This update represents data crawled from the middle of October to the start of November - processing was unfortunately delayed by Amazon (weirdly, EC2 didn't have machines available due to a "pre-holiday rush"). We're aware of these issues and will be taking precautions to make sure December's index update goes smoothly.
Stats for this index:
40,605,301,071 (40 Billion) Pages
425,695,258 (425 Million) Subdomains
103,776,906 (103 Million) Root Domains
395,851,127,399 (395 Billion) Links
2.10% of All Links are Nofollowed (up 0.06% from October)
56.99% are internal (down from 57.15% in October
43.01% are external (up from 42.85% in October)
5.88% of pages have rel=canonical (up from 5.42% in October)
62.28 links/page on average (down from 62.35 in October)
I'm also excited to say we've got the nascent beginnings of a Wordpress Plugin powered by Linkscape now available. There's just a few features today, but we'd like your help to tell us what would be valuable, useful and interesting to have in the Wordpress tool.
_ Still in alpha stages, but showing links + top pages in the admin panel
The plugin was built using just the FREE SEOmoz API. This is a very early version, and there may be some bugs, still, but if you have suggestions or feature ideas, please leave them in the comments!
President Barack Obama wishes Vice President Joe Biden an early happy birthday after he was presented with a cake during their lunch in the Private Dining Room, Nov. 17, 2010. The Vice President’s birthday is Saturday. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Today's Schedule
All times are Eastern Standard Time.
9:15 AM: The Vice President hosts a meeting to discuss the new START treaty
9:30 AM: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing
10:00 AM: The President drops by a meeting to discuss the new START treaty
10:45 AM: The President and the Vice President meet with Congressional Democratic Leadership
11:45 AM: The President meets with senior advisors
3:00 PM: The President and the Vice President meet with Secretary of the Treasury Geithner
11:15 PM: The President departs the White House en route Andrews Air Force Base
11:30 PM: The President departs Andrews Air Force Base en route Lisbon, Portugal
New Rules Require Equal Visitation Rights For All Patients Following a Presidential Memorandum, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services issues a rule that will let patients decide whom they want by their bedside when they are sick, an important step forward in giving all Americans more control over their health care.
$86.2 Million Big insurance companies spent millions trying to fight heath reforms that end lifetime limits and protect against denying coverage to those who get ill or have preexisting conditions, but millions of Americans are already benefiting from the new law.
Those who know me outside of my role as an SEOptimise writer are aware that I advocate a new approach to SEO called SEO 2.0 which encompasses both social media and SEO elements. I haven’t pushed my own agenda here on SEOptimise but I still believe that it’s true.
On the modern Web you don’t focus solely on Google or other search engines.
Some people mistake SEO 2.0 for a buzzword that means social media marketing but it’s not that either. SEO 2.0 is a holistic approach. Some experts call it digital asset asset optimization, some findability, some inbound marketing. The concepts are very similar. They all try to make sense of the current Webscape as a whole. Like SEO 2.0 they do not artificially differentiate between search and social media. They combine them. Saying SEO is better than social media or vice versa is like saying that
for cars using the wheels is better than the engine.
On the Web you need both search and social media combined to move forward in 2010. While it’s important to separate the two and to know how to deal with each one of them it’s crucial to always remember that they are both part of the bigger picture. Also even the search engines and social sites themselves combine both search and social media these days. Facebook and Twitter for example both focus on search as well and Google attempts to enter social media again and again with multiple tools. So there is no either or when it comes to SEO and social media.
Knowing that search and social media is one changes your whole Web strategy significantly.
You will probably bring together the two teams working on SEO and social media together to connect both sides of the equation. The results are obvious, your business will flourish. It doesn’t make sense to create content for social media and to market it when you don’t add some keywords you target. Social media traffic and attention last only for a short time frame but search will bring users in the long term.
Also it doesn’t make sense to create content solely geared towards the search engines spiders or even users. It’s not 2005 anymore and repetitive barely readable titles and headlines don’t work anymore. You may be lucky and they still work in your niche but soon enough you will wake up to high bounce rates and low conversion rates. Your sales will plummet.
So you need to stop comparing or juxtaposing SEO and social media to succeed. You have to combine both.
For almost two years I have been practicing a very radical approach of SEO 2.0 – I wanted to prove that in a Web 2.0 environment social media SEO is enough. I wanted to show the proof of concept that you don’t need Google anymore. It hasn’t worked out in the long run. I almost did it but it wasn’t sustainable. Still, the combined SEO 2.0 approach, good old SEO best practices and social media participation, outreach, optimization, marketing and strategy really work best.
As I’m a one man army it’s no a problem to take the two and get what I want. Your company or your third party service providers my struggle with it. There is no way to do either or though. Focusing solely on Facebook and Twitter or Google is a recipe for disaster. People search for and find your business using both social media and search engines and via other methods as well (yellow pages, local and niche directories e.g.).
SEO is not the same as social media marketing but there is no gain in artificially choosing one over the the other.
Whenever someone tries to convince that either SEO is better than social media or the other way around ask the person whether s/he prefers the engine or the wheels in a car.
Comparing SEO and social media optimization or search and social media can make sense once you decide to promote a business online. The purpose of such a comparison is not to decide whether you use one or the other but what tactics yu will use on each. Also what will come first? Last but not least you have to be able to plan resources and investments.
Denouncing either SEO or SMO does only make sense as a linkbait strategy to succeed on both social media and search.
Does a stressful event start a cascade that ends up making even you more stressed?
If an authority figure corrects your behavior, does the intervention lead you to push back and make the behavior worse?
Does a failure set you on a path to more failure?
These questions seem philosophical or even paradoxical, but in fact I think they get to the heart of why some people succeed and others don't. We can choose to create cycles that move us up or endure cycles that drag us down.
A cop hassles a teenager who is acting out. The kid escalates. The cop escalates. Someone gets shot.
A sales call is going poorly because the prospect doesn't perceive the salesperson is confident. She responds by becoming even less confident. No sale.
A mistake is made. The stakes go up. Rattled, another mistake is made, and then again, until failure occurs...
James Bond is a hero because the tougher the world got, the cooler he got. Symphony conductors don't endure the pressure of a performance, they thrive on it.
If being a little behind creates self-pressure that leads to stress and then errors, it's no wonder you frequently end up a lot behind. If the way you manage your brand inevitably leads to a ceaseless race to the bottom, it's no wonder that you're struggling. A small bump gets magnified and repeated until it overwhelms.
Customer service falls apart when mutual escalation or non-understanding sets in. Management falls apart when power struggles or miscommunication escalate. Education falls apart when students respond to negative tracking by giving up.
Someone who gets better whenever he fails will always outperform someone who responds to failure by getting worse. This isn't something in your DNA, it's something you can learn or unlearn.
The appropriate response is not to try harder, to bear down and grind it out. The response that works is to understand the nature of the cycle and to change it from the start. You must not fight the cycle, you must transform it into a different cycle altogether. It's a lot of work, but less work than failing.
When the lizard pushes you to recoil in fear, that's your cue to embrace the trembling fear and do precisely the opposite of what it demands. This won't work the first time or even the tenth, but it's the path to an upcycle, one where each negative input leads to more productivity, not less.
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, was re-elected on Wednesday to lead the Democrats in the next Congress, despite her party's loss of more than 60 seats and its majority control of the House in the midterm elections.
Officials said that Ms. Pelosi defeated Representative Heath Shuler of North Carolina in an internal party vote, 150 to 43. Mr. Shuler acknowledged before the vote that he had no chance of winning, but he wanted to give disgruntled Democrats a chance to register their opposition to Ms. Pelosi's leadership anyway.
In the midterm election campaign, Ms. Pelosi became something of a lightning rod for public anger over some of the sweeping and costly legislation passed during the past two years. Republican candidates frequently singled her out for attack in their campaigns. Many of the House Democrats who went down to defeat this month were moderates with ties to the speaker.
But it was precisely because of the sweeping defeat the Democrats suffered in the elections that Ms. Pelosi said she wanted to stay on as the caucus's leader.
"Our consensus is that we go out there listening to the American people," Ms. Pelosi told reporters Wednesday afternoon after the vote. "It's about jobs, it's about reducing the deficit and it's about fighting for the middle class. I look forward to doing that with this great leadership team."
Arrogant Nonsense
The American people have spoken. The idea that Democrats are "out there listening to the American people" is absurd and the election proves it. Voters have had enough of Obamanamics already (and certainly not a moment too soon).
Only an arrogant buffoon could not understand that. The implication of course, is that Nancy Pelosi is an arrogant buffoon.
If Pelosi wants to reduce the budget deficit then "Where the hell is the plan?"
Proving that I am an equal party basher, I ask the same of the Republicans "Where the hell is the plan?" The difference is Republicans have a huge advantage for two big reasons.
1. Nancy Pelosi's big mouth 2. A devastating election for the Democrats
However, it is important to point out that because BOTH Democrats and Republicans resort to tit-for-tat worst of both worlds compromises, we are in this mess.
For example, politics at present consists of this idiotic compromise: you grant a bigger budget for the military, I will give you an increase in entitlements.
Thus, both parties are guilty.
However, at the moment, Republicans have the upper hand because Nancy Pelosi looks like a arrogant, disingenuous fool. The simple reason is that Nancy Pelosi is an arrogant disingenuous fool.
That may sound harsh, but it is the truth. Moreover, I point out once again: I am not a Republican. I am an independent. I vote for policies not parties. I am in favor of a balanced budget amendment, and I ask both parties to back that idea.
A full year of municipal bond gains went up in smoke in the past two weeks. Worse yet, it's highly likely more blood is coming as issuance soars amid decreased demand from investors. A Moody's downgrade of Philadelphia, a complete mess in California, and a looming city bankruptcy in Michigan all weigh on the sector.
Philadelphia's credit rating was reduced to A2 from A1 by Moody's Investors Service, which said the sixth most-populous U.S. city is financially weak and has limited budget options.
The downgrade, to the firm's sixth-highest investment grade, affects $3.8 billion of general obligation bonds and similar debt. The outlook for the city of 1.5 million is stable, according to Moody's.
Philadelphia is rated BBB by Standard & Poor's, two steps above noninvestment grade, and A- by Fitch, four steps above noninvestment grade, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
"The city has little budgetary margin over its five-year plan which includes significant repayment of deferred pension contributions in 2013 and 2014," the Moody's report says.
Realistically, Philadelphia is Bankrupt
Philadelphia is in the same big mess for the same reasons as Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, and Oakland: pension promises and public union benefits that cannot possibly be met.
It is unfair and immoral to keep raising taxes on city residents to support benefit promises that should not have been made, and cannot possibly be kept no matter how high taxes go.
Philadelphia should declare bankruptcy.
Swaps on Property and Casualty Insurers Jump on Muni Selloff
The selloff in municipal bonds is helping push the cost to protect the debt of property and casualty insurers to the highest in more than a month.
Credit-default swaps on New York-based Travelers Cos. and Chubb Corp. climbed to the highest since October. Municipal securities account for 26 percent of the financial assets of property and casualty insurers, Hans Mikkelsen, credit analyst at Bank of America Corp., wrote in a report yesterday.
"Some investors view P&C insurer CDS as hedges against muni risk," Mikkelsen wrote. The swaps gain value as investor confidence in the companies' ability to repay debt deteriorates.
Municipal bond prices are dropping amid a surge in issuance. Pacific Investment Management Co.'s Municipal Income Fund has dropped 12.3 percent since Nov. 3, when the Federal Reserve said it would undertake a round of quantitative easing, known as QE2, by buying $600 billion in U.S. debt.
Yields on top-rated tax-exempt bonds due in 10 years climbed to a four-month high as the market absorbed the highest weekly issuance of municipal debt in at least seven years. California led states and local governments issuing $16.3 billion this week.
Credit-default swaps on Sprint Nextel Corp. jumped to the highest in more than two months after Moody's Investors Service said yesterday it's reviewing whether to cut its rating on the third-largest U.S. mobile phone carrier. They rose 9.2 basis points to 398.5, according to CMA.
"The question becomes will the federal government help," Buffett, 80, said at the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in New York on June 2. "I don't know how I would rate them myself. It's a bet on how the federal government will act over time."
Flood of Issuance Amidst Head Winds
A flood of issuance from California and other states comes amidst downgrades of Philadelphia, problems in California, and renewed fears of sovereign default in Europe.
The tumble in long-term municipal bonds last week comes as a flood of states and municipalities are seeking money in the debt markets, raising the prospect some will have to pay higher yields to lure investors.
California leads the list of planned borrowers. The state alone is planning $14 billion of sales before Thanksgiving.
Investors have been keeping a close eye on the municipal debt markets in recent months, amid reports—albeit rare—of some municipal borrowers struggling with or walking away from debts. Investors also have begun to worry about the future of Build America Bond program and the effects of the Federal Reserve's bond-buying efforts.
That came to a head last week when yields on consulting firm Municipal Market Advisors' index of AAA-rated 30-year municipals jumped up 15 basis points—or 0.15 percentage point— from the prior week. That is the biggest move in 18 months, said Matt Fabian, managing director at the firm.
Difficulties have been felt by even high-quality borrowers. Last week Harvard University was forced to pay an interest rate above a key benchmark rate and reduce the amount of debt it sold to close a $600 million bond deal. That got investors' attention, said Mr. Fabian, and helped trigger the price correction in the broader market.
Another concern: the future of the Build America Bond program. The program was designed as part of the Obama administration's effort to help states, cities and other local government entities borrow in the bond markets and lower financing costs by offering a federal subsidy.
The gains for Republicans in this month's midterm elections, market participants say, makes reauthorization of the program less likely. "The threat is if that [the BABs program is] not authorized than all that volume comes back to the tax-exempt side," Mr. Friedlander said.
There much more in the article. Those interested in Munis should give it a look.
Yet another way the California Legislature has stuck it to taxpayers: The long delay on a budget agreement this year also delayed the state's plans to raise cash in the municipal bond market.
Now, Treasurer Bill Lockyer is trying to get investors to buy $14 billion in debt amid a broad sell-off in the bond market overall, and the worst sell-off in many tax-free muni bonds since the financial crash of late-2008.
That will mean higher interest rates on the debt than the state would have paid two months ago.
Institutional pricing of California's $10 billion of revenue anticipation notes, which had been scheduled for Wednesday, has been delayed until Thursday due to litigation over a state building sale, the state treasurer's office said on Wednesday.
"The state is required to disclose the lawsuit to investors, and did so this morning. Retail investors on Monday and Tuesday ordered $5.89 billion of the RANs. Those orders now have to be reconfirmed in light of the new disclosure," a statement from Tom Dresslar, spokesman for California Treasurer Bill Lockyer said.
The building sale and lease-back plan was approved by the governor and legislature to help eliminate California's budget deficit.
Earlier on Wednesday, Lockyer issued a notice for the deal's preliminary official statement that said a taxpayer lawsuit was filed in state court on Tuesday seeking to block the sale of 11 state office properties.
Build America Bond Program About to Expire
Build America Bonds, a brainchild of the Obama Administration, was supposed to be a "temporary emergency" program. The debate now is whether to kill it.
Started in early 2009, the program offered state and local governments a subsidy to help issue debt when credit markets were largely frozen. The idea was that government borrowers, who largely sell tax-exempt debt to individual investors, needed help tapping the wider institutional market.
To this end, the U.S. government decided to rebate to state and local governments 35% of the interest paid on a taxable bond issue. That allowed them to sell debt with yields comparable to, say, corporate issues, and so garner wider investor attention, yet ultimately pay less interest. The program has proven popular — more than $150 billion of Build America Bonds have been issued as of October, according to the Treasury Department.
Whether that flies will depend on the lame-duck session of Congress that begins on Monday. The best course would be for legislators to end what is essentially just another bailout.
Why? State and local governments need incentives to get their financial houses in order, as painful as that might be. By subsidizing the cost of borrowing with this program, the federal government reduces the incentive to do so.
I concur with David Reilly. States need to get their fiscal budgets in order. Going into more debt does not work.
Muni Risk-Reward Setup is Horrid
Regardless of whether the Congressional lame duck session approves a permanent extension to the temporary Build America Bond Program, munis are very richly priced in this backdrop of increasing global uncertainty and likelihood of additional bond downgrades and even defaults.
I see no point in investing in munis at all. The sector crashed in October 2008 and there is no reason it can't (or even that it shouldn't) crash again.
Why it's hard to get a business off the ground in various cities around the USA including Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Houston, D.C., Chicago, and Philadelphia.
Analysis of weekly unemployment data and covered employees shows that 5,977,844 benefit-paying jobs have been lost in the last year.
click on chart for sharper image
The above chart is from reader Tim Wallace. I added the date and numeric annotations. Thanks Tim!
Covered Employment Stats of Merit
Covered employment is back to 2004 levels.
Close to 6 million benefits paying jobs have vanished in a year.
Over 8 million benefits paying jobs have vanished since the 2008 peak.
What is a Covered Employee?
The exact meaning of "covered employee" varies slightly state to state, but not by much. In simple terms it means one is eligible for unemployment insurance benefits.
Most states exclude the self-employed, commission based employment such as real estate agents, those in student training programs, academic and hospital internships, employment by churches or religious organizations, and rehabilitation programs.
Self-employed individuals must pay into unemployment insurance programs, however, the self-employed are not eligible for benefits anywhere.
Nearly 6 Million Jobs Vanish
By the above intrepretation, it is safe to conclude that 5,977,844 jobs totally vanished (not just benefit paying jobs).
The only way that cannot be true is if there was a sudden shocking increase in the number of real estate agents, church hiring, or close to 6 million people all of a sudden decided to go into business for themselves.
All of those possibilities are highly unlikely to say the least.
Tim Wallace writes ....
The ANNUAL ADDITIVE TREND from 2004 to 2008 of 1.9 million is now a net loss of 8 million the past two years
Year....Covered...........Number added from previous year 2004....126,276,670....Data from hard copy sheets 2005....127,622,590....1,345,920 2006....130,605,286....2,982,696 2007....132,623,886....2,018,600 2008....133,902,387....1,278,501 average added per yr = 1,906,429 2009....131,823,421....-2,078,966 2010....125,845,577....-5,977,844
Did the stimulus SAVE or CREATE any jobs, or did we lose over 8 million jobs in two years in spite of record amounts of stimulus?
Download data including the covered column is found on the US Department of Labor website, Weekly Claims Data.
Was there a Massive Surge in Retirees?
click on chart for sharper image
There was no massive surge in retirees so that cannot account for the loss of benefits-paying jobs.
Retiree Data
In October of 2006 there were 30,908,097 retirees.
In October of 2007 there were 31,467,071 retirees, an increase of 558,974.
In October of 2008 there were 32,222,895 retirees, an increase of 755,824.
In October of 2009 there were 33,366,881 retirees, an increase of 1,143,986.
In October of 2010 there were 34,463,650 retirees, an increase of 1,096,769.
Information on retirees is from the Social Security Administration. It undercounts retirees not in the system so actual numbers would be somewhat higher.
The number of retirees is certainly increasing which suggests the number of jobs needed to keep the unemployment rate steady is dropping. It also helps explain a falling participation rate (although not at the rate that it is falling).
That aside, the growth in the number of retirees cannot begin to explain the massive loss of benefits-paying jobs.
The increase in retirees from 2008 to 2010 is only 2,240,755 total. Civilian population growth was rose by 1,980,000 just last year.
Scroll down to page 5: HOUSEHOLD DATA Summary table A. Household data, seasonally adjusted.
click on chart for sharper image
The first item of interest is the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (i.e the population aged 16 and up not in school, prison, or other institutions).
In the last year, the table shows Civilian Noninstitutional Population rose by 1,980,000 an average gain of 165,000 potential workers a month.
Expected Increase In Workforce
In the last year the Civilian Noninstitutional Population rose by 1,980,000. There were 1,096,769 retirees. That mean the labor force should have increased by 883,231 workers. Instead the BLS reports the labor force increased by 50,000 workers (second line in table A above).
The rest supposedly dropped out of the workforce.
Hard Facts
Please remember the numbers in Table A are from phone surveys, seasonally adjusted, and arguably quite error prone.
On the other hand, the covered employees chart was produced from actual jobs data from the states.
Hard data says the US lost 5,977,844 benefits-paying jobs in a year, and 8,056,810 benefits-paying jobs in 2 years when we should have gained close to a million jobs a year or so based on population growth, even factoring in the number of retirees.
6 Million Benefits-Paying Jobs Vanish and Unemployment Rate Drops!
In spite of losing nearly 6 million benefits-paying jobs in the last year (and not gaining another 800,00 to a million more based on population growth minus retirees), the unemployment rate in October of 2009 was 10.1% and it is now supposedly a half-point lower at 9.6%.
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