miercuri, 27 februarie 2013

The Place of Review Filters in Local Search

The Place of Review Filters in Local Search


The Place of Review Filters in Local Search

Posted: 26 Feb 2013 05:41 PM PST

Posted by David Mihm

In its recent report on "Yelp's Rocky Relationship with Small Businesses," PBS Media Shift was the latest mainstream media outlet to cover one of the most controversial topics in all of local search: search engines' filtering of customer reviews.

The topic first came to prominence four years ago in Kathleen Richards' landmark piece on Yelp's aggressive sales pitches -- or extortion, depending on your perspective and whom you believe. While I was never fully convinced of corporate misbehavior on Yelp's part, the company hasn't done itself any favors by continuing to allow its field operatives to use deceptive sales tactics. Despite its best efforts to educate both business owners and everyday users of the site, the poor reputation of Yelp's salespeople continues to contribute to confusion around review filtering among the small business community. I hope to be able to clear up some of that confusion with this post and offer a few tactical tips to help avoid the frustration these filters can cause.

Why review filters exist

As local search usage among the general public has exploded over the last several years, more and more directories have (rightly) seen reviews as a way to:

  • Gauge the offline popularity of a business in their algorithms
  • Provide better insight to searchers into the experience at that business
  • Increase the "stickiness" of their sites by increasing the sense of community
  • Get out of Google's Panda/Farmer purgatory by adding unique user content

In many ways, Yelp was ahead of its time on all four of these bullet points, and as a result, it had to tackle the inevitable review spam that accompanied its popularity.  

Its answer was arguably the first widespread local review filter: an algorithm for detecting and removing spam or suspicious-looking content.  In Yelp's own words: 

For those of you who couldn't quite keep up with Yelp's version of Micro Machines man, the primary reasons are:

  • To make sure reviews are left by actual people (not robots)
  • To make sure reviews are left by customers and not just hired third parties
  • To make sure businesses don't leave reviews of themselves

Yelp's CEO, Jeremy Stoppelman, recently gave his own slower version of this rationale in a company-produced video:

How review filters work

While I don't have any detailed knowledge of Yelp's review filter specifically, many comparable filters seem to kick into action if any of the following is present in the content of the review:

  • Use of extreme adjectives or profanity in the review
  • Over-use of keywords in the review
  • Inclusion of links in the review

Another criterion that also tends to trigger filtering is a sudden burst of reviews preceded by or followed by a long lull between them.

Some of the more sophisticated review filters, including Yelp's, take a look at user characteristics, too, including:

  • Total number of reviews a user has left on the site
  • Distribution of ratings across all of a user's reviews
  • Distribution of business types among all of a user's reviews
  • Frequency of reviews that a user has left on the site
  • IP address(es) of the user when leaving reviews
The bottom line is that reviews written by active users have an astronomically-higher likelihood of "sticking" on a local search engine than those written by first-time or infrequent reviewers. And even beyond their stickiness, many local search experts (including myself) speculate that reviews left by active users also influence rankings to a much greater extent than those left by first-time or infrequent reviewers.
 
Problems with review filters
 
I Can See the Future of Your Google Reviews

“I Can See the Future of Your Google Reviews”by Margaret Shulock is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at blumenthals.com

The algorithms behind review filters are far from perfect, as many readers probably know, and Yelp is far from the only local search engine with a review filter. In fact, Google+ has probably accrued more ire from business owners as a result of its filter in 2012 and 2013 than any other site.  

Unfortunately, these filters frequently:

  • Lead to less-informed consumer decisions about the experience at a business
  • Remove legitimate reviews, especially from less-sophisticated, less-active customers
  • Discourage new users from leaving reviews

All of which leads to frustration from the standpoint of a small business owner.

Avoiding review filters

Yelp is probably the most aggressive of its peers at enforcing its business review guidelines, which also happen to be the most onerous guidelines of any local search engine.  Yelp's filtering is so aggressive that one in five reviews written on Yelp never shows up on the site!

To sum up those guidelines:

  • Don't ask anyone to review your business on Yelp.
  • Don't ask anyone to review your business on Yelp.
  • Don't ask anyone to review your business on Yelp.

O ye business owner who disobeys those guidelines, beware!  You run the risk of a public shaming.  

Although Yelp's guidelines are considerably more onerous than its peers', Google+ is not far behind in stringency. However, many local search engines are far less prickly about soliciting reviews from customers, or even incentivizing them, and some (including Google) have even engaged in this behavior themselves.

For those who have been caught in the Google+ review filter, Mike Blumenthal has covered your travails par excellence and has authored a most reasonable response. Miriam Ellis and Joy Hawkins have also given excellent advice on this front.  

Review guidelines at major local search engines

Here are direct links to those guidelines at a few of the biggest players:

The review filters of the future

While the search engines may throttle their level of filtering from time to time, the review filter is a local search institution that is here to stay.  

The primary methods of these filters, though, I think will change pretty dramatically. Rather than judging a review by its content or looking at website behavior (e.g. how many reviews a user has left for other businesses), the explosion in smartphone adoption is enabling a couple of far less easily-manipulated criteria to judge the veracity of a review.

  • Any local search platform operated by a handset maker (Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, ...Amazon?) could register the device ID at the time of review and tie it to a bonafide human being.
  • Any local search platform that has implemented mobile payment processing (Google, Apple, ...Amazon?, any Square/PayPalHere partner) could disable the ability for a user to leave a review of a retail-category business unless he/she had completed a transaction at the storefront.

And even for those platforms without the handset or payment-processing advantage, requiring location-awareness for users of mobile applications prior to leaving a review seems like a no-brainer (which Yelp has already implemented and Google may be well on its way to doing).

For those sites that are more desktop-dependent, widespread adoption of primary social logins (Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) could lead to a baked-in layer of spam-fighting.  

As Eric Schmidt recently said:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

In some industries (e.g., DUI law, plastic surgery, psychology), anonymity may be a pre-requisite for any user reviews and these local search platforms may need a Plan B. But for most industries, requiring some sort of verified social profile would solve a lot of problems.

Facebook, of course, has a huge leg up on everyone else based on its knowledge of a user's social connections. Google+, meanwhile, could look at a user's activity across Google's entire range of products (web search, Gmail, YouTube, etc.) to stop spammers in their tracks.  

While consumer privacy concerns around these mechanisms for review filtering may arise, many business owners would likely rejoice at a truer, less bug-ridden filtering algorithm and a more accurate and complete representation of their customers' experience.

Well, that's enough out of me for this week! How about you? What are some of your strategies for avoiding these dreaded review filters? What other methods of filtering do you see coming to Local Search?


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Advanced Wordpress SEO: Permalink Changes & Multilingual Implementation

Posted: 26 Feb 2013 01:54 AM PST

Posted by Nick Herinckx

This is a follow-up post to my Advanced Wordpress SEO Mozinar. Thank you so much for those who joined me as we discussed the inherent SEO issues in Wordpress and how to solve them.

Wordpress SEO is an exciting topic, and I received a lot of great questions during and after the Mozinar that I didn’t have time to answer live. As I started to read through your follow-up questions, I realized that a lot of them were about the same topics, so I decided to include responses to these common questions in this post for all to see.

Of course, there are multiple ways to address these issues in Wordpress as it’s such a flexible platform. I chose to focus this post on the solutions I’ve used in the past, but please include your ideas in the comments section of this post so we can all learn from each other.

Proper permalink structure and limitations

During the Mozinar, we talked quite a bit about how you can run into significant site speed issues by having your permalink structure for blog posts start with something other than a number.

In other words, www.site.com/blog/2012/awesome-post/ runs quickly, while www.site.com/blog/online-marketing/awesome-post/ actually results in site speed issues, particularly as your blog grows. This happens because Wordpress has difficulty deciphering where in the database to pull the post from without a number in the first directory. The team at Wordpress have themselves publicly acknowledged this issue on previous Wordpress versions.

A number of listeners were quick to point out, however, that newer versions of Wordpress have actually solved this issue entirely.

Indeed, if you have Wordpress 3.3 or later, you can actually forgo needing to begin your posts with a number and use whatever permalink structure you want! No speed issues to worry about.

Proper Wordpress Permalinks

I didn’t mention this difference between Wordpress versions on the Mozinar, and want to clear that up here. The best practice for permalinks (if you have Wordpress 3.3 or later) is to use something like /%category%/%postname%/, or even just /%postname%/, as it is both more user-friendly, results in a more logical site hierarchy, and is also can be more SEO-friendly.

Of course, if you haven’t updated Wordpress or are stuck with an older version for some reason (needing expired plugins, significant platform customization, etc.), not starting your blog post URLs (the permalink structure) with a number actually can result in some serious site speed issues. I suggest that either a Wordpress upgrade needs to be completed, or you should consider changing your permalink structure to ensure you have a quick site for users and search engines.

Proper way to change permalink structure

What are the best steps for changing your permalink structure? Maybe you need to maintain and older Wordpress version, and thus need to update your permalink structure due to site speed issues. On the other hand, maybe you just used the default permalink structure when you built your site, but now want to change for SEO or user experience reasons.

Updating your URLs is always a delicate change that requires good planning due to the huge impact this can have on your search engine visibility. We always want to make sure that we 301 redirect old URLs to their new counterparts to not just ensure a good user experience, but to properly communicate the change to the search engines in a way that allows them to attribute rankings and link equity to your new URLs.

Without establishing 301 redirects, you can really harm your search engine visibility.

301 Redirects are Best

Wordpress is great in how it allows for easy URL customization due to its very powerful URL re-write controls. Unfortunately, if you change your URL permalink structure, Wordpress implements 302 redirects from the old URLs to the new ones, rather than the necessary 301 redirects.

I’ve watched more than a few rankings tank due to this Wordpress quirk, and I don’t want this to happen to you!

Fortunately, there are two solutions that don’t involve you having to get crazy with redirect-rules or 1to1 301 redirects:

Solution #1: Update .htaccess file code

If you’re changing your permalink structure to /%postname%/ (and ONLY if you’re moving to this permalink structure), I recommend updating your .htaccess file to handle the 301 redirects from your old permalink structure to this new one.

I like this approach because working within the .htaccess file is quicker for your Wordpress installation, and keeps your installation from getting bloated with more plugins.

Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Copy your .htaccess file as backup in case something goes wrong and you need to re-upload the old one
  2. Get the .htaccess code snippet you need by scrolling to the bottom of this page on Yoast SEO’s website (I have no relationship with Yoast SEO outside of being a user) and click on the orange button that says “Generate Redirects”
  3. Fill out the form fields and click “Generate Redirect” when done to output the proper codeYoast SEO Redirect Tool
  4. Copy this code and place it at the very top of your .htaccess file
  5. Change your permalink structure to /%postname%/ from within Wordpress' interface
  6. Verify that the redirects from the old post URLs to the new ones are, indeed, now 301 redirects. You can do this by spot checking a your old URLs with a 301 redirect check tool like the one found here (again, no relationship outside of being a user)

This allows for a quick update to your .htaccess file without too much mess. If it doesn't work, just change back your permalink structure and re-upload your backed-up .htaccess file.

Solution #2: Use a redirect plugin

If you want to use another permalink structure besides /%postname%/, then a simple .htaccess update is out of the picture.

Instead, I recommend using a Wordpress plugin to give you the control you need to take care of the 301 redirects. Of course, there are numerous 301 redirect plugins available, but I recommend Redirection by John Godley (again, I’m just a user and have no other relationship with Redirection or John Godley).

Redirection Plugin

This plugin automatically 301 redirects URL changes while also allowing for implementation of 1 to 1 301 redirects and even the creation of redirect rules based on regular expressions! All of this from within the Wordpress interface, making it a relatively easy solution for managing a permalink structure transition.

Just install this plugin before changing your permalinks, and then once the change has been completed, verify that the 301 redirects were properly put in place.

Of course, there are multiple other SEO ramifications to consider when changing URL structure (see http://www.seomoz.org/blog/should-i-change-my-urls-for-seo for some more discussion on this), but the above solutions should cover how to properly change your permalinks for most Wordpress installations.

Multilingual Wordpress site implementations

This was a very common question I received after the Mozinar, and surrounds the best way to implement multiple languages on a Wordpress installation so that www.yoursite.com/fr/ returns French translations of your content, and www.yoursite.com/de/ returns German translations, for example.

Although Wordpress doesn’t support multilingual sites or blogs out of the box, there are multiple methods for implementing and running multilingual installations. Wordpress provides a detailed overview (including pros and cons) on five different methods to impellent such an installation themselves (just visit http://codex.wordpress.org/Multilingual_WordPress for a list of all available methods), so I won’t rehash all of their great commentary.

Instead, I’m going to review my preferred method for setting up a multilingual site, which is to include all available translations in a single page or post, and then have Wordpress automatically choose which one to display based on the language directory selected (such as /fr/ or /de/).

Multilingual Wordpress Site Setup

Solution: WPML plugin

I’ve always used the WPML plugin (no relation outside of being a user) to handle this for the following reasons:

  • It allows for easy governance of all of your translated content by allowing all translations to sit within the same post page in Wordpress
  • Easy to add new language variations if you want
  • Automatically implements the hreflang tags on all pages, reducing any potential duplicate content issues while also following new multilingual SEO best practices
  • It allows for the use of language directories, sub-domain or domains, and is thus very flexible and allows for good Google Webmaster Tools setting integration

Just visit the WPML site to purchase and for detailed configuration and installation instructions. Installation is just like any other plugin, and this is the best solution I’ve used for multilingual Wordpress blogs.

There are other ways!

I hope I’ve been able to clear up some common questions about handling Wordpress. I love the platform, but it’s not perfect and requires customization to ensure that’s it’s as SEO friendly as possible.

This post outlines what I typically do to address the topics discussed above, but there are, of course, other ways to make the changes we talked about. Please be sure to comment below and let the community know of ways you’ve been able to address the above topics yourself.


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How the Sequester Will Hurt Shipbuilders

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
 

How the Sequester Will Hurt Shipbuilders

Unless Congress takes action soon, our economy will be hit with harmful automatic cuts (known as the sequester) over the next few weeks that threaten hundreds of thousands of middle-class jobs. These cuts have already forced the Navy to cancel deployment and delay repair of certain aircraft carriers, and postpone building on additional vessels.

Speaking at Newport News Shipbuilding in Viginia yesterday, President Obama called on Congress to prevent these arbitrary cuts with balanced deficit reduction.

Find out what these cuts mean for businesses like Newport News Shipbuilding.

President Barack Obama delivers remarks to highlight the devastating impact the sequester will have on jobs and middle class families, at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va., Feb. 26, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

President Barack Obama delivers remarks to highlight the devastating impact the sequester will have on jobs and middle class families, at Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News, Va., Feb. 26, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

In Case You Missed It

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

President Obama: I Look Forward to Working with Governors to Reignite America's Economic Engine
In meetings with the National Governors Association, the President and Vice President stressed the need for all elected officials to work together to solve our nation's biggest problems.

Let's Move Anniversary News: Recipe Partnership Makes It Easy for Families to Eat Healthier at Home
Five of America's largest media companies have identified thousands of recipes that meet USDA's MyPlate guidance, making it easier for home cooks to prepare healthy, delicious meals for their families.

Policy Statement for Countering Improvised Explosive Devices Announced
With yesterday's publication of the policy statement on Countering Improvised Explosive Devices, the Obama Administration both recognizes the progress we have made, and rededicates ourselves to the next phase in our efforts to implement measures to discover, prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate IED attacks and their consequences.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST).

9:30 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:00 AM: The President meets with senior advisors

11:00 AM: The President delivers remarks at the unveiling of a statue of Rosa Parks WhiteHouse.gov/live

11:00 AM: The Vice President delivers remarks on the Administration’s proposals to reduce gun violence WhiteHouse.gov/live

11:00 AM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney WhiteHouse.gov/live

6:00 PM: The Vice President and Dr. Jill Biden host a reception in honor of Black History Month

7:30 PM: The President delivers remarks at the Business Council dinner

WhiteHouse.gov/live Indicates that the event will be live-streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/Live

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Seth's Blog : With a sure hand

 

With a sure hand

The charisma of a great speech, a powerful graphic design or a well-designed tool (and yes, a well-designed tool can have charisma) comes from certainty.

Not the arrogance of, "I am right and you are not," but from the confidence/certainty of, "I need to say it or draw it or present it just this way and I want you to hear it."

Graphic design that fades into the background, that recycles the safe or is merely banal does nothing for us. But the sure hand of someone who understands what she says and what she wants to communicate can't help but touch us.

This is the difference between the mediocre abstract painting at the local crafts fair and the powerful piece at MOMA. This is the difference between 8 bullet points on a slide and a picture that moves us. 

Confidence usually implies that you know it's going to work. I'm not talking about that, because only a fool is confident all the time. No, the sure hand can be open and vulnerable and connected, but above all, at least right this moment, it is sure enough to speak up, without hiding.


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marți, 26 februarie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Less Than Useless: Goldman Sachs Lowers Gold Forecast Following Plunge (Purposely Late?); Downside Risks

Posted: 26 Feb 2013 11:10 AM PST

In the less than useless category, Goldman Sachs lowered its gold price targets by over $200 an ounce following the recent plunge. Goldman now says Gold's Cycle Seen Turned.
The cycle for gold prices, which climbed for 12 straight years, has probably turned as the recovery in the U.S. economy gathers momentum and investment holdings collapse, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which reduced forecasts for the metal.

The bank cut its three-month target to $1,615 an ounce from $1,825 and lowered the six- and 12-month forecasts to $1,600 and $1,550 from $1,805 and $1,800. Goldman reversed an assumption exchange-traded products holdings will expand in 2013, analysts Damien Courvalin and Jeffrey Currie wrote in a Feb. 25 report.

Soros Sells

Billionaire investors George Soros and Louis Moore Bacon cut their stakes in gold ETPs last quarter, while John Paulson maintained his share, government filings showed this month. Global holdings reached a record 2,632.5161 tons on Dec. 20.

Gold futures fell to $1,554.30 on Feb. 21, the lowest since June 29, after minutes from the U.S. Federal Reserve's January meeting showed debate over the pace of asset purchases.

"Our economists believe that the downside risks to their forecasts have diminished while the uncertainty about the size of QE3 is high," the Goldman report said. "We believe that a shift has occurred over the past few months with conviction in holding gold waning quickly."
Downside Risks and QE Uncertainty

In contrast to the opinion of Goldman, I would like to note there is little uncertainty about QE. Bernanke is insanely committed to the idea.

In regards to downside risks to the economy I will also take the other side.

Downside Risks

  • The 2% payroll tax hike is going to take a far bigger bite out of the economy than most think.
  • The "sequester effect" will be small, yet larger than most think
  • Europe is an absolute basket case and will get worse
  • China is slowing down and overheating at the same time from an inflation standpoint (See China Overheating? Biggest Weekly Cash Drain in History; Questions Surface Over Chinese Growth Numbers)
  • Global rebalancing in general is not off to a good start
  • US budget cuts are anemic and far more should come. The only upside is if none come, and that effect would be a temporary sideways push because more stimulus is not in the cards, even if needed.

It is incredulous for Goldman to state diminished downside risks.

Gold Action

With Soros and others selling, and with Goldman (and/or JP Morgan) likely front-running the trade by shorting futures at illiquid times, perhaps we have already seen the bottom at $1554.

Unlike others who believe gold is constantly manipulated lower, I believe manipulation is equal in both directions. Look at it this way: In contrast to what GATA says, Goldman and JP Morgan do not care which direction gold (or silver) is going, only that they make a profit by front-running the surge in volume.

After a rebound in price, expect Goldman to change its forecast again, telling everyone why they should buy gold. This is the way Wall Street parasites work (even if in this example I am early with this forecast).

A quick check now shows gold has already rebounded to $1616, up $30 on the day. Where to from here? I don't know, but with Soros and other big sellers out of the way, and with Goldman and other market makers front-running the trades lower, I like my chances here, quite a lot.

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

Youth Vote Propels Five Star Movement Into First Place as Largest Political Party in Italy

Posted: 26 Feb 2013 09:32 AM PST

By a very slim margin Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement is the largest political party in Italy. Young voters and first-time voters are responsible for the surge (see comments from "AC" below).

Here are the official election results.

Chamber

  • GIUSEPPE PIERO GRILLO - MOVIMENTO 5 STELLE - 8,689.168 - 25.55%
  • PIER LUIGI BERSANI - PARTITO DEMOCRATICO - 8,644,187 Votes - 25.42%   
  • SILVIO BERLUSCONI - IL POPOLO DELLA LIBERTA' - 7.332.667 Votes - 21.56%
  • MARIO MONTI - SCELTA CIVICA CON MONTI PER L'ITALIA - 2,824,001 Votes - 8.30%

Bersani gets 55% of the Chamber seats because his center-left coalition barely beat Berlusconi's center-right coalition by a 29.54% to 29.18% margin otherwise Berlusconi would be courting Beppe Grillo (likely to no avail) to form a coalition.

Senate

  • PIER LUIGI BERSANI - PARTITO DEMOCRATICO - 8,399,991 Votes - 27.43%
  • GIUSEPPE PIERO GRILLO - MOVIMENTO 5 STELLE - 7,285,648 - 23.79%
  • SILVIO BERLUSCONI - IL POPOLO DELLA LIBERTA' - 6,829,135 Votes - 22.30%
  • MARIO MONTI - SCELTA CIVICA CON MONTI PER L'ITALIA - 2,797,451 Votes - 9.13%

The center-left received a higher percentage of votes than the center-right by a 31.63% to 30.72% margin. However, Senate seats are assigned based on regional totals and the result will be something like a 119 to 117 spit with the Five Star Movement picking up 54 Seats. A majority takes 158 so no coalition is likely.

Comments From "AC"

Reader "AC" who is from Italy but now lives in France writes ...
Final result are now available: M5S is the first political party at the Chamber of representatives, by a mere 46k voters. The Center-Left coalition scored first as coalition and therefore received a 55% majority of seats in the Chamber. There is no majority in the Senate and no possible majority even combining Bersani with Monti, so the result is a hung Parliament, exactly the forecast I made months ago.

In the Senate M5S is not the first party and scored a little bit less (23.79%). The main differences in the voters between Chamber and Senate is that to vote for the Chamber you must be eighteen, for the Senate you need to be 25 years old. This means that youngest part of the population and first-time voters voted massively for M5S.

Regards

AC
Flashback June 29, 2012: Time-Lapse Interactive Graph Shows Stunning Rise in Anti-Euro Sentiment in Italy led by Beppe Grillo Five Star Movement.

Flashback June 27, 2012: Reader from Italy Explains Why Early Elections Might Lead to "Deadlock"
Explaining Italian Politics

Reader "AC" who is from Italy but now lives in France, has some observations and comments on Italian politics in response to Monti Threatens to Resign if No Eurobonds; Specter of Early Elections

Monti's days are indeed numbered because he will step down at the end of legislature (spring 2013) and he will not seek for renewal of his mandate in the new one. However, his term could be even shorter.

There could be early elections before the natural term. ... the most likely outcome of the next election in Italy is a deadlock ... the Senate will most likely be fragmented with no majority at all. To govern, you need majority on both.
Explaining the Surge for Grillo

  1. Youth unemployment of 27%
  2. People in general tired of austerity
  3. People in general fed up with corruption in the major political parties

There were early elections and the result was indeed a deadlock.

Thanks to "AC" I have been following Beppe Grillo since early 2012. Mainstream media mostly ignored Beppe Grillo until after the election, shocked by a result we predicted long ago.

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

China Overheating? Biggest Weekly Cash Drain in History; Questions Surface Over Chinese Growth Numbers

Posted: 25 Feb 2013 11:57 PM PST

In December I suggested the modest bounce in China PMI would not last. It didn't. The allegedly sustainable recovery in China is already in question.

The HSBC Flash China Manufacturing PMI™ shows manufacturing conditions barely above contraction.
Key points

  • Flash China Manufacturing PMI™ at 50.4 (52.3 in January). 4-month low.
  • Flash China Manufacturing Output Index at 50.9 (53.1 in January). 4-month low




Commenting on the Flash China Manufacturing PMI survey, Hongbin Qu, Chief Economist, China & Co-Head of Asian Economic Research at HSBC said: "The Chinese economy is still on track for a gradual recovery. Despite the moderation of February's flash PMI, the index recorded the fourth consecutive reading above the 50 critical line. The underlying strength of Chinese growth recovery remains intact, as indicated by the still expanding employment and the recent pick-up of credit growth."
Questions Surface Over Chinese Growth Numbers

Those expecting China to be in some sort of sustainable recovery with Europe in a major recession and the US in a big slowdown if not outright recession are a bit delusional.

Please consider China's Premature Overheating.
China began this year with an off-the-charts explosion in credit issuance. Last week, it broke records again, this time for the amount of cash drained from its banking system. The record credit issuance of 2.5 trillion yuan ($400 billion) in January — comprising both bank lending and non-bank financial institutions' credit — always looked as if it was verging on the reckless.

The surprise perhaps is that this reversal came so early. The central bank withdrew 910 billion yuan from the economy via open-market operations last week, its biggest weekly cash drain ever.

This action coincided with warnings from Beijing for local governments to keep a tight reign on property-market speculation, amid fears of bubbles reappearing. On Friday, the government further extended its existing battery of property taxes to try to take the heat out of the market. The new measures target non-residential property and buyers of second homes.

In recent weeks, the Chinese capital has literally ground to a halt due to smog worsened by traffic and factories. Nomura says in a new report that pollution has got so bad, it may force policy change on the government, which will inevitably reduce growth in the short term. An unusual appendix in the report was a nationwide map of Particulate Matter (PM) readings.

 It has always been hard to square away China's position as a low-cost manufacturing hub, while at the same time having some of the highest-priced real estate in the world. Some economists have an explanation: The numbers are plain wrong.

Standard Chartered Bank's Stephen Green questions if China's growth in 2012 might have only been 5.5%, even as the official figure was 7.8%.

And if China's inflation has been running at a higher pace than we thought, reining it in could prove more difficult. How soon before investors need to worry again about what landing lies ahead for China's overheating economy?
No one really knows the true state of China's GDP, but many of us do realize it's overstated, perhaps by a large amount. GDP is not a good measure of the true state of the economy anyway, with fiscal stimulus everywhere you look.

Realistic Outlook



GDP aside, global rebalancing has just begun, and it may take a decade to finish. Expectations that the worst is behind us in China and in Europe is about to be shattered on the hard rocks of reality.

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

"Wine Country" Economic Conference Hosted By Mish
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Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Russian Meteorite: The Movie! [Video]

Posted: 26 Feb 2013 03:49 PM PST


Footage of the recent meteorite event in Russia is added a little Inception music and gets turned into a movie trailer.


Pissed Off Cat Photos

Posted: 26 Feb 2013 12:12 PM PST

Cats who simply won't smile for the camera.







































  



 

DIY Star Wars X-Wing Bed

Posted: 26 Feb 2013 10:30 AM PST

A Star Wars fan makes a present for his son.





















 

 












Via imgur

Funny Car-Themed Photos

Posted: 26 Feb 2013 10:12 AM PST





















































































The Anatomy of a Great Resume [Infographic]

Posted: 26 Feb 2013 09:27 AM PST

Want to be sure all eyes are on your resume? This infographic provides some helpful tips when it comes to making your resume the best it can be.

Click on Image to Enlarge. The Anatomy Of A Great Resume
Source: Top Counseling Schools