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marți, 10 mai 2011

Elevating the debate on immigration

Good morning,

Today, President Obama is traveling to El Paso, Texas to discuss the need to fix our broken immigration system. You can watch his speech live at WhiteHouse.gov/live starting at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1:30 p.m. MDT):

Our nation is the leader of the global economy in part because of the steady stream of hardworking and talented people who have come to our country in search of a better life for themselves and their families. As we continue to strengthen our economy, we need an immigration system that demands responsibility and accountability from government, businesses and immigrants themselves.

In his speech today, the President will lay out his vision for an immigration system for America's 21st century economy and will call on Americans across the country to join a constructive conversation on this issue. We know that folks are already discussing this issue around their dinner tables, with their friends and neighbors and through social media communities like Twitter.

Here are just a few ways you can get involved in the conversation, and tell us here at the White House what you think:

Twitter. During the President's speech today, I'll have a screen up next to my TV to watch the conversation on Twitter using the #immigration hashtag, so make sure to use #immigration to share your thoughts.
Advise the Advisor. Cecilia Muñoz, one of the President's senior advisors on immigration issues, just posted a new Advise the Advisor video asking for your feedback on this important issue. Visit WhiteHouse.gov/Advise to see the video and tell us what you think.
Roundtable Discussions. In addition to all the ways you can join the conversation online, we're encouraging Americans to host roundtable discussions in your own communities over the next few months, and let us know what you talked about and what issues matter the most in your community. Visit WhiteHouse.gov/Immigration to get started.

Most Americans agree that our immigration system is broken: it hamstrings our economy, it hurts families who play by the rules, and it leaves millions living in the shadows without a path to get right with the law.

We can't out-educate, out-innovate and out-build our competitors without an immigration system that works for our economy. That's why this conversation on immigration reform is so important. We need voices from across the country to help us elevate the debate and move forward.

We're looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Sincerely,

David Plouffe
Senior Advisor to the President

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Infographic: Protecting Consumers Against Rising Oil Prices

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

On Friday, President Obama travelled to Indianapolis to visit Allison Transmissions – a clean energy company that manufactures hybrid vehicle transmission technology. The President spoke about his long term plan to protect consumers against rising oil prices and decrease oil imports while ensuring a cleaner, safer, and more secure energy future.

We put together an infographic to help summarize the President’s approach:

White House Highlights

Latest Awards Bring US Closer to National High-Speed Passenger Rail Network
May 9, 2011
Ray LaHood, Secretary of Transportation, announces the next steps for high speed rail in 22 carefully selected projects across the country.

Weekly Address: Clean Energy to Out-Innovate the Rest of the World
May 7, 2011
Speaking from a hybrid vehicle transmission company in Indiana, the President explains how investments in a clean energy economy are the only solution to high gas prices in the long term.

The 'America's Next Top Energy Innovator' Challenge Begins Today
May 2, 2011
Starting today and until December 15, start-up companies can apply for one of the Department of Energy's thousands of unlicensed patents for greatly reduced cost and paperwork.

Weekly Address: Ending Taxpayer Subsidies for Oil Companies
April 30, 2011
At a time of high gas prices and massive oil industry profits, the President renews his call to end the $4 billion-per-year subsidies for oil and gas companies and invest in clean energy.

Thank You Alaska!
April 28, 2011
Watch last week’s podcast and webinar on the National Ocean Policy and what it means for the Arctic region.

Knowing Where We Stand to Save Money, Improve Efficiency, Reduce Pollution, and Eliminate Waste
April 28, 2011
This week several Federal agencies released the first-ever comprehensive Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions Inventory of the Federal Government’s operations in 2010.

A Clear Commitment to Clean Water for America
April 27, 2011
A multi-agency national clean water framework was released on Wednesday, emphasizing the Administration’s commitment toward protecting the health and longevity of America’s water resources.

Drawing Inspiration on Smart Grid Innovation from America’s Youth
April 27, 2011
U.S. Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra highlights how America’s youth are engaging in thoughtful discussion and innovative creation of clean energy technologies for our future.

Cultivating Seeds of Knowledge; Growing a Greener Future for our Nation
April 26, 2011
The DOE, EPA, and CEQ launch the Green Ribbon Schools Program which recognizes schools that are working toward teaching environmental literacy in the classroom and are creating ways to decrease their environmental footprint outside of the classroom.

President Obama to Congress: “I Hope We Can All Agree That, Instead of Continuing to Subsidize Yesterday’s Energy Sources, We Need to Invest in Tomorrow’s”
April 26, 2011
The President’s letter to leaders of both parties in Congress addresses the subject of tax breaks for oil companies.

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Join the Conversation on Immigration Reform

Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Join the Conversation on Immigration Reform

Today at 3:30 p.m. EDT (1:30 p.m. MDT), President Obama will lay out his vision for an immigration system for America's 21st century economy. Here are a few ways you can get involved:

Watch the speech live at WhiteHouse.gov/live
Join the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #immigration
Tell us what you think about immigration reform through Advise the Advisor

Photo of the Day

First Lady Michelle Obama participates in the “Pit Crew Challenge” station during an event with the President's Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition on the South Lawn of the White House, May 9, 2011. The First Lady visited seven activity stations during the event, which helped promote both the Let's Move! and Joining Forces initiatives. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

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Visit Us at Internet World & Give Us a #highfiveseoptimise to Win a Panda!

Posted: 10 May 2011 03:14 AM PDT

If you’re at Internet World this week (today, Weds and Thurs) make sure you come and drop by our stand (E3056) to say hello! You’ll also have a chance to win a panda by tweeting #highfiveseoptimise to us!

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We’re also delighted to announce the winners of our free SMX London ticket giveaway as Hannah Rampton, Dom Hodgson and Rob Nicholson – congrats guys, see you there!

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Nobody wears a tie either.

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The market of nobody is big indeed. You can do really well selling to nobody if you do your homework. In fact, most companies selling to nobody outperform those that are trying to sell to everyone.

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luni, 9 mai 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

More "Panda" Update Information Starting to Come Out

Posted: 08 May 2011 03:38 PM PDT

Posted by MikeCP

On Friday, Google posted an update on its Webmaster Central blog entitled "Providing More Guidance on Building High-Quality Sites". The piece expands on much of what Google has said about the Panda update since its original release on February 24th.

In public statements about the Panda update, Google has referenced a number of questions that they're attempting to answer algorithmically. "Would you feel comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?" and "Would you accept medical advice from this site?" are two that have been around since the beginning. Friday's Webmaster Central post offered up a more substantial list with some of the highlights below:

Does the site have duplicate, overlapping, or redundant articles on the same or similar topics with slightly different keyword variations?
Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors?
Are the topics driven by genuine interests of readers of the site, or does the site generate content by attempting to guess what might rank well in search engines?
Does the article provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?
Is the site a recognized authority on its topic?
Is the content mass-produced by or outsourced to a large number of creators, or spread across a large network of sites, so that individual pages or sites don’t get as much attention or care?
Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?
Does this article have an excessive amount of ads that distract from or interfere with the main content?
Would users complain when they see pages from this site?
Would you be comfortable giving your credit card information to this site?

Along with the set of questions, Google's Amit Singhal also added:

One other specific piece of guidance we've offered is that low-quality content on some parts of a website can impact the whole site’s rankings, and thus removing low quality pages, merging or improving the content of individual shallow pages into more useful pages, or moving low quality pages to a different domain could eventually help the rankings of your higher-quality content.

Answering the "Feeling" Questions

We can deduce how Google can algorithmically answer quite a few of the questions (Richard Baxter did just that in a great post), but what about those "feeling" questions, like the credit card question? It's tough to say, but actually having most of the questions answered about your site might provide some valuable feedback. If you're an in-house SEO for a site that has been punished, perhaps one of the following services can be used to support a claim for a redesign or some other change in site philosophy.

Mechanical Turk/FeedbackArmy

The cheapest and most scalable way to get this feedback would have to be through Mechanical Turk. If you haven't used the service, mturk allows you to break a project down into mini tasks that mturk's users will complete for sometimes as low as one penny.

Let's assume our task is for the user to visit the site in question, then answer one of our "feeling" questions. It would take no more than a minute of a Turkers time, so a fair price would probably be around 10 cents. Set your project to run until you've got 50 answers, and for $5.00 you've got 50 responses to your question. For another $5.00 you can ask Turkers to visit a competing site and ask the same question, allowing you to compare the results between the two sites.

FeedbackArmy is another option that would work. Think of FeedbackArmy as a front-end for Mechanical Turk, as they both use the Turk workforce. You'll end up paying a bit more than if you dealt directly with Mechanical Turk, but the setup process is much simpler.

UserTesting

UserTesting is a higher-end feedback solution. For $39 you'll get a video of a user interacting with your site. UserTesting allows you to ask the user up to 4 questions after they've completed the feedback video, which would be a perfect place to ask some of our Panda questions.

Other Panda Odds and Ends

NPR did a story on Panda's effect on one company's struggle since getting Panda-fied: Google's search tweaks puts a company at risk

Matt Cutts quote from that story:

Think about something like an Apple product, when you buy an Apple product you open it up, the box is beautiful, the packaging is beautiful, the entire experience is really wonderful.

It sounds to me that this statement is really just another way of saying "large amounts of duplicated or poor content on your site can impact the entire domain".

Reversing the Effects of Panda

Tom Critchlow had this exchange with Matt Cutts on Twitter:

@mattcutts assuming a site completely reworks their site/content after panda, how long before they will regain traffic?less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyTom Critchlow
tomcritchlow

@tomcritchlow short version is that it's not data that's updated daily right now. More like when we re-run the algorithms to regen the data.less than a minute ago via web Favorite Retweet ReplyMatt Cutts
mattcutts

Moral of this story: Don't expect rankings to come right back after making changes. This is a little frustrating because webmasters can't make a change, wait to see if the change "worked", then try something else. It also might explain why there have been so few reports of sites regaining their traffic.

A Third Panda Spotted?

Rumors picked up in early May that a third Panda update may have gone live. Users were reporting wild fluctuations in rankings and other oddities in the Google cache and site search commands. Considering what Matt Cutts said above, it makes sense for Panda updates to hit suddenly and all at once, rather than over a period of time. Some are reporting that their exact match domains took a hit.

So our Panda timeline now reads:

Feb 24th, 2011: Panda rollout on Google.com searches
April 11th, 2011: Panda rollout to all English speaking Google sites. Additional tweaks made to original algorithm
May 3-6th, 2011: Third Panda update?

Have you seen any traffic changes during this time frame? Have any of your sites recovered from initially being Panda-fied?

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marți, 10 mai 2011

Elevating the debate on immigration

Infographic: Protecting Consumers Against Rising Oil Prices

Join the Conversation on Immigration Reform

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Seth's Blog : Marketing to nobody

Marketing to nobody

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luni, 9 mai 2011

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