Low.

The pound plunged the most in almost two years against the dollar after the Bank of England signaled it will keep interest rates at a record low for longer than investors had expected.

Gilts rose and short-sterling futures jumped, indicating traders were reducing bets on higher borrowing costs. Led by new Governor Mark Carney, the central bank kept its bond-buying target at 375 billion pounds ($565 billion) and issued a statement afterwards, signaling a move toward the foward-guidance tool he favors.

Today's decision was the first by the central bank since Carney became governor on July 1. The nine-member Monetary Policy Committee also left the U.K.'s main interest rate at a record-low 0.5 percent.

Former Bank of Canada Governor Carney is the first foreigner to run the 319-year-old U.K. central bank. The Bank of England typically doesn't release statements after leaving policy unchanged. The decision to do so today reflects comments Carney made earlier this year to use communication, including forward guidance, as one of his policy tools.

Communication Only Tool Left

For starters none of this should be a surprise to anyone, so it's rather amusing to see S&P futures up 15 points on the news.

Carney did exactly what he said he would do as head of the Bank of England, even before he took the job. Yet, without doing anything (or even saying anything), the central banks got the reaction they wanted, at least from the stock market.

What About Lending?

Will Bank of England and ECB statements stimulate lending? After all, that's the real goal of the central banks.

Let's answer the question with more questions: Why will it? What structural problems have been solved anywhere?

And please note (mock is a better word) reliance on communication as an alleged central bank "tool".

This is akin to calling a child's toy plastic hammer a "tool" to help build a bridge. However, communication is all they have because with interest rates at 0.5% in Europe and 0.25% in the US there is almost no room to cut rates.

Here's the final question of the day: With crude already above $100 a barrel, what will happen to the price of oil if central banks achieve a modicum of growth?

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