Central Perk

marți, 19 aprilie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Nerd Weddings
Arab Censorship
Lion’s Back, Utah
The Making of Extreme Pizza at the Pizza World Cup
Orange juice prank
The 10 Sexiest Female Fighters In MMA

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 03:08 PM PDT

I wonder if people actually grow up dreaming of weddings like these. Nerds sanctifying their love for one another and for sci-fi/fantasy franchises.

Arab Censorship

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 01:51 PM PDT

There are some unusual prohibitions in advertising in the Muslim world.
They are based on the national and religious peculiarities of Islamic countries.
Any advertising including logos that appear in Arabic-speaking countries should be forcibly adapted to the local cultural values and the Arabic language.

In order to achieve these goals, you need to understand what various animals and symbols mean and how different objects can be interpreted according to the Islamic traditions and customs.

For example, dogs are believed to be "filthy animals" that is why you can rarely see puppies in the local ads. There are other traits as well. Fish symbolizes Christianity. A crow is a symbol of death and a chameleon means hypocrisy.

The Crusades left a deep wound in the Arab psychology. Thus any form of a cross is considered to be a violation here. The Red Cross organization in the Muslim world is called Red Crescent.

t is prohibited to demonstrate open eyes in the advertisements in the most conservative Asian countries. Local advertising agencies have to use their imagination when they show people in ads. The most popular ways of showing eyes are pixelation, glasses and "rolled eyes".

Magazines
Magazines go through hand-censorship. Even their covers are "finalized". Photoshop and other things including black markers, paper and glue are widely used. Any form of nudity is prohibited. Islamic culture is very conservative. Only the skin on the face, hands and feet can be showed.

Movies and Video Games
A particular attention is paid to movie advertising. Such ads must get a "retouch" in order to comply with the strict cultural expectations. Legs, chest and even shoulders of women and men have to be covered. Even cartoon characters must be dressed.

Brands
All world-famous brands that are sold in the Asian market have to be adapted to the Arabic script.

Some brands don't even try to use fonts similar to the original ones when they translate their names into the Arabic language. They sacrifice it for the sake of their brand's spirit using the simplest classic Arabic fonts.

Lion’s Back, Utah

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 01:00 PM PDT

The 'Lion's Back' is a lovely piece of rock near the city of Moab in the US state of Utah. Unlike nearby 'Potato Salad Hill', you can see why the Lion's Back got it's name. However, it is not merely for this resemblance that it has found its way onto the hallowed pages of Amazing Stuff. What makes this precipice truly amazing is that people like to drive up it. And back down.

The Making of Extreme Pizza at the Pizza World Cup

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 12:33 PM PDT

This is the World Cup of pizza that was held in April in the northern part of Italy.

Orange juice prank

Posted: 18 Apr 2011 09:46 PM PDT

Orange juice blind test turns really funny when people are left alone in the mall, sitting by themselves. A presentation of the Just For Laughs Gags. The funny hidden camera pranks show for the whole family.

The 10 Sexiest Female Fighters In MMA

Posted: 18 Apr 2011 05:58 PM PDT

They're beautiful, they're talented, they'd kick asses. Some of these women have already received plenty of attention, others have drifted into the background while we all gossip about the ring girls. That can't be right.

Following on from my 'Top 10 Sexiest Fighters—the Guys', here come the girls. Who's your personal favourite?

Michele "Diablita" Gutierrez

Carina Paganini Damm Golcalvez

Debi Purcell

Michelle "The Karate Hottie" Waterson

Miesha Tate

Ginele Marquez

Kim Couture

Felice Nicole Herrig

Erin Young Toughill

Gina Carano

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Facebook + Twitter's Influence on Google's Search Rankings

Posted: 18 Apr 2011 05:34 PM PDT

Posted by randfish

Since last December's admission from Google + Bing's search teams regarding the direct impact of Twitter + Facebook on search rankings, marketers have been asking two questions:

What signals are Google + Bing counting?
How much influence do these social signals have on the results?

Over the last few weeks, we've been collecting data and running calculations in an attempt to provide more insight into these answers. Today, I'd like to share some results of that process. But, before we begin, there's some important caveats.

The data we're sharing below examines the top 30 ranking results for 10,217 searches performed on Google in late March (after the Panda/Farmer update, using top suggested keywords in each category from Google's AdWords data). It compares the features that higher ranking results have, which lower ranking results do not. Since the standard error numbers are very, very tiny, we can be fairly confident that these correlation values would apply to Google results as a whole (i.e. if we were to run these correlations on 100K, 1 million or 1 billion results, we'd get the same correlations).

However, this does not mean we can be confident that what we're measuring are actually ranking factors having a direct influence. Let's use an analogy about dolphins to help illustrate:

Dolphins + Correlation
image credit: alfonsator on Flickr

Thus, our first caveat is - correlation is NOT causation - the features we show below may indeed be directly influencing Google's ranking algorithm, but they also may just be artifacts or features that high ranking pages tend to have (though, we do know from their public statements that at least some data from these sources is influencing the results).

It's also true that our analyses will not be nearly as sophisticated as whatever Google + Bing are doing with the data, so while we look at raw numbers from APIs, the search engines may have arrangements enabling them to look far deeper into the signals that make a tweet or share authentic - in particular the "author authority" metric they mention in the linked interview above. Thus, the second caveat is that results presented here are likely overly simplistic. A big takeaway for marketers should, thus, be - even if you're sure that a social metric is highly influential, spamming the heck out of it is probably a dumb way to try manipulating the rankings.

With those out of the way, let's look at some data!

Correlation of Link Metrics vs. Social Signals

How well do metrics like the quantity of shares on Facebook, Tweets on Twitter or Google Buzz shares correlate with higher rankings in the top 30 results in Google's web search results?

In June of 2010 we ran a similar analysis and found the highest correlated metrics to be exact match .com domain names and # of linking root domains to the ranking page. Exact match domains have fallen substantially (in both prominence and correlation) - but we'll save that analysis for another blog post - while link metrics have remained fairly static in their correlation to higher rankings in Google. As of late March, the data is showing an unlikely new leader - shares of a URL on Facebook!

Naturally, this data shocked us. I presented at SMX Elite in Sydney last week on this and, prior to showing the slide, asked the audience, by show of hands, who believed Facebook to be more influential in Google's rankings than Twitter. Not a single person raised their arm. When data's this surprising (and particularly when the rest of the data from the analysis - much of it available here - matches our expectations), we want to look deeper.

Is Facebook Share Data Available for Enough Pages to Be Significant?

My first reaction was to ask Dr. Matt Peters, SEOmoz's in-house data scientist conducting this analysis, if the results were skewed by a few search results where Facebook shares just happened to be present in the top results. His response...?

More data:

Link data was present for nearly every result we examined (99.9%+), which is to be expected, but social data? Of this magnitude? Even for plenty of weird, uninteresting queries? Shocking. If you had asked me to guess, I would have said we'd find Facebook share data on maybe 5-10% of the results - 61% is mind-boggling. It challenges a lot of my assumptions about how far social data really could take web search (e.g. see this video from April of last year in which I proclaim there's no way Facebook search could replace Google search), especially considering the relative newness of Facebook's Open Graph project.

Are Social Correlation Merely the Result of Overlap with Link Signals?

My next guess was that Facebook Shares' correlation was simply a matter of being a good predictor of links. Surely, pages that earn lots of Facebook shares also earn lots of good links. As before, Dr. Peters had some analysis to help answer the question.

In this chart, we examine the correlations of social data, controlling for links (in this case, specifically # of linking c-blocks). And yet, we still see a remarkable positive correlation between Facebook shares and higher rankings. Twitter, on the other hand, drops dramatically, potentially signalling that its influence as direct signal may not be as strong (though we must keep in mind this data is not causal).

Takeaways from this Data

While we can't say for certain whether these numbers mean that Facebook strongly influences Google rankings, I personally have some big learnings and opinions to share:

Social Metrics are Well Correlated with Higher Rankings
To me, correlation alone is interesting because I want my sites/pages to be similar to the pages that rank higher in Google, irrespective of whether those traits are directly measured in the algorithm. Pages that earn tweets + Facebook shares also correlate well with earning links, and send direct traffic on their own - ignoring these services at this point seems foolish.
Testing the Direct Impact of Facebook Shares on Google is Imperative
We've already observed several remarkable results from testing Twitter's impact. Facebook should be next on the list for many search marketers.
I Need to Learn More About How to Earn Facebook Shares
Given the potential importance and the obvious direct impact (traffic from and visibility on Facebook itself), I, and probably many web marketers, need to examine successful strategies and brainstorm new ways to earn sharing activity from Facebook's massive user base.
Shares Might Be More Valuable than Likes
In Facebook's own environment, a "like" of content will show up on your own "Wall" and in "Most Recent" (a new feature as of last week), but it rarely shows in "Top News" where most users scan and click. If that alone isn't reason to encourage sharing v. liking, the data above certainly is (at least to me).
Twitter May Be Less Powerful than I Thought
The correlation data and the presence of tweets in SERPs was less, in comparison to Facebook, than I would have expected. It could be that in cases like those of our experiments, where many influential Twitter users shared a URL in close temporal proximity, Google takes it as a signal, yet for standard search rankings, it's not as powerful. We'll definitely keep testing and watching, but my expectations for tweets correlating with rankings, after controlling for links, were higher, and thus the results, somewhat surprising.

It's up to you how to interpret this data, but whether you believe (or have tested) the causality of Facebook/Twitter or not, all of us in the SEO sphere should be carefully watching the social space and Google's social efforts.

For those interested, here's the full presentation on correlation + opinion data shared at SMX Elite last week:

Ranking Factors Data 2011: SMX Elite Sydney

View more presentations from Rand Fishkin

Looking forward to a vibrant discussion and, hopefully, some testing (and reports back) of Facebook's influence on Google's rankings :-)

p.s. When the full search ranking factors report is released in the weeks to come, we'll also be providing our methodology and a raw dump of data so anyone can reproduce and double-check our results.

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Have you RSVP'd for President Obama's Facebook town hall?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Have you RSVP'd for President Obama's Facebook town hall?

Tomorrow at 4:45 p.m. EDT (1:45 p.m. PDT) President Obama will hold an online town hall at Facebook's headquarters. RSVP and learn how you can participate in the event by visiting the White House’s Facebook page:

http://facebook.com/WhiteHouse

The theme of tomorrow's event is “Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity.” The President will connect with Americans across the country to discuss the tough choices we all must make to put our economy on a more responsible fiscal path, while still investing in the innovation economy that makes America more competitive.

After the event, be sure to stay tuned for our Women and Technology panel with White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett and the Startup America panel with Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Austan Goolsbee.

President Obama recorded a video invitation to encourage you to join, which you can watch on the White House Facebook page:

If you aren't on Facebook and want to participate in the town hall without using that site, we've set up a special page on WhiteHouse.gov with all of the information and a form to submit questions:

http://www.WhiteHouse.gov/facebooktownhall

If you are on Facebook and can't make the town hall tomorrow, take a moment to "like" the White House. It's a great way to stay current with what's happening in the Obama Administration. You'll find behind-the-scenes photos, videos and opportunities to chat with administration officials:

http://facebook.com/WhiteHouse

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Seth's Blog : Bringing interesting businesses online

Bringing interesting businesses online

Today, Shopify is launching their annual new online business contest. I'm pleased that they're making a very significant donation to the Acumen Fund to kick it off, as well as offering everyone who enters a digital copy of Poke the Box.

The contest offers $250,000 in prizes to businesses that use their platform (see here for the rules) as well as offering the finalists a chance to come to my office for lunch. Given a choice between lunch and the cash prize, I think you should take the cash.

[UPDATE! I got the launch date wrong, I'm sorry. You'll have to hold your horses re entering, because the contest isn't actually live yet. I'll repost with details next week when it is. Sorry for the hassle.]

I have no idea if you should be running an online store, it's certainly not for everyone... but I do know that the only way to grow is to launch, to initiate and to make a ruckus. Good luck

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Passover at the White House

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama mark the beginning of Passover with a Seder in the Old Family Dining Room of the White House, April 18, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Seth's Blog : Economies of small

Economies of small

Economies of scale are well understood. Bigger factories are more efficient, bigger distribution networks are more efficient, bigger ad campaigns can be more efficient. It's often hard to defeat a major competitor, particularly if the market is looking for security and the status quo.

But what about the economies of small? Is being bigger an intrinsic benefit in and of itself?

If your goal is to make a profit, it's entirely possible that less overhead and a more focused product line will increase it.

If your goal is to make more art, it's entirely possible the ridding yourself of obligations and scale will help you do that.

If your goal is to have more fun, it's certainly likely that avoiding the high stakes of more debt, more financing and more stuff will help with that.

I think we embraced scale as a goal when the economies of that scale were so obvious that we didn't even need to mention them. Now that it's so much easier to produce a product in the small and market a product in the small, and now that it's so beneficial to offer a service to just a few, with focus and attention, perhaps we need to rethink the very goal of scale.

Don't be small because you can't figure out how to get big. Consider being small because it might be better.

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marți, 19 aprilie 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Correlation of Link Metrics vs. Social Signals

Is Facebook Share Data Available for Enough Pages to Be Significant?

Are Social Correlation Merely the Result of Overlap with Link Signals?

Takeaways from this Data

Have you RSVP'd for President Obama's Facebook town hall?

Seth's Blog : Bringing interesting businesses online

Bringing interesting businesses online

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Passover at the White House

Seth's Blog : Economies of small

Economies of small

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marți, 19 aprilie 2011

Correlation of Link Metrics vs. Social Signals

Is Facebook Share Data Available for Enough Pages to Be Significant?

Are Social Correlation Merely the Result of Overlap with Link Signals?

Takeaways from this Data

More Recent Articles

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