Central Perk

joi, 15 august 2013

Damn Cool Pics

The Cast of 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' Then & Now

Posted: 15 Aug 2013 11:06 AM PDT

Will Smith as Will "The Fresh Prince"
Born September 25, 1968 (age 44)

Tyra Banks as Jackie Ames
Born December 4, 1973 (age 39)

James Avery as Philip Banks
Born November 27, 1948 (age 64)

Alfonso Ribeiro as Carlton Banks
Born September 21, 1971 (age 41)

Joseph Marcell as Geoffrey, the Butler
Born 18 August 1948 (age 64)

Tatyana M. Ali as Ashley Banks
Born January 24, 1979 (age 34)

Nia Long as Lisa Wilkes
Born October 30, 1970 (age 42)

DJ Jazzy Jeff as Jazz
Born January 22, 1965 (age 48)

Vernee Watson-Johnson as Vy Smith, Will's mother
Born January 14, 1954 (age 59)

Janet Hubert-Whitten as Vivian Banks (Seasons 1–3)
Born January 13, 1956 (age 57)

Can you guess who this is?

Daphne Maxwell Reid as Vivian Banks (Seasons 4–6)
Born July 13, 1948 (age 65)

Karyn Parsons as Hilary Banks
Born October 8, 1966 (age 46)

Ross Bagley as Nicholas "Nicky" Banks
Born December 5, 1988 (age 24)

Arirang is North Korea’s First Smartphone

Posted: 14 Aug 2013 07:40 PM PDT

North Korea has built its first smartphone. It's called Arirang (it's the name of a Korean folk song. Who needs a smartphone in the country without Internet?

President Obama Calls for an End to Violence in Egypt

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President Obama Calls for an End to Violence in Egypt

President Obama this morning issued a statement on the unfolding situation in Egypt and called for an end to violence.

"The Egyptian people deserve better than what we've seen," he said.

Click here to hear President Obama's statement.

President Barack Obama makes a statement to the press about the situation in Egypt while in Chilmark, Mass., Aug. 15, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon)

Why Simple Websites Will Always Lead to Better SEO Graywolf's SEO Blog

Why Simple Websites Will Always Lead to Better SEO

Posted: 15 Aug 2013 10:14 AM PDT

Earlier this year it was discovered that Google was having a problem crawling Apple’s website and, as a result, direct links to apps weren’t showing in the results. The next few days involved lots of finger pointing, blame shuffling, and hang wringing; but, a few non public changes later, things were sorted out. This, however, set […]

The post Why Simple Websites Will Always Lead to Better SEO appeared first on Graywolf's SEO Blog.

A New Analysis of Google SERPs Across Search Volume and Site Type

Posted: 14 Aug 2013 07:43 PM PDT

Posted by Matt Peters

At Moz, we have been following up on our 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors study by continuing to analyze interesting aspects of the data. One of our most frequently asked questions is, "Do you see any systematic differences in Google's search results across search volume or topic category?" By design, our main study used a broad keyword set across all search volumes and industries to capture Google's overall search algorithm. As a result, we weren't able to answer this question since it requires segmenting the data into different buckets. In this post, I'll do just that and dig into the data in an attempt to answer this question.

Our approach

We used a subset of the data from our 2013 Ranking Factors study, focusing on a few of the most important factors. In the main study, we collected the top 50 search results for about 15,000 keywords from Google, along with more then 100 different factors. These included links, anchor text, on-page factors, and social signals, among others. Then, for each factor we computed the mean Spearman correlation between the factor and search position. Here's a great graphic from Rand that helps illustrate how to interpret the correlations:

In general, a higher correlation means that the factor is more closely related to a higher ranking than a lower correlation. It doesn't necessarily mean that there is causation!

In addition to search results and factors, we collected the categories from AdWords (e.g. "Home and Garden") and the monthly US (local) search volume. This allows us to examine correlations across these different segments.

Search volume

First up is search volume. We segmented each keyword into one of three buckets depending on the average local (US) monthly search volume from AdWords: less than 5,000 searches per month, 5,000-15,000 searches per month, and more than 15,000 searches per month.

To begin exploring the data, here is the median page and domain authority in each bucket, along with the total percentage of results with a domain name exactly matching the keyword:

Not too surprisingly, we see the overall page authority, domain authority and the exact match domain (EMD) percentage all increase with search volume. This is presumably because higher-volume queries are targeted by larger, more authoritative sites.

Now, an overall higher page authority for high-volume queries doesn't necessarily mean that the correlation with search position will be larger. The correlation measures the extent to which page authority (or any other factor) can predict the ordering. As a example, consider two three-result SERPs, one with page authorities of 90, 92, and 88 for the first three positions; and another with values of 30, 20, and 10. The first SERP has higher values overall, but a lower correlation. To examine how these impact search ordering, we can compute the mean Spearman correlation in each bucket:

And for those who prefer a chart:

From left to right, the table lists link-related factors (page authority, domain authority, and exact match anchor text); a brand-related factor (number of domain mentions in the last 30 days from Fresh Web Explorer); social factors (number of Google +1s, Facebook shares, and tweets); and keyword-related factors (keyword usage on the page, in the title, and EMD).

Looking at the data, we can see a few interesting things:

The correlations increase noticeably with search volume for link, brand, and social media factors.
The correlations are mostly constant for keyword-related factors (keyword usage on the page or in the domain name).

Primarily, point #1 says that these factors do a better job at predicting rank as search volume increases. We'd expect to see a larger discrepancy in the link or social metrics throughout the SERPs in higher volume queries than in lower-volume queries. One corollary is that SERPs from lower-volume queries are more heavily influenced by factors that aren't represented in the table (e.g. positive or negative user signals).

One implication of point #2 is that Google's keyword-document relevance algorithm is the same for high- and low-volume queries. That is, their method for determining what a page is about doesn't depend the query popularity.

We can make this more concrete by considering two different queries and SERPs: one high volume ("cheap flights" with more than 1 million searches per month), and one low-volume ("home goods online" with less than 500 searches per month). For reference, here are the top results for each search, with the page and domain authority from the MozBar:

Above: Google SERP for "cheap flights"

Above: Google SERP for "home goods online"

When a user enters a query, Google first determines which of the many pages in its index are relevant to the query, then ranks the results. A popular query will likely have several relevant pages (or more) with many links, since they are targeted by marketers. In this case, Google should have plenty of signals to determine ranking. A relevant page with high page authority? Check, put it in the top 10. On the other hand, pages in the dark corners of the internet with relatively few links are likely most relevant to low-volume queries. In the low-volume case, since the link signals aren't as clear, Google is forced to rely more heavily on other signals to determine ranking, and the correlations decrease. This example oversimplifies the complexity of the algorithm, but provides some intuitive understanding of the data.

Site category

We can repeat the analysis for the different AdWords categories. First, the median page and domain authority and EMD percentage:

And the mean Spearman correlations:

Overall, the trends are similar to search volume, with significant differences in the link correlations, and smaller differences in the keyword-related correlations. The explanation for these results is similar to the one above for search volume. The industries with the largest link and social correlations â€" "Health" and "Travel & Tourism" â€" tend to have broad-based queries targeted by lots of sites. On the other hand, the industries near the bottom of the table â€" "Apparel," "Dining & Nightlife," and "Retailers & General Merchandise" â€" all tend to have specific or local intent queries that are likely to be relevant to specific product pages or smaller sites.

Takeaways

In this post, we have explored how a few individual ranking factors vary across search volume and keyword category. Correlations of link- and social-related metrics increase with search volume, but correlations of keyword-related factors (usage on page and in the domain name) are constant across search volume. Taken together, this suggests that Google is using the same query document relevance algorithm for both head and tail queries, but that link metrics predict SERPs from popular queries better then tail queries. We see something similar across site categories with the largest differences in link related correlations. Industries like "Health" that have broad, informational queries have higher correlations than industries like "Apparel" that tend to have queries with specific product intent.

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Seth's Blog : An end of books

An end of books

Books, those bound paper documents, are part of an ecosystem, one that was perfect, and one that is dying, quickly.

Ideas aren’t going away soon, and neither are words. But, as the ecosystem dies, not only will the prevailing corporate systems around the paper book whither, but many of the treasured elements of its consumption will disappear as well.

THE BOOKSTORE as we know it is doomed, because many of these establishments are going to go from making a little bit of money every day to losing a little bit. And it’s hard to sustain daily losses for long, particularly when you’re poorly capitalized, can’t use the store as a loss leader and see no hope down the road.

The death of the bookstore is being caused by the migration to ebooks (it won't take all books to become ‘e’, just enough to tip the scale) as well as the superior alternative of purchase and selection of books online. If the function of a bookstore is to stock every book and sell it to you quickly and cheaply, the store has failed.

THE LIBRARY is limping, partly because many of them have succumbed to being a free alternative to Netflix or the boarded-up Blockbuster. As fewer people dive into a sea of printed books, libraries will have no choice but to stop stocking that sea with expensive items that few use.

THE TRADITIONAL PUBLISHER is culturally connected to the bookseller. That's their customer, not you, the reader (ever tried to call customer service at a book publisher?). As the bookseller disappears, and as the open nature of the ebook platform rewards individuals and quick-moving smaller entities, many in traditional book publishing will find their particular skills no longer valued the way they used to be.

SINGLE TASKING is an anachronism. As soon as ebooks moved from the Kindle to the iPad, the magic of reading was threatened by the opportunity (“for just a second”) to check on email, Words with Friends or an incoming text message.

READING FOR PLEASURE was largely extinguished by four generations of not-very-good teaching philosophies. By treating a book as homework and a punishment, we’ve raised people to not look forward to reading. More than once, friends have said, “you should be really pleased, I even finished your new book.” My guess is that no one says that to Laurence Fishburne about his new movie. There’s no real ebook piracy problem because most people don’t think books are worth stealing.

THE BELOVED SHELF (or wall) of books is less well-thumbed and less respected than it was. We’re less likely to judge someone on their ownership and knowledge of books than at any time in the last five hundred years. And that shelf created juxtapositions and possibilities and prompted you when you needed prompting. Ten generations ago, only the rich and the learned owned books. Today, they're free at the local recycling table.

THE PAVLOVIAN RESPONSE will fade. You go to a bookstore, a quiet, civilized, respected greenhouse of ideas. A person you connect with hands you a book, wraps it, charges you a surprisingly small amount of money and you go home, ready to curl up for five or six or thirty hours, to immerse yourself in a new world or a new set of ideas. And then you will take that volume, one that’s designed to last for a century with no technology necessary, and either share it with a friend or place it in just the right place on your wall. Your brain was wired to be taught to be open to these ideas, to be respectful of the volume itself, because all of the elements of the ecosystem, from the author who took a year to the editor who curated the book to the jacket designer and the printer and the store… they all aligned perfectly to create this method of consumption.

None of these changes, by themselves, are enough to kill a venerable information delivery and cultural touchstone like the book. But all of them together? I’m writing this on a train filled with educated, upper income suburban commuters of all genders and ethnicities (book buyers, until recently). I can see 40 people at a glance, and 34 are using electronic devices, two are asleep and exactly one person is reading a traditional book.

Yes, we're entering a new golden age for books, one with more books and ebooks being written and read today than ever before. No, books won’t be completely eliminated, just as vinyl records are still around (a new vinyl store is opening in my little town). But please don’t hold your breath for any element of the treasured ecosystem to return in force.

Is it traitorous to my tribe to write these words? I'm not arguing that we should push the ecosystem out the door, but I am encouraging us to not spend too much time trying to save it. First, it's a losing battle, but more important, we have bigger opportunities right in front of us.

Twenty years ago, I saw the web and wrote it off. I said it was a cheap imitation of Prodigy, but slower and with no business model. Partly, I just didn't see. But a big part of me wanted Prodigy (my client) to succeed, along with a business model I understood. As a result of my arrogance, I missed the opportunity to take advantage of a brand new medium.

I fear that our cultural and corporate connections to books as a delivery system may blind us to the alternatives.

I’m not as bitter as I might be, as we’ve traded in our books for some fabulous alternatives mixed in with the time-wasters. But yes, after 500 years, after building not one but several industries around the creation, publication, distribution and storage of books, I’m pretty nostalgic.

I called this post, "An end" as opposed to "the end." As always, we'll reinvent. We still need ideas, and ideas need containers. We've developed more and more ways for those ideas to travel and to have impact, and now it's up to us to figure out how to build an ecosystem around them.