marți, 14 iulie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

White Knight Irony: IMF Threatens to Walk Away From Bailout Deal Citing Unsustainable Debt
Deflationary Pressures Unabated; Another One-Hit Wonder; Transitory Tales
Retail Sales Unexpectedly Sink Below the Lowest Economist's Estimate; September Hike? Really?

White Knight Irony: IMF Threatens to Walk Away From Bailout Deal Citing Unsustainable Debt

Posted: 14 Jul 2015 02:46 PM PDT

IMF to the Rescue?

In the final minutes of the gunpoint "negotiation" between Greece and its creditors, the last two sticking points were IMF involvement and €50 billion in pledged Greek assets in return for another "bailout".

Prime minister Alexis Tsipras said he could not give in on those demand. In the end, Tsipras bowed down and kissed the feet of German chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble on those issues, and everything else they demanded as well.

Ironically, it could very well be the IMF that comes to the rescue and sinks this inane deal.

IMF Threatens to Walk

Please consider IMF Signals it Could Walk Away from Greek Bailout Deal.

In the three-page memo, sent to EU authorities at the weekend and obtained by the Financial Times, the IMF said the recent turmoil in the Greek economy would lead debt to peak at close to 200 per cent of economic output over the next two years. At the start of the eurozone crisis, Athens' debt stood at 127 per cent.

"Greece's debt can now only be made sustainable through debt relief measures that go far beyond what Europe has been willing to consider so far," the memo reads.

Under its rules, the IMF is not allowed to participate in a bailout if a country's debt is deemed unsustainable and there is no prospect of it returning to private bond markets for financing. The IMF has bent its rules to participate in previous Greek bailouts, but the memo suggests it can no longer do so.

According to EU officials, Ms Merkel stood firm on the issue, telling the Greek premier there would be no bailout — and therefore "Grexit" from the eurozone — without a formal request made to the IMF for participation in a new programme. The final bailout deal states that "Greece will request continued IMF support" once its current IMF programme expires.

If the IMF were to walk away from the Greek programme, it could cause significant political and financial problems for Berlin and other eurozone creditors. Without the IMF's imprimatur, German officials have said they would struggle to win approval for any new bailout funding in the Bundestag. German MPs must approve both the reopening of new talks and the final terms of the third bailout.

In addition, an EU official said that of the €86bn in Greek financing requirements, the European Stability Mechanism — the eurozone's €500bn bailout fund — was expected to put up only €40bn-€50bn.

Under the terms of IMF participation in Greece's second bailout, eurozone officials had agreed they would take steps to ensure Athens debt fall go "substantially lower" than 110 per cent of gross domestic product by 2022. The new IMF memo said it is now projected to be at 170 per cent by 2022.

It added that financing in a new programme would make Greece's bailout funding levels so large that they would exceed "the 15 per cent of GDP threshold deemed safe" under IMF rules, and would "continue rising in the long term".

EU leaders have only proposed lengthening maturities on existing eurozone bailout loans rather than full-scale writedowns, which Berlin argues is against EU law.

But the IMF memo said eurozone leaders needed to look at the issue more immediately and in amounts far larger than currently under consideration.

Among the options it suggested was a "very dramatic extension" of repayment plans with a "grace period" another 30 years on the "entire stock of European debt" — meaning Greece would not make a single interest or principle payment on eurozone loans until 2053; it already has such a grace period until 2023.

Alternatively, eurozone creditors would have to make "annual transfers to the Greek budget" — meaning eurozone grants to Athens — or "deep upfront haircuts", the IMF said.

White Night Irony

It would be fitting irony if the IMF saved Tsipras from himself.

Even if Greek parliament foolishly accepts terms that cannot possibly be fulfilled economically, the IMF may walk away, killing the deal outright.

Alternatively, the IMF may force the ball back in Germany's court.

Musical Tributes

Many songs with the word "walk" in them come to mind . In hope that the IMF does indeed walk away I offer ...

I'm Walking

Link if video does not play: I'm Walking - Fats Domino

Walk Like a Man

In contrast, Tsipras crawled like a helpless baby, at best. The next tribute is about what Tsipras should have done, but didn't.

Link if video does not play: The Four Seasons "Walk Like a Man" Music Video

Watch The Four Seasons "Walk Like a Man" music video from 1963. It features the foursome singing at a dance hall overlooking an interesting variety of energetic fans unleashing dance moves that could have only come out of the 1960s. During the recording sessions that produced the hit song, producer Bob Crewe would stop at nothing for the perfect take. After realizing that a fire had broken out in the room above the studio, he blocked the studio door and continued recording until firemen had to force their way in and pull Crewe out.

For further discussion of the gunpoint deal and humiliating cave-in by prime minister Tsipras, please see ....

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

Deflationary Pressures Unabated; Another One-Hit Wonder; Transitory Tales

Posted: 14 Jul 2015 12:55 PM PDT

Another One-Hit Wonder

In spite of counterproductive attempts by the Fed and Central Banks to foster price inflation, debt overhang has stymied those efforts, at least in regards to consumer prices and import/export prices.

Last month, following a surge in gasoline prices, import and export prices did rise a bit, but as with retail sales, the import/export price report was another "one-hit wonder".

Missed Boat Again

Bloomberg Econoday Economists again missed the boat.

Cross-border deflationary pressures are not abating as import prices fell 0.1 percent in June with export prices down 0.2 percent. Year-on-year, import prices are down 10.0 percent with export prices down 5.7 percent. These rates are not showing any improvement from prior months with import prices not even getting much of a lift from the bounce back in petroleum prices as the ex-petroleum reading fell 0.2 percent in the month. Year-on-year, ex-petroleum import prices, and this is a core reading, are down 2.6 percent.

Outside of monthly gains for petroleum components, negative signs sweep both the import and export columns with agricultural exports, at minus 1.5 percent in June, extending a deep run of declines. Year-on-year, agricultural export prices are down 16.7 percent in what is not good news for the nation's farming sector. A look at finished goods categories shows no price strength anywhere with import prices for capital goods, at a year-on-year minus 1.7 percent, and export prices for consumer goods, at minus 1.9 percent, especially weak.

By country, import prices fell 0.5 percent with the NICs, down 0.4 percent with Japan, and down 0.1 percent with China. Prices rose 0.4 percent for Canada, up 0.2 percent for the EU, and up 0.1 percent for Latin America.

The strength of the dollar is pulling down import prices but the decline in export prices points to a lack of global price pressures. This report is a reminder that inflation is not yet picking up steam toward the Fed's 2 percent goal and hints at similar results for this week's later releases of producer and consumer prices.

Import-Export Prices

Crude Oil

From Mid-March to early May, the price of crude rose from $44.00 to a high of $63.61. Since then, the price of crude is down by about 17%.

Gasoline Futures

From Early March until Mid-June, gasoline futures rose from $1.70 to $2.15. Since then, gasoline futures have fallen about 10%.

Deflationary Pressures Unabated

Economists keep expecting consumers to spend elsewhere "what they save" on gasoline. Of course the idea that one can "save" this way is totally absurd.

In practice, consumers have chosen to save, the only way they really can (by not spending in the first place and instead paying down debt).

This is a consequence of a consumer that is still over-leveraged in debt.

And as I have pointed out, it is only sub-prime auto sales that has propped up the consumer economy. (See Retail Sales Unexpectedly Sink Below the Lowest Economist's Estimate).

Transitory Tales

Today's import/export and retail sales reports are more flies in the ointment of the expected September rate hike thesis.

The Fed insists the negative first quarter GDP is "transitory".

Second quarter GDP will indeed rebound, but not as much as previously expected. Third quarter and fourth quarter will tell the story.

Will the Fed hike before we know how the "transitory tale" ends?

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

Retail Sales Unexpectedly Sink Below the Lowest Economist's Estimate; September Hike? Really?

Posted: 14 Jul 2015 10:02 AM PDT

A month ago, following the Expected Retail Sales Bounce, I stated "A sales snapback was coming at some point. May was the month following months of disappointments."

Key Questions

Here were my two key questions:

Will the surge in spending continue?
How Much Longer Can Subprime Auto Sales Lead?

Economists Surprised Again

The surge in spending did not continue.

Today's report not only revised last month's sales numbers lower, this month surprised if not shocked economists, with negative numbers below any forecast in the Bloomberg Consensus Estimate.

Economists predicted a rise in sales of 0.3%. Actual sales came in at -0.3 percent, a half-percentage-point below the lowest estimate, and another wrong sign for the economists.

One month does not tell a story, but it may provide clues.

Advance Retail Sales Numbers

Let's dive into the Census report for additional details on Advance Retail Sales for June.

Business	Percent Change
	June 2015 Advance From		May 2015 Preliminary From
	May 2015	June 2014	April 2015	May 2014
Retail and food services total ………………………………..	-0.3	1.4	1.0	2.3
Total (excl. motor vehicle & parts) …..	-0.1	0.1	0.8	0.9
Retail ………………………..………..	-0.3	0.6	1.1	1.6
Motor vehicle & parts dealers ………	-1.1	6.5	1.8	8.0
Auto & other motor veh. dealers …	-1.0	7.1	1.9	8.6
Furniture & home furn. stores ………	-1.6	4.1	1.4	6.7
Electronics & appliance stores …….	1.0	-0.4	0.2	-1.5
Building material & garden supplies	-1.3	-1.4	-0.4	2.3
Food & beverage stores………………	0.0	2.4	0.5	3.6
Grocery stores …………………….	-0.2	2.2	0.6	3.4
Health & personal care stores ………	0.2	1.3	-0.4	2.9
Gasoline stations ……………………..	0.8	-17.1	3.7	-18.8
Clothing & clothing accessories	-1.5	1.9	1.4	4.1
Sporting goods, hobby, book & music	0.1	6.6	0.6	7.8
General merchandise stores…………	0.7	1.2	1.4	0.3
Department stores (ex. L.D.)……….	-0.6	-1.7	1.9	-2.0
Miscellaneous store retailers ……….	-0.2	2.9	-0.1	5.1
Nonstore retailers …………………….	-0.4	3.0	0.3	5.6
Food services & drinking places …..	-0.2	7.7	0.2	8.6

Economic Comparison

If you are a Keynesian economist, that first column of numbers will look shockingly dismal.
If you are a normal human being with an ounce of common sense, you may come to the conclusion that spending money one does not have on junk one does not need is actually a good thing.

Retail Sales vs. Last Month

Retail Sales vs. Year Ago

Subprime Auto Loans

That last chart shows the real driver for retail sales: subprime auto loans. When that goes, it's likely all over. Was this the month?

September Hike? Really?

This report will undoubtedly shave a few tenths of a percent off second quarter GDP. It will also raise questions about the strength of the economy.

Unless we see a sharp economic rebound in the next two months, the Fed won't hike in September.

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

A Vision for Brand Engagement Online, or "The Goal" - Moz Blog

A Vision for Brand Engagement Online, or "The Goal"

Posted by EricEnge

Today's post focuses on a vision for your online presence. This vision outlines what it takes to be the best, both from an overall reputation and visibility standpoint, as well as an SEO point of view. The reason these are tied together is simple: Your overall online reputation and visibility is a huge factor in your SEO. Period. Let's start by talking about why.

Core ranking signals

For purposes of this post, let's define three cornerstone ranking signals that most everyone agrees on:

Links

Links remain a huge factor in overall ranking. Both Cyrus Shepard and Marcus Tober re-confirmed this on the Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors session at the SMX Advanced conference in Seattle this past June.

On-page content

On-page content remains a huge factor too, but with some subtleties now thrown in. I wrote about some of this in earlier posts I did on Moz about Term Frequency and Inverse Document Frequency. Suffice it to say that on-page content is about a lot more than pure words on the page, but also includes the supporting pages that you link to.

User engagement with your site

This is not one of the traditional SEO signals from the early days of SEO, but most advanced SEO pros that I know consider it a real factor these days. One of the most popular concepts people talk about is called pogo-sticking, which is illustrated here:

You can learn more about the pogosticking concept by visiting this Whiteboard Friday video by a rookie SEO with a last name of Fishkin.

New, lesser-known signals

OK, so these are the more obvious signals, but now let's look more broadly at the overall web ecosystem and talk about other types of ranking signals. Be warned that some of these signals may be indirect, but that just doesn't matter. In fact, my first example below is an indirect factor which I will use to demonstrate why whether a signal is direct or indirect is not an issue at all.

Let me illustrate with an example. Say you spend $1 billion dollars building a huge brand around a product that is massively useful to people. Included in this is a sizable $100 million dollar campaign to support a highly popular charitable foundation, and your employees regularly donate time to help out in schools across your country. In short, the great majority of people love your brand.

Do you think this will impact the way people link to your site? Of course it does. Do you think it will impact how likely people are to be satisified with quality of the pages of your site? Consider this A/B test scenario of 2 pages from different "brands" (for the one on the left, imagine the image of Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola, whichever one you prefer):

Do you think that the huge brand will get a benefit of a doubt on their page that the no-name brand does not even though the pages are identical? Of course they will. Now let's look at some simpler scenarios that don't involve a $1 billion investment.

1. Cover major options related to a product or service on "money pages"

Imagine that a user arrives on your auto parts site after searching on the phrase "oil filter" at Google or Bing. Chances are pretty good that they want an oil filter, but here are some other items they may also want:

A guide to picking the right filter for their car
Oil
An oil filter wrench
A drainage pan to drain the old oil into

This is just the basics, right? But, you would be surprised with how many sites don't include links or information on directly related products on their money pages. Providing this type of smart site and page design can have a major impact on user engagement with the money pages of your site.

2. Include other related links on money pages

In the prior item we covered the user's most directly related needs, but they may have secondary needs as well. Someone who is changing a car's oil is either a mechanic or a do-it-yourself-er. What else might they need? How about other parts, such as windshield wipers or air filters?

These are other fairly easy maintenance steps for someone who is working on their car to complete. Presence of these supporting products could be one way to improve user engagement with your pages.

3. Offer industry-leading non-commercial content on-site

Publishing world-class content on your site is a great way to produce links to your site. Of course, if you do this on a blog on your site, it may not provide links directly to your money pages, but it will nonetheless lift overall site authority.

In addition, if someone has consumed one or more pieces of great content on your site, the chance of their engaging in a more positive manner with your site overall go way up. Why? Because you've earned their trust and admiration.

4. Be everywhere your audiences are with more high-quality, relevant, non-commercial content

Are there major media sites that cover your market space? Do they consider you to be an expert? Will they quote you in articles they write? Can you provide them with guest posts or let you be a guest columnist? Will they collaborate on larger content projects with you?

All of these activities put you in front of their audiences, and if those audiences overlap with yours, this provides a great way to build your overall reputation and visibility. This content that you publish, or collaborate on, that shows up on 3rd-party sites will get you mentions and links. In addition, once again, it will provide you with a boost to your branding. People are now more likely to consume your other content more readily, including on your money pages.

5. Leverage social media

The concept here shares much in common with the prior point. Social media provides opportunities to get in front of relevant audiences. Every person that's an avid follower of yours on a social media site is more likely to show very different behavior characteristics interacting with your site than someone that does not know you well at all.

Note that links from social media sites are nofollowed, but active social media behavior can lead to people implementing "real world" links to your site that are followed, from their blogs and media web sites.

6. Be active in the offline world as well

Think your offline activity doesn't matter online? Think again. Relationships are still most easily built face-to-face. People you meet and spend time with can well become your most loyal fans online. This is particularly important when it comes to building relationships with influential people.

One great way to do that is to go to public events related to your industry, such as conferences. Better still, obtain speaking engagements at those conferences. This can even impact people who weren't there to hear you speak, as they become aware that you have been asked to do that. This concept can also work for a small local business. Get out in your community and engage with people at local events.

The payoff here is similar to the payoff for other items: more engaged, highly loyal fans who engage with you across the web, sending more and more positive signals, both to other people and to search engines, that you are the real deal.

7. Provide great customer service/support

Whatever your business may be, you need to take care of your customers as best you can. No one can make everyone happy, that's unrealistic, but striving for much better than average is a really sound idea. Having satisfied customers saying nice things about you online is a big impact item in the grand scheme of things.

8. Actively build relationships with influencers too

While this post is not about the value of influencer relationships, I include this in the list for illustration purposes, for two reasons:

Some opportunities are worth extra effort. Know of someone who could have a major impact on your business? Know that they will be at a public event in the near future? Book your plane tickets and get your butt out there. No guarantee that you will get the result you are looking for, or that it will happen quickly, but your chances go WAY up if you get some face time with them.
Influencers are worth special attention and focus, but your relationship-building approach to the web and SEO is not only about influencers. It's about the entire ecosystem.

It's an integrated ecosystem

The web provides a level of integrated, real-time connectivity of a kind that the world has never seen before. This is only going to increase. Do something bad to a customer in Hong Kong? Consumers in Boston will know within 5 minutes. That's where it's all headed.

Google and Bing (and any future search engine that may emerge) want to measure these types of signals because they tell them how to improve the quality of the experience on their platforms. There are may ways they can perform these measurements.

One simple concept is covered by Rand in this recent Whiteboard Friday video. The discussion is about a recent patent granted to Google that shows how the company can use search queries to detect who is an authority on a topic.

The example he provides is about people who search on "email finding tool". If Google also finds that a number of people search on "voila norbert email tool", Google may use that as an authority signal.

Think about that for a moment. How are you going to get people to search on your brand more while putting it together with a non-branded querly like that? (OK, please leave Mechanical Turk and other services like that out of the discussion).

Now you can start to see the bigger picture. Measurements like pogosticking and this recent search behavior related patent are just the tip of the iceberg. Undoubtedly, there are many other ways that search engines can measure what people like and engage with the most.

This is all part of SEO now. UX, product breadth, problem solving, UX, engaging in social media, getting face to face, creating great content that you publish in front of other people's audiences, and more.

For the small local business, you can still win at this game, as your focus just needs to be on doing it better than your competitors. The big brands will never be hyper-local like you are, so don't think you can't play the game, because you can.

Whoever you are, get ready, because this new integrated ecosystem is already upon us, and you need to be a part of it.

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Seth's Blog : The technology ratchet

The technology ratchet

Any useful technology that's successfully adopted by a culture won't be abandoned. Ever. (Except by top-down force).

The technology might be replaced by a better alternative, but society doesn't go backwards.

After books were accepted, few went back to scrolls.

After air conditioning is installed, it's never uninstalled.

Vinyl records, straight razors and soon, drivable cars, will all be perceived as hobbies, not mainstream activities.

This one-way ratchet is accelerating and it's having a profound effect on every culture we are part of. As Kevin Kelly has pointed out, technology creates more technology, and this, combined with the ratchet, has a transformative effect.

In a corollary to this, some technologies, once adopted, create their own demand cycles. A little electricity creates a demand for more electricity. A little bandwidth creates a demand for more bandwidth.

And the roll-your-own media that has come along with the connection economy is an example of this demand cycle. Once people realize that they can make their own apps, write their own words, create their own movements, they don't happily go back to the original sources of controlled, centralized production.

The last hundred years have also seen a similar ratchet (amplified, I'd argue, by the technology of media and of the economy) in civil rights. It's unlikely (with the exception of despotic edicts) that women will ever lose the vote, that discrimination on race will return to apartheid-like levels, that marriage will return to being an exclusionary practice... once a social justice is embraced by a culture, it's rarely abandoned.

Fashion ebbs and flows, the tide goes in and it goes out, but some changes tend to flow in one direction.

• Email to a friend •

luni, 13 iulie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Reader Q&A On Bitgold
US Navy to 3-D Print Ships; Brick-Laying Robots; Bit-Rot: Meet "Helium" the Software Coding Robot; End of the Programmer?
Humiliation; Arrogance; Crucifixion; Demolition of Eurozone Project
Breathtaking Political Capitulation; Tsipras Should Resign; Tsipras Trades Royal Flush for Draw at Inside Straight

Reader Q&A On Bitgold

Posted: 13 Jul 2015 10:44 PM PDT

In response to BitGold Now Available in US! Why BitGold? I received many questions from readers.

Apologies for the delay. I was in Iceland for a 17 day vacation when the questions started coming in.

Reader questions and answers from BitGold follow.

Reader RP writes ....

Mish,

Thanks for the post on BitGold. I have gold with Goldmoney but when I called them they couldn't tell me much about the significance of the merger with BitGold. Your post helped.

I'd love to see a little more. Specifically what does establishing a BitGold account have to do with my gold stored at GoldMoney vaults in Switzerland. My guess is that there is planning going on about how to let a BitGold card link up to the gold in my Goldmoney account. I read your post twice looking for an allusion to that but saw nothing. Can you share with your readers anything Turk has hinted may be coming along those lines?

Thanks!
RP

BitGold Response to RP

In the immediate future, GoldMoney customers must open a separate BitGold account to access BitGold's full range of services. Going forward however, GoldMoney account holder benefits will include:

Access to prepaid debit cards operating on the MasterCard network
Lower precious metals storage fees
Lower dealing rates
An Active Trading Platform
Simplified User Interface with Mobile Phone Application.

Keep in mind, BitGold will remain the high velocity payments engine of the combined entity, while GoldMoney will continue as the precious metals vaulting and investment firm. Think of it as your bank and Visa with Visa powering payments. We want our customers to have the option of using gold in real-world and online payments. It's their choice whether they want to embrace this option or not. As James Turk has noted, "I really see the combined company as a true 1+1=3 situation - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts". We couldn't agree more, and users will experience these synergies and more in the coming months.

Reader Roy writes ....

Hi Mish,

I just finished your article on Bitgold. Sounds wonderfull. Hope it will spread.
Do you know if GoldMoney or Bitgold will issue a silver debit card? Like you, I do not want to sell gold but silver is a different story.

Best Regards,
Roy

BitGold Response to Roy

Hi Roy,

BitGold has no plans to introduce a silver debit card option at this time but this doesn't mean you cannot fund your card with silver proceeds. Remember, the card is loaded with currency using proceeds from metal sales. At BitGold that means gold metal sales. With GoldMoney, that could mean any metal (Gold, Silver, Platinum or Palladium) .

We appreciate your interest in BitGold.

Reader Tom Writes ...

Hello Mish,

I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I still don't understand how BitGold works. And where there's one, there must be many more like me. So please help me understand this.

Let's say I want to dip my toes in here and get started and see how it goes first. If I had $100 that I was willing to put up to begin, how would this work? Or, is $100 not even close to what it would take to get started?

Would my $100 be like at the price of gold, as soon as I deposited it? So that if gold went up 1% tomorrow my account would then be worth $101? Or, if it went down 1%, then my account would be then worth $99. And so forth each day thereafter?

Meanwhile, would I be getting charged some sort of user fees for having the money in the account, as well? Or does it somehow work out that it's like a free checking account with no minimum deposit, only the balance varies with the daily price of gold?

I think once I had the account and held on to it awhile and saw what was happening that I would then be more willing to add to it over time. I can deal with - and plan for - daily changes in the price of gold. I would only invest what I felt comfortable with in that respect. But I'm just not anxious to open an account that I'm later going to find that I just looked up and saw other costs being taken out in the meantime besides the gold itself.

I'm psychologically prepared to ride with the gold once I buy it for physical possession. But if I'm going to have other fees attached, then I am more hesitant to jump in this right now.

Also, if I wanted to cash out at any moment from the gold, do I just say, "Send me what the gold is worth right now and liquidate my account?"

I'm thinking that this is kind of like a debit card, only the value of the account is calculated by the daily price of gold. Is that correct thinking on my part?

I am appreciative for all your insights,
Tom

BitGold Response to Tom

Tom, thanks for your inquiry.

There is no minimum deposit amount to open a BitGold account. Simply visit www.bitgold.com, enter an email, select a password, and click 'Create Account'.

The Sign Up process can be complete in less than five minutes, free of charge. You may then proceed to fund your BitGold account in an amount of your choosing and you can start with as little as .01 gold grams or $.03 cents.

Once funds are deposited into your account (let's use $100 USD as an example), the 'value' of your holdings is derived from the weight of gold you purchased. When you "fund" your bitgold account, you are parting with fiat currency and acquiring physical ownership in vaulted gold at the location of your choosing. From that point forward, the US Dollar value of your account is simply the value of your weight of gold purchase multiplied by the current gold price. If the USD price of gold rises 5% in a given month, the value of your holdings will rise proportionally; with the inverse concept in a market decline. While price volatility is a certainty over shorter durations, no fiat currency has ever gained purchasing power over gold in the long-term (20 year+ period).

In terms of fees, BitGold adheres to a '1% in, 1% out' model. We charge a 1% fee to fund an account, and a 1% fee to redeem your gold. We do not charge storage or insurance fees, or any holding or monthly fee for that matter. Gold can be redeemed via bank wire, credit card or we can even deliver physical anywhere in the world if you prefer to hold it in possession. We allow for as little as 10 grams to be redeemed from the platform through our BitGold 10g Cubes.

Reader Tariq Writes ...

Hello Mish,

I read your post on BitGold. I have a GoldMoney account but I have always had a big issue with one thing... when you deposit/send money to your GoldMoney account, the funds are held at either RBS or HSBC, two banks which I feel are high risk in the event of another crisis. Where does BitGold keep client money?

Tariq

BitGold Reply to Tariq

Hi Tariq,

All client funds are arrive at a segregated customer account at Royal Bank of Canada where they are held intermittently for the purpose of purchasing gold which is located in a Brinks vault. Every metric gram, kilogram, or tonne of gold that a customer has acquired through BitGold is owned and allocated to the customer once transactions have settled. Settlement, occurs once Brinks has confirmed your metal has been received. That is why transactions on the platform have two states (Pending and Settled). A pending state confirms your price but not yet delivery. A settled state confirms both price and delivery. At that point, you have an actual gold balance corresponding to a physical bar of gold at the location of your choosing. BitGold Inc. Customer Agreement and Terms of Service unequivocally state that all customer assets are held by BitGold Inc. as bailee for the benefit of customers. A "bailment" occurs when a person (the "bailor") delivers personal property into the possession of another person (the "bailee") for safekeeping but retains legal title to the property. We are merely a software operating system for your vaulted gold.

Reader Darrell Writes ...

Hi Mish,

Your description of Bitgold did not address the issue of asset security. There have been numerous stories about Bitcoin accounts being plundered by hacker/thieves and government agencies that make me extremely leery. Also, you said you wouldn't use the card for large purchases and that the minimum purchase is about $370 depending on the gold price. Whose valuation are they using to price gold and what type of purchase would you use this card for-assuming the merchant would accept the card? Also, you didn't make clear whether or not they like Bullion Vault also handle silver.

Regards,
Darrell

BitGold Response to Darrell

Hello Darrell,

Unlike a digital exchange such as Bitcoin, BitGold accounts cannot be 'hacked' since gold is allocated and stored in a physical vault. Thus, the only way to achieve value destruction would be to elevate an attack from cybercrime to real world crime by attempting to penetrate the physical vaults. This risk is mitigated with 100% insurance coverage and the world' most prestigious security firm.

In terms of our pricing engine, we measure our gold price in gram units, using our proprietary Aurum price engine, which aggregates the best bid & offer prices from COMEX/LBMA members quoting on the platform. This price would be similar to the widely quoted COMEX price at any given time.

Lastly, BitGold does not engage in silver dealing and does not anticipate this will change in the future. Because silver is more abundant in the earth's crust, it has a much lower ratio of value per density. Said differently, it costs a lot more to store the same physical dimension of silver. This makes silver an unattractive element for high velocity payments as we subsidize the storage fee from our own operational balance sheet.

Reader Mike Writes ...

Hi Mish,

Thanks for the blog on BitGold. I hold a decent amount of gold through GoldMoney and have been meaning to do some research on the acquisition. Your analysis answers many of my questions.

I am wondering about the tax consequences now. I figured I'd avoid cap gains indefinitely because I had planned on accumulating gold in Gold Money for a long time without selling. Now, if I have a debit card it changes the parameters because I'm withdrawing gold that may be sitting at a gain/loss to my basis.

Feel free to tell me to go talk to an accountant but I'm just wondering if this situation came up in your discussion with BitGold.

Appreciate your work. I read your posts religiously.

Best Regards,
Mike

BitGold Response to Mike

Hello Mike,

To make purchases with the BitGold debit card, users must load it with proceeds from gold in a BitGold account. Therefore, the taxable amount is the portion of account proceeds used to load the debit card (as opposed to individual transactions generated from the card itself). Users can view the taxable portion in the 'Transactions' tab once debit card funding is complete.

Reader Christopher Writes ...

Hi Mish,

What are the reporting requirements for a US citizen with a Bitgold account? Is it an offshore account reportable under FACTA? How will the cap gain - loss (taxable at 28%) be reported on each "gram sized: transaction? FIFO, or ? Will BitGold provide year end tax US reporting?

Kind regards,
Christopher

BitGold Reply to Christopher

Hello Christopher,

BitGold does not give tax advice and we urge you to consult with your local tax advisor as we're a global platform and circumstances will differ depending on region. However, BitGold does supply a tax tool to calculate gains and losses in FIFO/LIFO for your account for a given time period. We recommend consulting with a trusted tax advisor before filing a return.

U.S. customers are not subject to FATCA provisions at this time as we are a Canadian company.

In a follow-up Email Christopher writes ...

Mish,

I see no provision exempting the obligation of a US person to report a Canadian Account to on FBAR (FinCen 114) and/or tax return (form 8938). The argument could be made that it is not a financial account if it is allocated gold only. However, when it is monetized as in the credit card program, I believe this argument would become tenuous. Using BitGold transactionally; i.e. small gold sales to cover payments would give rise to capital gains and losses. ... If I am incorrect in any of the above I would appreciate being enlightened as to the correct view.

I responded to Christopher ....

Christopher, ask your broker or banker a question about taxes - any question - and you will get a "we do not give tax advice" answer.

BitGold did go one step further and say ...

BitGold does supply a tax tool to calculate gains and losses in FIFO/LIFO for your account for a given time period
U.S. customers are not subject to FATCA provisions at this time as we are a Canadian company.

Nonetheless, I forwarded Christopher's follow-up question to BitGold.

BitGold Response to Christopher's Follow-Up

Hello Christopher

As we previously indicated, it's upon you to consult your local tax advisor and proceed accordingly. We concur that any gains stemming from transactions in your account will be subject to capital gains. Those gains will need to be reported and included as part of your total Adjusted Gross Income.

With respect to whether the account should be reported on FBAR or Tax Form 8938, again we stress that this decision should be made along with your tax advisor. As you noted, there can be nuances in the tax-code that treat each account holder differently depending on the type of activity they pursue. This validates the position we are taking that each individual account holder should seek personalized advice per their activity, domicile and tax status.

Instead, we focus on providing the tools necessary to effortlessly calculate the net delta over time whether that delta is positive (resulting in a gain) or negative (resulting in a loss).

With respect to gains and their tax rate, we view these as akin to historical interest rate returns where you would be required to include these gains as part of your adjusted gross income.

Mish Further Comment on Taxes

I am not a tax advisor, nor does this constitute tax "advice", but in my view, BitGold tax accounting is theoretically no different than that of a US taxpayer holding a debit card based in Euros, Yen, or BitCoin.

With each, there are potential gains or losses over time.

With BitGold, here is the key sentence:

We focus on providing the tools necessary to effortlessly calculate the net delta over time whether that delta is positive (resulting in a gain) or negative (resulting in a loss).

Reader Mark Writes ...

Hello Mish,

In your post you mentioned Gold can be redeemed in as little as 10 gram increments (approximately $370 at today's price). What precisely does that mean? Can I use it as a debit card and buy a $50 item?

Thanks,
Mark

BitGold Reply to Mark

Hi Mark,

You can use your BitGold card for transactions of any size. There are no storage or insurance fees. We operate on a '1% in, 1% out' model.

Redemption of "as little as 10 gram increments" refers to cashing out or taking physical delivery of grams of gold.

BitGold users may redeem funds from their BitGold account at any time, up to the value of their account balance. Redemption times are dependent upon the method and the time of day the withdrawal is initiated. Redemptions can be initiated through bank wire, credit card, China UnionPay, Interac, Bitcoin or physical gold redemption.

Physical gold can be redeemed in the form of BitGold 10 gram cubes or 1kg .9995 bullion bars. Please see Redemption fees, processing times & policies for additional details.

Mish Comments

Compared to very high markups on coins, 1% fees each way provide a convenient way to purchase gold in small amounts.

For sizable amounts, opening an account at GoldMoney makes more sense.

Disclosure

As I have noted before, I have a relationship with both GoldMoney and BitGold.

Storage fees at GoldMoney are the lowest in the industry. I get a tiny percent of the tiny storage fees collected. There is no difference to the account holder.

At Bitgold, I get a small signup fee, and again that comes out of BitGold's pocket, not the account holder.

I do not enter relationships to collect fees. I turn down such offers all the time.

I reiterate what I said in my first BitGold post.

My reputation is very important to me. I do not enter relationships easily. If I genuinely thought there were major issues with GoldMoney or BitGold, my relationship with them would be over.

Instead, I have taken the time to research this matter thoroughly, and have concluded the GoldMoney/BitGold deal is a good one for the industry, for merchants, and individuals alike.

Want to promote gold as money? Then please Sign Up for your BitGold Account today!

If you were hesitant to open a BitGold account based on any of the questions above, I believe they have been fully explained.

If you have further questions, fire away. I will forward them on.

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

US Navy to 3-D Print Ships; Brick-Laying Robots; Bit-Rot: Meet "Helium" the Software Coding Robot; End of the Programmer?

Posted: 13 Jul 2015 05:02 PM PDT

Brick-Laying Robots

In the past few weeks, numerous readers sent me emails about brick-laying robots, so many that I wonder if most have already seen this.

If not, please consider Brick-Laying Robot can Build a Full-Sized House in Two Days.

Engineers in Perth, Australia, have created a fully working house-building machine that can create the brick framework of a property in just two days, working about 20 times faster than a human bricklayer.

Named Hadrian (after Hadrian's Wall in the UK), the robot has a top laying speed of 1,000 bricks per hour, which works out as the equivalent of about 150 homes a year. Of course there's no need for the machine to sleep, eat or take tea breaks either, giving it another advantage over manual laborers.

At the heart of Hadrian is a 28 m (92 ft.) articulated telescopic boom. The boom auto-corrects itself 1,000 times per second to prevent interference from vibrations or sway.

Hadrian Video

Link if video does not play: Hadrian Can Lay 1,000 Bricks and Hour.

Video of SAM another Brick-Laying Robot

Link if video does not play: Introduction to Construction Robotics and the bricklaying robot SAM

US Navy to 3-D Print Ships

Network World reports Office of Naval Research Interested in Bringing 3D Printing to Large Scale for Ships, Aircraft.

The Navy this month will outline what it is looking for from additive manufacturing or 3D printing technology as way to bolster what it terms "fleet readiness."

The Office of Naval Research will on July 15 detail its Quality Metal Additive Manufacturing (Quality MADE) program that will aim to "develop and integrate the suite of additive manufacturing software and hardware tools required to ensure that critical metallic components can be consistently produced and rapidly qualified in a cost effective manner."

The Navy has a number of different ongoing 3D trials and recently partnered with 3D Systems to evaluate and develop evaluate 3D printing technology and materials for military uses.

Meet "Helium" the Software Coding Robot

Helium, a software coding program, can rewrite rotten legacy computer code in an hour. It would take expert programmers months to do the same task.

Moreover, Helium's code is up to 500% faster than legacy code. This is especially true of unoptimized Windows code and imaging software such as Adobe Photoshop.

Bit-Rot

Please consider Computer Program Fixes Old Code Faster than Expert Engineers.

Last year, MIT computer scientists and Adobe engineers came together to try to solve a major problem that many companies face: bit-rot.

A good example is Adobe's successful Photoshop photo editor, which just celebrated its 25th birthday. Over the years Photoshop had accumulated heaps of code that had been optimized for what is now old hardware.

"For high-performance code used for image-processing, you have to optimize the heck out of the software," says Saman Amarasinghe, a professor at MIT and researcher at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). "The downside is that the code becomes much less effective and much more difficult to understand."

Enter Helium, a CSAIL system that revamps and fine-tunes code without ever needing the original source, in a matter of hours or even minutes.

The team started with a simple building block of programming that's nevertheless extremely difficult to analyze: binary code that has been stripped of debug symbols, which represents the only piece of code that is available for proprietary software such as Photoshop.

A particular type of computational kernel popular for such software are "stencil kernels," which allow you to do operations for entire areas of pixels. Stencil kernels are especially important to update because they use huge amounts of memory and compute power, and their performance degenerates quickly as new hardware become available.

With Helium, the researchers are able to lift these kernels from a stripped binary and restructure them as high-level representations that are readable in Halide, a CSAIL-designed programming language geared towards image-processing.

Going from binary to high-level languages was a big leap that the team originally didn't think was doable, according to lead author Charith Mendis.

"The order of operations in these optimized binaries are complicated, which means that they can be hard to disentangle," says Mendis, a graduate student at CSAIL. "Because stencils do the same computation over and over again, we are able to accumulate enough data to recover the original algorithms."

From there, the Helium system then replaces the original bit-rotted components with the re-optimized ones. The net result: Helium can improve the performance of certain Photoshop filters by 75 percent, and the performance of less optimized programs such as Microsoft Windows' IrfanView by 400 to 500 percent.

Question of the Day

Is this simply reverse engineering, or is this the beginning of the end of the programmer?

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

Humiliation; Arrogance; Crucifixion; Demolition of Eurozone Project

Posted: 13 Jul 2015 02:29 PM PDT

As I further ponder on the Breathtaking Political Capitulation of Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, I still seek an explanation for his stunning reversal. Here is a short recap.

Shockingly Stupid Sequence of Events

I am seldom stunned by political stupidity. In fact, I am surprised when I don't see it.

Yet, I have never witnessed a political reversal so shockingly stupid as we saw tonight from Greek Prime minister Alexis Tsipras.

For months on end Tsipras claimed he would not accept blackmail by Germany. He rejected Germany's "final offer" in favor of a referendum.

He encouraged Greek citizens to vote "no" to the bailout referendum. Then they did, by an overwhelming majority.

Tsipras then reversed himself 180 degrees, and accepted the newest "final offer" that was far worse than the one he turned down a short while ago.

The deal was so harsh that I agreed with Paul Krugman's description of "grotesque".

I retyped most of the four-page proposal here because the document copied about one character at a time thanks to some weird PDF encoding: Tsipras' Choice: Total Capitulation or Grexit; Text of 4-Page Eurozone Demands.

Telegraph Explanation

Ambrose-Evans Pritchard explained in advance that Tsipras did not expect to win the yes-no referendum and had to change course when he did.

Six days ago, In Europe is blowing itself apart over Greece - and nobody seems able to stop it, Pritchard wrote "Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras never expected to win Sunday's referendum. He is now trapped and hurtling towards Grexit. He called the snap vote with the expectation - and intention - of losing it."

Pritchard's explanation makes for good copy, but does not pass the Mish "smell test". If Tsipras really wanted to lose, he would have made a lukewarm endorsement for 'no'. Instead, he threw every word in the book at Germany including a demand for Nazi war reparations while making overtures with Russia.

Arrogance

I don't accept Pritchard's explanation. To directly campaign, and campaign exceptionally hard, for an outcome one does not want makes no sense.

Instead, I offer a simpler explanation: Tsipras is an arrogant fool. He had far too much confidence in his own ability to make the world see things his way.

Stupidity alone does not provide the answer, but an amazing amount of arrogant belief in oneself to the bitter end, that Germany would eventually bow down and kiss his feet is the likely answer.

Humiliation

Tsipras has humiliated himself while destroying any hope Greeks had. He refused to resign and it's highly likely his coalition splinters to smithereens in short order.

It would be best for Greece if it splinters now, but the likeliest outcome is the coalition busts apart after the Greek parliament votes for servitude and pledges €50 billion in assets.

Tsipras should resign, but arrogant fools don't do that.

Pledged Assets

Inquiring minds may be wondering What Assets Will Greece Pledge?

The Wall Street Journal explains ...

The statement merely requires that they be "valuable." After six years of recession and counting, Greek liquid assets are scarce; presumably hard assets like beautiful Islands and national treasures are off limits. One likely source of said assets are the new bank shares that the Greek government will acquire with the money it will borrow from the eurozone's bailout fund to recapitalize the country's banks.

Islands off limits? We will see. Greek banks are not worth €50 billion for sure. In fact, they are bankrupt, with negative worth. Ten years from now will they be worth something? What about airlines, airports, bus terminals, and electrical companies?

The Journal did not state so but any infrastructure assets owned by the government will surely be on the block.

Defeat Snatched From Jaws of Victory

The Financial Times reported the deal nearly fell through at 6:00AM this morning when after 14 hours of negotiation, when both Merkel and Tsipras headed for the door.

Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with 'Sorry, but there is no way you are leaving this room'. Next up ....

Crucifixion

"They crucified Tsipras in there," a senior eurozone official who had attended the summit remarked. "Crucified."

Demolition of Eurozone Project

With crucifixion of Tsipras, and more importantly of the Greek people, Wolfgang Münchau accurately assesses the developments this way: Greece's Brutal Creditors Have Demolished the Eurozone Project.

A few things that many of us took for granted, and that some of us believed in, ended in a single weekend. By forcing Alexis Tsipras into a humiliating defeat, Greece's creditors have done a lot more than bring about regime change in Greece or endanger its relations with the eurozone. They have destroyed the eurozone as we know it and demolished the idea of a monetary union as a step towards a democratic political union.

In doing so they reverted to the nationalist European power struggles of the 19th and early 20th century. They demoted the eurozone into a toxic fixed exchange-rate system, with a shared single currency, run in the interests of Germany, held together by the threat of absolute destitution for those who challenge the prevailing order.

On Saturday, Wolfgang Schäuble, finance minister, insisted on a time-limited exit — a "timeout" as he called it.

I have heard quite a few crazy proposals in my time, and this one is right up there. A member state pushed for the expulsion of another. This was the real coup over the weekend: not only regime change in Greece, but also regime change in the eurozone.

The fact that a formal Grexit may have been avoided for the moment is immaterial. Grexit will be back on the table when you have the slightest political accident — and there are still many things that could go wrong, both in Greece and in other eurozone parliaments. Any other country that in future might challenge German economic orthodoxy will face similar problems.

This brings us back to a more toxic version of the old exchange-rate mechanism of the 1990s that left countries trapped in a system run primarily for the benefit of Germany, which led to the exit of the British pound and the temporary departure of the Italian lira.

What should the Greeks do now? Forget for a moment the economic debate of the past few months, over issues such as the impact of austerity or economic reforms on growth. Instead ask yourself this simple question: do you really think that an economic reform programme, for which a government has no political mandate, which has been explicitly rejected in a referendum, that has been forced through by sheer political blackmail, can conceivably work?

Previously, the strongest argument against any forecasts of break-up has been the strong political commitment of all its members. If you ask Italians why they are in the eurozone, few have ever pointed to the economic benefits. They wanted to be part of the most ambitious project of European integration undertaken so far.

"We will soon be asking ourselves whether this new eurozone, in which the strong push around the weak, can be sustainable".

But if you take away the political aspiration, you may end up with a different judgment. From a pure economic point of view, we know that the euro has worked well for Germany. But for Italy, it has been an unmitigated economic disaster. The country has seen virtually no productivity growth since the start of the euro in 1999. If you want to blame the lack of structural reforms, then you have to explain how Italy managed decent growth rates before then. Can we be sure that a majority of Italians will support the single currency in three years' time?

Once you strip the eurozone of any ambitions for a political and economic union, it changes into a utilitarian project in which member states will coldly weigh the benefits and costs, just as Britain is currently assessing the relative advantages or disadvantages of EU membership. In such a system, someone, somewhere, will want to leave sometime. And the strong political commitment to save it will no longer be there either.

Final Thoughts

In my opinion, that is the best article Wolfgang Münchau has ever written.

Like Economist Paul Krugman, and unlike myself, Münchau was a strong supporter of the eurozone "project".

I maintain that the eurozone has too many flaws to possibly work. That Tsipras caved in at the last moment changes nothing, and it even appears that Münchau has come to grips with that reality.

In Critics Flock to Site "ThisIsACoup"; Killing the European Project; Illusions; Who's Going to Pay?, I offered my take on why the eurozone would fail.

Prior to that, in From ZIRP to NIRP: Virtues of Germany vs. the Vices of Greece; What About "Speece" and Gold? I explained in detail why blaming Greece alone was entirely wrong.

Crucifixion Does Not Change Reality

I still stand by my analysis. The eurozone remains fatally flawed. Humiliation, even crucifixion, does not change reality.

Indeed, it likely assures an even more violent eurozone breakup sometime down the road.

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

Breathtaking Political Capitulation; Tsipras Should Resign; Tsipras Trades Royal Flush for Draw at Inside Straight

Posted: 13 Jul 2015 02:30 AM PDT

Shockingly Stupid Sequence of Events

I am seldom stunned by political stupidity. In fact, I am surprised when I don't see it.

Yet, I have never witnessed a political reversal so shockingly stupid as we saw tonight from Greek Prime minister Alexis Tsipras.

For months on end Tsipras claimed he would not accept blackmail by Germany. He rejected Germany's "final offer" in favor of a referendum.

He encouraged Greek citizens to vote "no" to the bailout referendum. Then they did, by an overwhelming majority.

Breathtaking Political Capitulation

Tonight, Tsipras reversed himself 180 degrees, and accepted the newest "final offer" that was far worse than the one he turned down a short while ago.

The deal so harsh that I agreed with Paul Krugman's description of "grotesque".

Specifically, Krugman said of the latest deal "This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can't accept; but even so, it's a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for."

Whether or not one believes in the eurozone, and no matter what side one takes in the debate, there is no question regarding Krugman's description.

Creditor Demands

For the complete list of creditor demands, please see Tsipras' Choice: Total Capitulation or Grexit; Text of 4-Page Eurozone Demands.

Germany demanded, amongst many other things, that Greece put up €50 Billion in collateral (no doubt islands and state businesses at bargain basement prices).

The creditor demands remind me of the war reparations at the end of WWI that ultimately collapsed Germany and led to WWII. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but that is what comes to mind.

ThisIsACoup

Following months of rants against Germany and the Troika, culminating in a referendum in which the Greek people overwhelmingly agreed the deal was a bad one, Tsipras bowed down and accepted a far, far worse deal.

In Critics Flock to Site "ThisIsACoup"; Killing the European Project; Illusions; Who's Going to Pay?, I offered my take on why the eurozone would fail.

I still stand by that analysis. The eurozone remains fatally flawed.

Who's Going to Pay

In spite of this stunningly idiotic reversal, I still maintain that one way or another, Germany will pay a price (by bailout, by default, or by destructive breakup).

Only the timeline and who gets the blame has changed.

Tsipras Trades Royal Flush for Draw at Inside Straight

Tsipras won the game. He had the backing of Greek citizens no matter what he did. The opposition party leader and former prime minister resigned following the "no" vote in the referendum.

Blame for Grexit was squarely in the Germany's hands. And it was even in the best interests of Greece to default.

Tsipras traded all that away for nothing!

Questions

Did the US bribe Tsprias with a secret account worth millions?
Is someone holding his kids hostage?

If one of those (or something similar) does not explain the reversal, then what does?

I have often stated that when one of the answers to a question is stupidity, then stupidity is frequently the likely answer.

But stupidity alone cannot possibly explain this course of events.

Tsipras Should Resign

If Tsipras had an ounce of decency left, he would resign, put forth a new referendum, and let the people decide. Apparently, this hypocrite would now tell them to vote yes.

He sure owes Greek citizens an explanation. Instead he will fire all the ministers who do not go along.

Wow.

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

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Mihai, here are some posts from Pages you might like on Google+

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An Open-Source Tool for Checking rel-alternate-hreflang Annotations - Moz Blog

An Open-Source Tool for Checking rel-alternate-hreflang Annotations

Posted by Tom-Anthony

In the Distilled R&D department we have been ramping up the amount of automated monitoring and analysis we do, with an internal system monitoring our client's sites both directly and via various data sources to ensure they remain healthy and we are alerted to any problems that may arise.

Recently we started work to add in functionality for including the rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in this system. In this blog post I'm going to share an open-source Python library we've just started work on for the purpose, which makes it easy to read the hreflang entries from a page and identify errors with them.

If you're not a Python aficionado then don't despair, as I have also built a ready-to-go tool for you to use, which will quickly do some checks on the hreflang entries for any URL you specify. :)

Google's Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) does have some basic rel-alternate-hreflang checking built in, but it is limited in how you can use it and you are restricted to using it for verified sites.

rel-alternate-hreflang checklist

Before we introduce the code, I wanted to quickly review a list of five easy and common mistakes that we will want to check for when looking at rel-alternate-hreflang annotations:

return tag errors - Every alternate language/locale URL of a page should, itself, include a link back to the first page. This makes sense but I've seen people make mistakes with it fairly often.
indirect / broken links - Links to alternate language/region versions of the page should no go via redirects, and should not link to missing or broken pages.
multiple entries - There should never be multiple entries for a single language/region combo.
multiple defaults - You should never have more than one x-default entry.
conflicting modes - rel-alternate-hreflang entries can be implemented via inline HTML, XML sitemaps, or HTTP headers. For any one set of pages only one implementation mode should be used.

So now imagine that we want to simply automate these checks quickly and simply...

Introducing: polly - the hreflang checker library

polly is the name for the library we have developed to help us solve this problem, and we are releasing it as open source so the SEO community can use it freely to build upon. We only started work on it last week, but we plan to continue developing it, and will also accept contributions to the code from the community, so we expect its feature set to grow rapidly.

If you are not comfortable tinkering with Python, then feel free to skip down to the next section of the post, where there is a tool that is built with polly which you can use right away.

Still here? Ok, great. You can install polly easily via pip:

pip install polly

You can then create a PollyPage() object which will do all our work and store the data simply by instantiating the class with the desired URL:

my_page = PollyPage("http://www.facebook.com/")

You can quickly see the hreflang entries on the page by running:

print my_page.alternate_urls_map

You can list all the hreflang values encountered on a page, and which countries and languages they cover:

print my_page.hreflang_values  print my_page.languages  print my_page.regions

You can also check various aspects of a page, see whether the pages it includes in its rel-alternate-hreflang entries point back, or whether there are entries that do not see retrievable (due to 404 or 500 etc. errors):

print my_page.is_default  print my_page.no_return_tag_pages()  print my_page.non_retrievable_pages()

Get more instructions and grab the code at the polly github page. Hit me up in the comments with any questions.

Free tool: hreflang.ninja

I have put together a very simple tool that uses polly to run some of the checks we highlighted above as being common mistakes with rel-alternate-hreflang, which you can visit right now and start using:

http://hreflang.ninja

Simply enter a URL and hit enter, and you should see something like:

Example output from the ninja!

The tool shows you the rel-alternate-hreflang entries found on the page, the language and region of those entries, the alternate URLs, and any errors identified with the entry. It is perfect for doing quick'n'dirty checks of a URL to identify any errors.

As we add additional functionality to polly we will be updating hreflang.ninja as well, so please tweet me with feature ideas or suggestions.

To-do list!

This is the first release of polly and currently we only handle annotations that are in the HTML of the page, not those in the XML sitemap or HTTP headers. However, we are going to be updating polly (and hreflang.ninja) over the coming weeks, so watch this space! :)

Resources

Here are a few links you may find helpful for hreflang:

Moz's guide to Hreflang
Aleyda Solis' hreflang generator tool
Kaitlin McMichael's post on 7 common hreflang mistakes
Dave Sottimano's post on hreflang insights

Got suggestions?

With the increasing number of SEO directives and annotations available, and the ever-changing guidelines around how to deploy them, it is important to automate whatever areas possible. Hopefully polly is helpful to the community in this regard, and we want to here what ideas you have for making these tools more useful - here in the comments or via Twitter.

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Seth's Blog : Bounce forward

Bounce forward

When we hit an obstacle, sometimes the best we can hope for is to bounce back. To recover, to get through this and get back to normal.

But when our project hits a snag, perhaps we can consider using the moment to bounce forward instead. Being on the alert for opportunities, not merely repairs.

If we're spending our time and effort focusing on a return to normal, sometimes we miss the opportunity that's right in front of us.

Bouncing forward means an even better path, not merely the one we were on in the first place.

• Email to a friend •

marți, 14 iulie 2015

Core ranking signals

Links

On-page content

User engagement with your site

New, lesser-known signals

1. Cover major options related to a product or service on "money pages"

2. Include other related links on money pages

3. Offer industry-leading non-commercial content on-site

4. Be everywhere your audiences are with more high-quality, relevant, non-commercial content

5. Leverage social media

6. Be active in the offline world as well

7. Provide great customer service/support

8. Actively build relationships with influencers too

It's an integrated ecosystem

luni, 13 iulie 2015

rel-alternate-hreflang checklist

Introducing: polly - the hreflang checker library

Free tool: hreflang.ninja

To-do list!

Resources

Got suggestions?

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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