marți, 3 ianuarie 2012

Tool Review: Wordstream's PPC Grader

Tool Review: Wordstream's PPC Grader


Tool Review: Wordstream's PPC Grader

Posted: 02 Jan 2012 08:48 PM PST

Posted by JoannaLord

In paid search there are a lot of rough Adwords accounts out there. You've seen them I'm sure. I know I've worked on them. We get brought in to assess the situation and make some big decisions around whether an account has potential or whether it would be better just to start fresh. This is one of the most common questions we get asked -- how am I doing?

I'm always looking for tools that can help advertisers answer that question. Usually I have to log in and pull reports myself to get to a point where I feel comfortable enough to jump on a phone call and give my opinion. Needless to say that ends up costing time on both ends which of course costs money on both ends. 

Recently, Larry Kim, founder of Wordstream, dropped by the Moz offices and a few of us Mozzers were able to explore what their team has been working on. We checked out Wordstream's PPC Grader pretty closely and I thought it would be worth running through what we found. I can honestly say it offers us paid marketers a unique snapshot that can be really useful when first getting started with a company or client.

Wordstream's AdWords Tool

Their Google Adwords PPC Grader tool (report w/ some blurring pictured above) runs by looking at your AdWords account and grading against averages and best practices they've seen from analyzing thousands of other AdWords accounts. To help show off some of the tool's benefits I am going to go ahead and share some actual data (and screenshots) of the tool's analysis of our Google AdWords account.

The big deliverable from the tool is a lengthy report page that shows a bunch of data about your account, but the first number you see is a rough "score" comparing your AdWords campaign's performance to other accounts in your spend range. It's worth pointing out that a concern we had with the PPC grader was the "spend range" component. The range SEOmoz fell into was "$15,000 to $99,999,999.00." Our monthly budgets run on the low end of that but we are compared to huge companies with huge branding budgets. You can see where that might affect some data. With that said, the tool is still a great way of showing a client or company the potential PPC has as a channel. It makes the case that with time and resources there is a profitable place to grow this account to. 

Below are the sections included in the PPC Grader (as you can see this is some seriously awesome data!):

  • Account Diagnostics - An overall score and rundown of your account compenents & counts.
  • Wasted Spend - A look at your negative keyword list and projected spend waste calculation. 
  • Quality Score - A graph of your quality score distribution, which is often overlooked by too many paid search marketers.
  • Impression Share - A share of voice view that helps you understand how often your ads are appearing for relevant searches.
  • Click Thru Rate - Analysis to help you compare your CTR to competitors in your spend range for both Search and Display networks.
  • Account Activity - A snapshot to help you better understand the volume of recent activity in your account and comparitive views.
  • Long-Tail Keyword Optimization - Helps you understand if you are holding your own in the long-tail arena, which holds huge potential for PPC-ers.
  • Text-Ad Optimization - Quick glance of how many text ads you have running, and how many per ad group to better understand how tailored your ads are.
  • Landing-Page Optimization - Helps you see how many this account has, and how that compares to your competitors in this spend range.
  • PPC Best Practices - A pass/fail audit whichs helps you quickly identify any low hanging fruit to go after on the best practices list.
  • Overall Grade - A reminder of your account grade and performance summary. 

Phewwww. That sure is a lot huh? This snapshot is an epic first view for paid search marketers. I'm not going to go through each of the sections in depth because that would take forever, but I thought I'd run through some of my favorite pieces to start. After that I'm going to mention some other feedback and feature requests we have. Let's start off with what we think is really awesome...

PRO #1 : Depth & Breadth of Summary

A report with both such a broad view and such a deep view is really hard (if not impossible) to come by in PPC. One of my favorite sections of the Wordstream PPC Grader is the PPC Best Practices checklist. It gives you a top-level view of how well you are doing. Below you can see what came back when we ran the SEOmoz account through the Grader:

PPC Best Practices Analysis

You can see we are doing well on every section, except for "Modified Broad Match Type." This is 100% accurate, we have yet to play around too significantly with match type strategy at SEOmoz, and have instead focused on long-tail expansion. This is a great reminder that we are leaving an excellent option on the table, and we can better prioritize match type expansion in 2012.

PRO #2: Impression Share View

I love this section. This view helps us understand how often our SEOmoz ads are showing up. We can see if our budgets are where they need to be and if our ad ranks are sitting in the right places. This can help with a really common conversation paid marketers have with advertisers around budget. Most  times advertisers want to improve PPC performance without increasing budgets. While optimization should always be happening, there is a time and place for budget changes. Bid management and budget management need to be revisited often. Wordstream's Grader helps make the case for this. 

Impression Share view

You can see that SEOmoz scored in the 58th percentile which is pretty decent, but there is still so much more we can be doing. This sort of view helps us make a case for more budget, as well as helps us prioritize some ad position management internally. This means we need to set aside more time to work on quality scores, and targeting. A view like this can tell us so much.

Okay those are just a couple of the PROs we found by running the Wordstream Grader for the SEOmoz PPC account. I do want to run through some of the concerns we had, and lace in some feature requests the team over here would love to see.

Concern #1: Competitive Spend Range

I mentioned this above but since the competitive bucket we are in is so large, we really need to take this audit with a grain of salt. The budget spend of an account is indictive of big differences in how an account will perform, and be managed. Let's look at an example:
 

CTR Analysis

If we were to just glance at our CTR summary without considering the above limitation we would think we are doing horribly on our CTRs. It shows us performing at the 10th percentile. Yuckkk. If you take a closer look though, we are at a 1.39% CTR and our "competitors" at a 5.34%. The baseline for CTR success is a 1.00%, so we feel pretty great about out 1.39%. Seeing that our competitors have a 5.34% makes it quite clear we are being bucketed with advertisers who have large (in the millions) budgets who likely bid on brand terms (in the hundreds). We only have a few brand terms and those perform at the 4.00% level. 

Feature Request #1:

It is absolutely awesome that Wordstream has collected these audits across thousands of advertisers, but we would love to see a budget drop-down filter that had more bucket ranges to help us better categorize ourself appropriately. As a side request to this it might be cool to see some place where we as advertisers can add in "how long this account has been active" to help further categorize the advertisers so the comparison carries more description. It would be cool to know if that average lifetime of the accounts I'm being compared to is 6 months, or 3 years, you know? Just some ideas. 

Concern #2: Industry Non-Specific Data

Just like in SEO, PPC performance varies greatly depending on both your industry and your site's purpose. By not having an "industry or site type" filter in the Grader, all of my data is compared to advertisers with such different goals, resources, etc. Below is a great example of how this can hurt the data cause:

Landing Page Optimization

Knowing how I am doing on my landing page optimization (LPO) is key. I really appreciate Wordstream building this in, as I believe it's one of the most valuable pieces to PPC success. Unfortunately given the data is not industry specific, and the competitive spend range issues, this data isn't very useful for me.

It shows me with 23 landing pages, and my competitor having 543 landing pages. Having over 20 unique landing pages given our limited PPC spend, and the size of our keyword list is pretty good. That is the score I'd love for them to show me somehow, like a "size of account" to "#of landing pages" ratio. By showing me that my competitor has over 500 pages built out, its safe to assume I am being compared to an ecommerce site, or at the least a site with big budgets and lots of resources (most likely a CMS that has a PPC template system in place). I can't really gauge from this if I am doing well in LPO.

Feature Request #2: 
I'd love the ability to bucket my site into an industry like a "software" or "tech" bucket, and then have them show me how I am doing compared to them specifically. At the very least I'd like to be compared to other SaaS companies, or B2B companies. I'd also love a score that shows me something like -- a "size of account" to "#of landing pages" ratio for my account and then shows me industry standard. I am really impresses that Wordstream has included LPO in their audit, but I'd love to see them push this a bit further.

So What's the Good Word?

While the tool has a few caveats, I think it's safe to say the Wordstream Grader is the best of it's kind out there. I haven't highlighted all the features of the tool here (as it would make this a monster of an unreadably long blog post), and I would encourage anyone with a Google AdWords account to give it a spin, particularly since it's totally free. The report is great for quick snapshorts, and benchmarking your progress. I'd love to hear your experiences with the tool and feedback - I'm a fan of the folks at Wordstream and of the metrics-comparison methodology in general. So feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below!

Sidenote: Wordstream also has a great keyword research tool and Rand is planning to do a follow-up post at some point, so stay tuned for that! He'll be digging into their keyword research tool to gauge its value for SEO folks. If you've got any thoughts, experiences or suggestions there, that's also much appreciated. 


Do you like this post? Yes No

8 Predictions for SEO in 2012

Posted: 02 Jan 2012 02:13 PM PST

Posted by randfish

It's 2012, and that means we get to revisit our expectations for 2011 and prognosticate for the year ahead. In keeping with tradition, I'm first going to evaluate my predictions from last December before determining if I've got the cred to make some for 2012. Here's the rules:

For each prediction, we'll grade using the following points system:

  • Spot On (+2) - when a prediction hits the nail on the head and the primary criteria are fulfilled
  • Partially Accurate (+1) - predictions that are in the area, but are somewhat different than reality
  • Not Completely Wrong (-1) - those that landed near the truth, but couldn't be called "correct" in any real sense
  • Off the Mark (-2) - guesses which didn't come close

The rule is - if the score is lower than +1, I'm not allowed to make predictions for the coming year. Cross your fingers for me!

Last year, I made 7 predictions:

  1. Someone proves (or a search engine confirms) that clicks/visits influence rankings +2
    Both Google and Bing confirmed in 2011 that they use searcher behavior, including clicks, as ranking signals. This prediction was spot on (though, to be fair, some felt that prior statements had already insinuated this was the case).
  2. Google local/maps adds filtering/sorting -1
    This one was almost completely wrong. I expected something more like what Yelp offers (and I thought Google's move to do this in recipe search was the beginning of something broader). Google has added more suggested searches as seen below, which is the only reason I'm giving myself a "not completely wrong."
    Google Local Suggestions
    _
  3. Social search will rise -1
    This guess was also quite nearly off the mark, but Google's move into social saved it, at least partially. Google+ has added a lot more depth of social elements and signals for the engine, and for anyone logged into their Google/Gmail/Google+ account, the prevalence of social results is quite remarkable.
  4. Rank tracking will be possible through the query string -2
    Sadly, this one was dead wrong. We saw rank tracking in the query string first emerge in 2009 and I was sure that Google would roll this out more broadly, but instead we're still getting only 10-20% of search referral strings with rank data included, and the new (not provided) issue has made manual or machine-based rank tracking even more essential. Sad, because I think this was a big opportunity for Google to be more open.
  5. Mobile will have a negligible effect on search/SEO +1
    While many pundits will surely claim that 2012 will (finally) be the year of mobile, I'd say 2011 has helped prove that the search world  is pretty device agnostic. Rather than changing SEO, mobile and tablet adoption has merely meant that there's more searches around local and location and that the web as a whole is a bigger part of people's lives than ever before.
  6. Software will become an SEO standard +1
    This one's hard to quantify, but I think it's directionally accurate. Here's the Forrester Interactive Marketing report, which notes a large adoption of SEO software at the enterprise level, and with the death of Yahoo! Site Explorer, software and tools from third parties is more essential than ever. I'm not going to give a +2 as I'd say we're still missing conclusive proof that software is "standard," though our upcoming industry survey may help shed light on that.
  7. We'll start to move away from the title "SEO" to something more all-inclusive +1
    It didn't happen in a big way, but the phrase "inbound marketing" and "inbound marketer" appears to be gaining traction. I like the wording, which suggests earning people's trust and interest rather than buying it and includes SEO, social media, content marketing, blogging and web analytics. In our recent survey of agencies, "inbound/organic" agency was how the largest group of respondents described their firms:
    Survey Data
    We'll be releasing the full data tomorrow night on the blog - stay tuned!

When we tally up the numbers, it's +5 and -4, leaving me with +1, just barely enough credibility to make predictions for another year :-)

This year, I'm making 8 predictions (rather than 7). The goal with each is not just to share an opinion, but hopefully to provide some action (implied or explicit) for marketers on at least a few. I'm also aiming to have each prediction be verifiable at year's end, so that I can, once again, check my work.

Prediction #1: Bing Will Have a Slight Increase in US Marketshare, but remain <20% to Google's 80%+

According to Comscore, Bing + Yahoo! have ~30% market share in the US to Google's ~65%. I personally think these numbers are relatively bogus and put much more faith in those generated by sources like Statcounter (which look at traffic sites receive rather than queries performed by a sample audience). Statcounter shows Google at ~82% and Bing+Yahoo! totally to ~16%. I'm guessing those numbers will be pretty similar come January 2013.

Statcounter Google vs. Bing in North America

The biggest reason, IMO, isn't necessarily just brand loyalty and inertia for Google, but their continued superior performance on long tail queries (note: plenty of the comments in the linked-to Reddit thread are worth a read to get a sense of how "early majority" searchers feel).

Prediction #2: SEO Without Social Media Will Become a Relic of the Past

Already, we're seeing SEO and social media marketing become intrinsically intertwined, but in 2012, I believe we'll see SEO without social fade, just as SEO without link building did from 1999-2000. It's not just that social signals are making their way into the ranking algorithms (in both direct and indirect ways), but also that social is becoming the dominant method of both sharing and discovery for web users. The link graph will remain useful for years to come, but the social "sharegraph" is chipping away at its ability to illustrate what's new, interesting, useful, relevant and high quality.

This trend could well be part of what finally weakens the title of SEO (though I think the practice/tactic will remain strong) and forces those of us who've used that name to describe our profession for over a decade to migrate to something broader.

Prediction #3: Google Will Finally Take Stronger, Panda-Style Action Against Manipulative Link Spam

One of the major weaknesses of Google (and Bing, to be fair) is their continued over-reliance on links as an overwhelming ranking signal. Just recently, I took up a friend's offer to point some obviously shady links from sites Google should clearly be discounting at several webpages. We saw dramatic results within 24 hours - #1-5 rankings that have sustained for several weeks (more news on this experiment to come). This shouldn't be the case and Google's webspam and search quality teams know it.

Linkspam Panda

In 2012, I believe Google's search quality folks will roll out algorithmic changes in how they value low quality links that help them regain pride in their work. The embarrassment and quality gap caused by linkspam is egregious and, if left to stand, gives competitors an opening while simultaneously weakening searchers' trust in Google's results. Just as "content farms" took their hits in 2011, I think link spam's up for some blows in 2012.

Prediction #4: Pinterest Will Break into the Mainstream

The last 4 years have seen Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare and Tumblr all break the 10+ million users mark. In 2012, I give Pinterest good odds for doing the same. Pinterest is also the first major social network where the gender balance heavily favors women (which is, IMO, a great thing).

Pinterest Geek Memery Board
(above, my sad attempt at a Pinterest board)

Because of this breakout, don't be surprised to see lots more posts like these showing marketers how to leverage Pinterest to help share their content and find potential customers.

Prediction #5: Overly Aggressive Search Ads Will Result in Mainstream Backlash Against Google

There are some pretty crazy things going on in the search advertising world right now. To wit:

espresso machine paid search results

On my laptop (which has fairly impressive resolution), I can only see a single organic result, and the paid search markup is incredible. Star ratings, seller reviews, prices and individual items, photos and featured brands are all dominating the page.

0% Interest Credit Cards SERPs

Google's own "comparison ads" in the credit/finance world push organic results down even further, as the Google product still allows for three additional full size ad slots above the organic listings.

Work From Home Sales SERPs

Perhaps the most aggressive of all is Google's new ability to insert a logged-in users email address automatically into PPC ads, as pictured above. These are still rare, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them roll out in greater force.

My prediction is that in 2012, we'll see the start of "paid search blindness" being studied, reported and impacting the engines' bottom lines. Organic results still garner 80%+ of all clicks, but that percent has been dropping as Google gets more aggressive with paid search to continually meet earnings expectations. 

Prediction #6: Keyword (Not Provided) Will Rise to 25%+ of Web Searchers

Despite Google's statements that missing keyword data will stay below double digits, I'm predicting that by December of 2012, we'll be looking at a quarter of all searches coming from logged-in (and thus, keyword-anonymous) searchers. Google's working hard to get adoption of Android, Google+, Google Apps and Gmail, all of which will increase the percent of not provided searchers.

Keyword (not provided) for SEOmoz

While I wish this program would roll back (as there's clearly no real privacy risk or they wouldn't provide the data to paid advertisers), Google's the 800-pound gorilla and the marketing field's counterpoints, while far more valid, likely won't play as well in the media. Google's got the politics sewn up on this one, so our only hope is that they decide to do less evil. Unfortunately, that's not the way they've been trending of late.

Prediction #7: We'll See the Rise of a Serious Certification Program

The search/inbound marketing industry is in sore need of a program that helps early talent in the field become mature professionals. Today, SEMPO, Market Motive, Inbound Marketing University (from Hubspot), Search Engine College and a variety of others provide this service, but none of them are yet at scale or universally respected by hiring managers and companies in the field.

It's hard to quantify what "the rise of..." means. Thus, I'll predict that by year's end, at least one industry certification has 5,000+ users on LinkedIn (currently, Market Motive leads the pack with ~1,700)

Prediction #8: Google Will Make it Very Hard to Do Great SEO Without Using Google+

Google's just started to add Google+ brand pages in search results, They're leveraging Google profiles for rel=author tags. They've made Google+ circles and +1s visible in SERPs. In 2012, I think this pattern becomes a concerted effort by Google to tie promotional efforts in organic results to the Google+ login/verification system. This will not only encourage/force usage of their social network, but give them a much greater ability to tie social, ranking and visibility signals together (and probably fight spam + manipulation, too).

The positive for marketers is that closer integration with the social platform will reward those who can successfully manage both SEO and social media marketing. It's also (hopefully) going to be a boon for white hat tactics that help build brand signals while reducing the effectiveness of exploits that manipulate (like exact match domains or anchor text link spam). The negative is that Google's probably going to get even more data about ALL of our online behaviors, making themselves an even more overreaching and powerful force on the web than they are today. We just have to hope they'll also become more benign, though more power rarely leads to less corruption.


I'm looking forward to hearing your predictions (and opinions on the above) in the comments. I think we've got an exciting year ahead.


Do you like this post? Yes No

Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Photos from 2011

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
 

Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Photos from 2011

The White House Photo Office compiled some of their favorite images from 2011, with commentary from Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza. You can view them on our Flickr feed, or on WhiteHouse.gov.

Go behind the scenes to get a glimpse of some incredible moments from the year.

Behind the scenes roundup 

"This is a composite of several images of the President and his national security team during a series of meetings in the Situation Room of the White House discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden on Sunday, May 1. We put this together so in addition to the previous, now iconic image of this day, people might have a better sense of what it's like in presidential meetings of historic significance." (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In Case You Missed It

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

Weekly Address: Working Together in the New Year
President Obama tells the American people that, by joining together, we can move past the tough debates and help to create jobs and grow the economy in the new year.

More Than 1.9 Million Records Released
A new release of White House visitor records brings the grand total of records that this White House has released to more than 1.9 million.

Intern Picks: Must-See White House Videos of 2011
After much debate, the interns in the White House Office of Digital Strategy decided on their 10 must-see White House videos of 2011.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST).

7:15 AM: The First Family arrives at Andrews Air Force Base

7:30 AM: The First Family arrives at the White House

11:30 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing

12:00 PM: The President meets with senior advisors

12:30 PM: The President and the Vice President meet for lunch

12:30 PM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney WhiteHouse.gov/live

4:30 PM: The President and the Vice President meet with Secretary of Defense Panetta

8:15 PM: The President participates in a video teleconference with Iowa Caucus attendees

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

Get Updates

Sign up for the Daily Snapshot

Stay Connected

This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com
Manage Subscriptions for e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com
Sign Up for Updates from the White House

Click here to unsubscribe | Privacy Policy

Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

 

 

Seth's Blog : Trading in your pain

Trading in your pain

The pain of a lousy boss, of careless mistakes, of insufficient credit. The pain of instability, of bullying, of inadequate tools. The pain of poor cash flow, corrossive feedback and work that isn't worthy of you.

Pain is part of work. And it leads to two mistakes.

The notion that you can trade your way out of pain.

"If I just get a little bigger, a little more famous, a little richer--then the pain will go away."

This notion creates a cycle of dissatisfaction, an unwillingness to stick it out. There's always a pain-free gig right around the corner, so screw this, let's go try that.

The truth is that pain is everywhere, in every project and in every relationship and in every job. Wandering from one to another merely wastes your energy.

The other choice, though, is:

Embracing your current pain and avoiding newer, unknown pains.

This is precisely the opposite mistake. This leads to paralysis. Falling in love with the pain you've got as a way of avoiding unknown future pains gets you stuck, wasting your potential.

As usual, when confronted with two obvious choices, it's the third choice that pays.

 

More Recent Articles

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.




 
Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498

 

luni, 2 ianuarie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Major Slowdown in Global Trade Coming Up; Think the U.S., China, Germany, or U.K. will Be Immune?

Posted: 02 Jan 2012 09:41 PM PST

Starting with events in the U.K., the Eurozone, and then on to China and Japan, this post will tie together various idea all suggesting a major slowdown in global trade is on the way.

U.K. Retailers Squeezed to Extinction

Sales reports from retail associations are subject to spin in any direction depending on whether their motive is positive to encourage shopping because "everyone else is", or negative, hoping to get tax breaks or other concessions from politicians.

In this case, the director of the UK's retail federation says retailers face being "squeezed to extinction". Given several retail bankruptcies and more expected, the story rings true.

Please consider Retailers face being "squeezed to extinction"
As many as 40,000 are expected to lose their jobs, with more forced to work on reduced hours, as the full force of the consumer slowdown starts to makes its effects felt on the high street.

After the collapse of Barratts Priceless, the shoe chain, Hawkin's Bazaar, the toy shop and D2 Jeans last week, a clutch of other names are expected to go to the wall, said Stephen Robertson, the director general of the British Retail Consortium.

"This feels, talking to retailers, that there is more pressure than there was back in 2008. Back then there had been a relatively good run up until that point, and sales were certainly down, but margins were holding up.

"This time, it's not just about the poor sales performance it's about the underlying profitability. We have seen a blizzard of deals and promotions, so gross profit margins will have been punished."

"It might not be an official recession, but we are in a retail recession," he said. Last month De Mello predicted 20,000 retail job losses in 2012, based on a 1pc rise in shop vacancy rates.
"Dear George" Ritual Lies About Price Inflation

Every few months, Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England has been forced to write to Chancellor George Osborne to explain why UK inflation is so much above target.

And every time, Mervyn King has trotted out the same set of excuses, proving the BOE (central bankers in general) do not really care about inflation mandates, they simply do what they want.

For a humorous analysis please consider Inflation: The truth about those Dear George letters
Many cultures have bizarre ceremonies which once had a function but become mere empty rituals. One of Britain's goes by the name of 'inflation targeting'.

Every year the Chancellor stands before the House of Commons and in his Budget statement declares he is instructing the Bank of England that consumer price inflation should be two per cent.

He does this in the full knowledge that he has no desire whatsoever that the Bank should actually try to get inflation to two per cent – because that would mean increasing interest rates to a level he thinks might threaten growth.

Every few months the Bank's Governor, Sir Mervyn King, writes to the Chancellor. His letters say, roughly: 'Inflation is above target, because we didn't try to get it to the target, because meeting the target would have been a bad idea.'

Chancellor George Osborne then sends a reply, which amounts to the following: 'Good. I'm glad you didn't try to meet the target I set you. You are quite right in thinking that would have been a bad idea.'

The arrangement has become a farce. In fact, during the past 45 months the consumer price index has been below two per cent in only six of them.

UK Price Inflation Peaks, Deflationary Pressures Mount

If Mervyn King hits his inflation target, he will not care much for the reasons why:

  1. UK Retailers are in a massive price squeeze, unable to pass on costs
  2. Huge numbers of layoffs are coming up
  3. UK Manufacturing is in contraction second straight month
  4. All of Europe is headed for a nasty, prolonged recession


By the way, the impacts of the above four points on the UK deficit will not be pretty, However, if it's any consolation, I believe UK price inflation peaked in October at 5%.

Official Recession Coming Up

The recession many not be "official" just yet, but it has likely already started with the UK PMI in a second straight month of contraction.
Figures from the seasonally adjusted Markit/CIPS PMI recorded a UK manufacturing sector contraction of 47.6 in November; this is the lowest recorded level since June 2009.

Commenting on the report, David Noble, Chief Executive Officer at the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply, said: "It looks like it's going to be a bleak winter for UK manufacturers with the PMI showing very little to be positive about at the moment. Exports orders, which UK manufacturers are increasingly dependent on, continue to decline as the Eurozone crisis impacts demand in US and Asia as well as Europe.

Slowdown in European Trade Coming Up

In general, Eurozone nations are in deep trouble because of tax hikes and various austerity measures. Indeed, all of Europe is in trouble, even the non-eurozone countries like the UK and the trade surplus countries like Germany. 

Sampling of Links to Consider

  1. Portugal Car Sales Plunge 60% in December, 31% for Entire Year; Spain Car Sales Plunge 17.7% to 1993 Levels
  2.  
  3. Eurozone Manufacturing Contracts 5th Straight Month; New Orders Fall Faster than Output
  4.  
  5. Promises Go Out the Window as Spain Undertakes Huge Tax Increase Coupled With Biggest Budget Cut in History; Depression in Spain will Worsen
  6.  
  7. Explaining Italian Christmas Season Sales (It's Far Worse Than Previously Reported); How Various Austerity Measures Will Affect Spending in 2012; Emails from Italian Readers; Massive European Recession On the Way
  8.  
  9. "It's a Mistake To Pursue a United States of Europe" says German Supreme Court Justice in Spiegel Interview ; Interpretation of Interview from Saxo Bank Chief Economist
  10.  
  11. French Unemployment Hits 12-Year High (It's Going to Get Much Worse); Sarkozy Outlines Jobs Plan (Mathematically It Can't Work)

Slowdown in Global Trade Coming Up

Any country dependent on European sales is in trouble and that includes China.

In turn, China will need fewer imports of raw materials from places like Australia and Canada. China will also need less technology from Japan and that has Japan worried.

Please see Japan Proposes Nonsensical Deal to China: "I'll Loan You a Nickel if You Loan Me a Nickel"; Japan Worries About Servicing Its Debt for details.

Think the US will Be Immune?

One has to be a major Pollyanna to think the US will be immune from all of this.

I can already show the US has been impacted: China to Withdraw Support for Foreign Investment in Autos; Three Reasons China Will Not Be a Boon to Global Auto Sales

Chinese Regime Change Dynamics

To top it off, a regime change is coming this year in China. It is highly likely China will be a shift away from construction, real estate, and fixed investment as a means of growth and that too will reduce China's needs for commodities from Australia as well as truck equipment from Caterpillar.

For a look at Australia, please consider 4 out of 5 Australians Worry about Debt; New Reality - Owing More on Your Home Than You Own; Shocking Year for Corporate Collapses

This macroeconomic chain-of-events portends a major slowing in global trade with huge worldwide consequences and missed budgets everywhere you look.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Portugal Car Sales Plunge 60% in December, 31% for Entire Year; Spain Car Sales Plunge 17.7% to 1993 Levels

Posted: 02 Jan 2012 04:04 PM PST

Things are not starting off on a good foot for Portugal or Spain, the two countries where the European sovereign debt crisis is most likely to strike early in 2012.

Portugal Car Sales Plunge 60% in December Compared to Year Ago

Via Google Translate, please consider The sale of passenger cars dropped 31.3% in Portugal in 2011
The sale of passenger cars in Portugal fell to 31.3 percent in 2011 compared with the previous year to sell a total of 153,433 units, reported the Automobile Association of Portugal (ACAP).

This marked reduction was driven by the results of last December, when sales fell 60% over the same month last year.

The market for vehicles, including light commercial vehicles and heavy with cars, registered a contraction of 29.9% over 2011.
Spain Car Sales Plunge 17.7% to 1993 Levels

Also from El Economista via Google Translate, please consider Car sales fell 17.7% in 2011 in Spain, near 1993 levels
Registrations of cars and SUVs in Spain stood at 808,059 units in 2011, resulting in a decrease of 17.7% compared to previous year's figure, according to manufacturers' associations (Anfac) and sellers (Ganvam).

During the last month of last year, deliveries of cars in the Spanish market reached 66,458 units, representing a decrease of 3.6% compared to data recorded in December 2010.

These figures show that 2011 was one of the worst year ever in terms of volume of registrations in Spain and Spanish car market place at levels close to those recorded in 1993 when 792,500 units were delivered.

Channels, the supply of private cars to customers stood at 387,831 units in 2011, representing a cumulative decline of 33.6%, while in December the figure was reduced by 8% to 35,657 units.

Ganvam Anfac and explained that these sales data in the particular channel shows that 48 of every 100 cars sold in Spain during the last year were purchased by individual customers, compared with 60% recorded in 2007.

Both associations noted that the drop in enrollment "has caused a significant drop in tax revenues for the acquisition of vehicles," so that the State has failed to enter EUR 450 million the previous year.
These economies are basket cases already. Tax hikes will make matters much worse.

For details, please see Spain's Budget Minister says "Serious Budget Shortfalls in All 17 Autonomous Regions"; Primer Minister Announces $19.3 Billion Package of Tax Hikes; Cockroaches and the Theory of the Unexpected.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Eurozone Manufacturing Contracts 5th Straight Month; New Orders Fall Faster than Output

Posted: 02 Jan 2012 11:12 AM PST

There was a slight improvement in European manufacturing PMI for December but it is a meaningless illusion given prolonged contraction coupled with the fact new orders are sinking much faster than output.

The PMI is a diffusion index with reading below 50 in contraction, above 50 in expansion.

MarketWatch reports PMI data underline euro-zone recession fears
The final December reading of the Markit purchasing-managers index for the manufacturing sector rose to 46.9 from a 28-month low of 46.4 in November, matching an earlier estimate.

"Euro-zone manufacturing is clearly undergoing another recession," said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit. "Despite the rate of decline easing slightly in December, production appears to have been collapsing across the single-currency area at a quarterly rate of approximately 1.5% in the final quarter of 2011."

For the second month in a row, all nations covered by the survey reported a decline in output.

Williamson said it was particularly worrying to see new orders falling at a far faster rate than output. That indicates firms have relied on orders placed earlier in the year to sustain current production levels, he said.
PMI Readings

  • Germany 48.4
  • France 48.9
  • Netherlands 46.2
  • Austria 49
  • Italy 44.3
  • Spain 43.7
  • Greece 42.0

The Eurozone New Orders component came in at 43.5 so expect a plunge across the board in future PMI readings as manufacturing output contracts further to keep up with orders.

New austerity measures in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, and Greece have yet to bite, and they will. Economists think the European recession will be over mid-year. I think they are in fantasy-land. More likely, the US follows Europe into recession.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List


Obama Signs Legislation Killing Bill of Rights; Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Rachel Maddow Skewer Obama; Road to Tyranny; Complete List of Senatorial Cowards Backing the Bill

Posted: 02 Jan 2012 12:10 AM PST

In 9 Things to Say Goodbye To, I lamented on the loss of privacy and free speech.

Unfortunately, the situation is much worse, thanks a huge group of senatorial cowards that wrote and passed a "defense" bill that allows US citizens to be arrested, detained, even sent to Guantanamo, Cuba without being charged with any crimes.

On New Year's Eve Obama Signed Defense Bill Despite 'Reservations'

Obama's Blatant Hypocrisy

The "reservations" Obama has are of his own making.  Please consider this skewering of President Obama by Rachel Maddow.



Link if video does not play: Rachel Maddow Skewers Obama


The bill is a clear and direct attack on the Bill of Rights.



Link if video does not play: Rand Paul vs. John McCain

Road to Tyranny

Please consider this video from Larry Wilkerson, retired colonel and former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell.



Link if video does not play: Wilkerson: New Military Powers the Road to Tyranny

"Larry Wilkerson: National Defense Authorization Act that passed the Senate giving the military power for indefinite detention without trial is a draconian violation of our rights"

Ron Paul Say Defense Bill Establishes Martial Law In America

In an interview with Alex Jones on Prison Planet, Ron Paul says Defense Bill Establishes Martial Law In America



Bill Passes Senate 86 to 13

Unfortunately the Indefinite detention bill passed in Senate
Exactly 220 years to the date after the Bill of Rights was ratified, the US Senate today voted 86 to 13 in favor of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, allowing the indefinite detention and torture of Americans.

As RT reported earlier, one provision in NDAA FY2012 will allow for the reinstatement of "enhanced interrogation techniques," essentially making waterboarding and forms of psychological torture a very possible reality for anyone America deems to be a threat, including its own citizens who, prior to the ruling, had the US Constitution on their side.

Among the corporations which have lobbied in support of NDAA FY2012 are several military contractors, including Honeywell and Bluewater Defense, who together have received millions of dollars in Pentagon guarantees this year alone.

"How long can you hold them? As long as it takes to make us safe," said Graham.

In his closing marks, Graham ironically recited that in respect to "civil liberties and the American way of life," US citizens must fight. "If we don't fight for it, we're going to lose it."

Unfit for Office

Any Senator voting on a bill that would allow US citizens to be arrested, detained indefinitely, even sent to Cuba without being formally charged with any crime is no friend or supporter to the US constitution.

Note the absurd irony in Graham's statements. The fight for freedom can never be won by trashing freedoms or the Bill of Rights.

Senator Graham and Senator McCain are both huge hypocrites and cowards.

Indeed, all 86 Senators who voted for that bill are cowards, a hypocrites, and no friend to the United States or the US Constitution.

Even more disgusting, Senator Mark Udall introduced an amendment intended to forbid the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens and even that amendment was rejected by a vote of 38–60.

I do not have a roll call on that, but there are 60 extreme cowards who wrap themselves in a flag while pissing on the Constitution.

13 Courageous Votes

Nay ID Crapo, Michael [R]
Nay ID Risch, James [R]
Nay IL Durbin, Richard [D]
Nay IA Harkin, Thomas [D]
Nay KY Paul, Rand [R]
Nay MD Cardin, Benjamin [D]
Nay MN Franken, Al [D]
Nay OK Coburn, Thomas [R]
Nay OR Merkley, Jeff [D]
Nay OR Wyden, Ron [D]
Nay SC DeMint, Jim [R]
Nay UT Lee, Mike [R]
Nay VT Sanders, Bernard [I]

There you have it. Anyone not on that list voted to trash the constitution. I am particularly pleased by the votes of Senators Jim DeMint, Thomas Coburn, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Michael Crapo, and James Risch.

Those are the only six Republicans willing to stand behind the Constitution. 

Senator Rand Paul Explains His Vote



Link if video does not play: Rand Paul's Impassioned Plea

"Detaining citizens without a court trial is not American. ... Justice Scalia said the very core of liberty, secured by our anglo-saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the executive. Justice Scalia was, as he often does, following the wisdom of our founding fathers. ... As Franklin wisely warned, those who give up their liberty for security may wind up with neither."

Wikepedia has the Benjamin Franklin quote as follows "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Benjamin Franklin is correct and Senator Rand Paul was a hero for fighting this bill. Sadly, Rand Paul failed to a collective group of cowards who do not know what the Constitution is about or why we need it.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List