Central Perk

luni, 20 februarie 2012

Seth's Blog : Too far from the center?

Too far from the center?

The action used to happen at court. In France, if you wanted to get ahead, you put on your outfit, called in favors and hung out near the King, because proximity was all.

If you're in Kibera, are you too far from Silicon Valley to write an app? If you live in New Zealand, are you too far outside the mainstream music world to perform a hit song? What about an author who lives 3,000 miles from New York?

The magic of our new form of communication is that it's no longer one-way. If you consume an app, you can write one. If you can read a blog, you can publish one. If you can grab an ebook, you can produce one.

The center has nothing to do with geography any longer. The center is a state of mind.

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duminică, 19 februarie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Warmongering Insanity: Canada Wants Military Base in Germany
Ron Paul Blasts Santorum's "Atrocious" Liberal Voting Record, Doubts Santorum Could Beat Obama, Says Romney and Gingrich Do Not Offer Change
Japan Posts Record Trade Deficit in January, 4th Consecutive Deficit Month
Greek CDS to Trigger in March

Warmongering Insanity: Canada Wants Military Base in Germany

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 08:34 PM PST

It's time to bring home the troops, all of them, from every country where they do not belong (which is everywhere but home).

Instead, I am saddened to report a WTF moment on warmongering insanity: Canada wants military base in Germany

Canada plans to set up a military base in Germany under a deal that will allow the expanding Canadian military to increase its global reach.

The new "operational support hub" – along with others to be set up around the world – will allow Canada to deploy troops and supplies to distant hotspots on short notice, said a joint statement by the German and Canadian governments as German Defence Minister Thomas de Maiziere paid a visit to Ottawa.

It's still not clear when the base at Cologne-Bonn Airport will be set up or how many Canadians will be there, although troop numbers will not approach the tens of thousands of Americans currently stationed in Germany.

De Maiziere told a press conference that he and his Canadian counterpart, Peter MacKay, are also discussing missile defence, the future of Afghanistan and the nuclear component of NATO defence capabilities – all topics of an upcoming NATO summit in Chicago in May.

According to the Canadian CBC television network, Germany and Canada have recently been expanding their defence cooperation as both countries grapple with prolonged military deployments to Afghanistan.

The Canadians have experimented with setting up temporary logistics hubs in Germany to support their Afghanistan mission – one successful such venture was recently launched alongside the American military in Spangdahlem, Rhineland-Palatinate.

From Temporary to Permanent Insanity

Canada has gone from temporary insanity to a more permanent form thereof, though not as bad as the US which has troops in 140 countries.

Here are a few comments to the article that I agree with ...

Supernova says: W*T*F every creep from NA want their crappy basis in Germany. Go do your military exercise on glaciers that were given to you. Get the hell out of DE!
Sebastian says: As a dual citizen, Germany/Canadian I think they should keep the military out.
Carlm says: What are those Canadians thinking, eh? Let the Germans fend for themselves, they've got the money and the know how to do the job, if they choose. But why would they when others, namely the US, are dumb enough to do it for them.
Christopheuk25 says: The Americans have about 80.0000 troops in Germany the UK yes remember them they still have 22,000 troops in Germany. There may be some French troops still in Germany though what good they would be is anyone's guess. The cost to keep US and UK troops in Germany for defense is astronomical to both countries especially in these serious economic times.

Looks like Canada could use a Ron Paul type candidate as well. On second thought, every country in the entire world does. Indeed, the world would be a safer place and taxpayers everywhere would have more money in their pockets instead of feeding the military complex.

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

Ron Paul Blasts Santorum's "Atrocious" Liberal Voting Record, Doubts Santorum Could Beat Obama, Says Romney and Gingrich Do Not Offer Change

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 07:25 PM PST

Ron Paul went after Santorum, on Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union with Candy Crowley".

"His voting record is ... from my viewpoint, an atrocious voting record -- how liberal he's been in all the things he's voted for over the many years he was in the Senate and in the House," Paul said.

He had kinder words for Mitt Romney, praising his "acceptable management style," a qualification that he said Santorum and Newt Gingrich did not share.

"But as far as issues go, I'm uncomfortable with all three of them," Paul added. "I think they are the status quo and they are not change -- they don't want to really change anything. That's what I'm offering."

Paul is certainly correct about all of them. They do not offer change. I will write in Ron Paul unless Paul is the Republican nominee.

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

Japan Posts Record Trade Deficit in January, 4th Consecutive Deficit Month

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 04:58 PM PST

At some point, I suggest now, Japan needs to stop blaming the earthquake and tsunami for its collapse in exports. Furthermore, Japan is going to have difficulty financing its debt unless its turns the situation around quickly.

That may not be likely as Japan logs record trade deficit in January

Japan posted its biggest ever trade deficit in January, topping the previous record seen during the financial crisis in 2009, Ministry of Finance data showed On Monday, underlining concerns that a persistent trade gap may undermine the country's ability to finance its debt.

The trade deficit stood at 1.475 trillion yen ($18.59 billion), against median market forecast for 1.468 trillion yen, marking a fourth straight month of deficit, as weak global demand and a strong yen hurt exports and robust fuel demand boosts imports.

Exports fell 9.3 percent from a year earlier, down for a fourth straight month. That compared with a 9.5 percent drop expected by economists, following an 8.0 percent decline in the year to December.

Japan logged an annual trade deficit in 2011 for the first time in 31 years as the March disaster, a global slowdown and a strong yen dealt a blow to an export-reliant economy.

Imports Up Exports Down

Imports rose 9.8 percent from a year ago and energy prices are one of the reasons. Japan needs alternate energy sources following the shutdown of its nuclear reactors.

While rising imports may still be blamed on the tsunami, the collapse in exports has a different reason. Europe is in a major slowdown and more US consumers are happy with GM and Ford autos.

This does not bode well for Japan.

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

Greek CDS to Trigger in March

Posted: 19 Feb 2012 10:02 AM PST

Whether or not Greece stays in the Eurozone and for how long is still debatable, but Greek CDS contracts are set to trigger next month after Greek parliament retroactively inserts collective action clauses (CACs) forcing all debt-holders to participate in the next deal.

Bear in mind that forced restructuring is the trigger, not the insertion of the CAC language itself.

The Financial Times reports Greece sets date for €200bn debt swap

Greece plans to launch a debt swap next month for private bondholders as part of a second €130bn bail-out expected to be approved on Monday by eurozone finance ministers, a government official said on Saturday.

The official said the swap, which would cover €200bn of Greek sovereign debt, would take place between March 8 and March 11, only days before Athens is due to repay a €14.4bn bond maturing on March 20.

As a first step towards completing the deal, the Greek parliament is set to pass legislation next week on so-called collective action clauses, with the aim of forcing a minority of "holdout" investors to take losses of around 70 per cent on their holdings.

The debt swap would offer bondholders a cash sweetener of 10-15 per cent of their holdings, plus new 30-year bonds with a coupon of around 3.75 per cent, which could increase if Greece achieves higher than forecast growth rates

An Athens banker with knowledge of the swap negotiations said the size of the cash payment and the final interest rate would be set by eurozone officials ahead of Monday's meeting of finance ministers.

Default Ducks Lined Up

As noted earlier, the ECB will get preferential treatment on its bonds, exchanging them at par.

After the swap, the ducks will then be lined up for the Troika to find some excuse to deny Greece payments or request still more austerity measures that Greek politicians refuse to go along with. In theory, the Greek mess could fester for years, I just highly doubt it will.

A hard default will not be as disorderly as most claim, especially from the point of view of the rest of the Eurozone. There are only $3.2 billion or so Net CDS Contracts still floating around, a trivial number these days. I have seen reports as low as $2.8 billion. Last month it was $4 billion.

Greece is in a hopeless situation until it exits the Eurozone. German officials seems to have figured that out even if the Eurocrats have not.

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

Help with Nomenclature for Links & Brand Mentions

Posted: 18 Feb 2012 12:18 AM PST

Posted by randfish

Hey gang - short blog post on a topic our product and marketing teams have been noodling around with. As many of you know, we've got our Linkscape index, which is crawled, processed and served out on a monthly basis (there's a new index about every 30 days). We also have a newer datasource, Blogscape, aka Freshscape (which is currently undergoing some repairs in Labs) which crawls a few million "fresh" RSS feeds and indexes full content.

The goal of Linkscape is to present a search-engine size link graph, while the goal with Freshscape is to provide a more realtime, full-content index of links and mentions similar to what Google Alerts does. The problem is... what to call them?

We're currently hard at work on a future iteration of the SEOmoz PRO platform that will include deeper integrations of both Linkscape and Freshscape data (so you can watch and competitively compare your wide link graph metrics as well as these fresher, primarily RSS-based links and brand mentions). As such, we need a way of segmenting these that makes sense to current and future users of PRO, and we'd love your input. The following polls have some of the names we like best right now for classifying Linkscape vs. Freshscape data:

If you have other suggestions or ideas, please feel free to include them in the comments. If there's one in particular that receives lots more thumbs up than anything in the poll, we might use your idea in the final version!

Thanks very much for the help - can't wait to show you our new stuff (though it will be more than a few months until this is ready to roll out).

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Seth's Blog : "How'd it work out?"

"How'd it work out?"

It turns out that the light fixtures a builder used in my kitchen a few years ago have all begun to fail. One by one, each one stops working.

My guess is that he has no idea, and continues to confidently install these fixtures, his go-to choice for kitchen lighting. And why not? He doesn't know that they only have a relatively short life. He doesn't know because he didn't ask.

Doctors and consultants and builders are often hesitant to ask about how something worked long after the work is done. It feels like nothing but a chance to hear a complaint.

It's not. It's a chance to show that you care. And a chance to learn how to get even better at what you do.

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sâmbătă, 18 februarie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Irish Home Loans 90+ Days Delinquent Hits 9.2%; Spain Lending Shrinks at Record Pace
Germany Draws Up Plans for Greece to Leave Euro; Athens Rehearses the Nightmare of Default; Merkel's Denial Rings Hollow
China Exports "Grim"; Bad Loans Rise in Fourth Quarter; China Cuts Bank Reserve Requirements; Looking for Miracles

Irish Home Loans 90+ Days Delinquent Hits 9.2%; Spain Lending Shrinks at Record Pace

Posted: 18 Feb 2012 10:58 PM PST

Spain and Ireland have economies in shambles over housing bubbles popped long ago. Damage continues to mount. Here are a pair of stories highlighting problems.

Bloomberg reports Irish Home Loans At Least 90 Days In Arrears Rise to 9.2%

Irish home loans in arrears for more than 90 days rose to 9.2 percent at the end of last year from 8.1 percent at the end of the third quarter, according to the country's central bank.

A total of 107,708 home mortgages, or 14 percent of the total, were either 90 days in arrears or had been restructured and were performing at the end of December, the central bank said in an e-mailed statement today.

Spain Lending Shrinks at Record Pace

In the wake of Spanish real estate collapse, Spain Lending Shrinks at Record Pace as Defaults Rise

Lending fell by 3.3 percent in December from a year before, the biggest drop since Bank of Spain records started half a century ago, the regulator said on its website today. Bad loans as a proportion of total loans rose to 7.61 percent from 7.52 percent in November as borrowing considered "doubtful" jumped to 136 billion euros ($179 billion) from about 11 billion euros five years ago, before Spain's property crash.

The prospect of a protracted recession in Spain is curbing the appetite for loans and making banks more cautious about lending. The economy may shrink 1.5 percent this year, according to central bank forecasts, while unemployment stands at 23 percent. Exane BNP Paribas predicts an economic contraction could stretch through 2013.

Banks piled up apartments and building land on their balance sheets as loans to property developers and mortgage borrowers soured during the crash. The government is talking to banks to try to reduce the number of people evicted from their homes for failing to pay their mortgages, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said in an interview with state radio RNE late yesterday.

Deposits gathered by Spanish lenders declined 4.6 percent from a year earlier, the Bank of Spain said. Deposits increased 0.5 percent from November, the regulator said.

Misery in Spain

Various austerity measures, tax hikes, and cuts to regional governments ensure that the recession in Spain will be both long and deep.

For more on the misery in Spain, please see ...

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

Germany Draws Up Plans for Greece to Leave Euro; Athens Rehearses the Nightmare of Default; Merkel's Denial Rings Hollow

Posted: 18 Feb 2012 06:32 PM PST

It's been crystal clear for weeks, if not much longer, that Germany has been actively seeking to persuade Greece to abandon the Euro.

Confirmation came on February 7 with Merkel's Official Denial "I will have no part in forcing Greece out of the euro"; Schäuble Starts Salami Tactics on German Participation, Calls for Vote .

Note carefully how the "I"s are being dotted and the "T"s crossed. The ECB refuses to take a haircut on its Greek bond holding so now we have this last-minute debt swap to bail out the ECB right before the rug is pulled.

My friend Pater Tenebrarum had an excellent writeup on the debt swap in Credit Market Watch – ECB To Participate in Greek Debt Exchange.

Pieces of the Puzzle are In Place

Greek CDS contracts are down to a mere $2.8 billion
Merkel's "Official Denial"
German Finance minister places numerous roadblocks on Greece accepting the next bailout
A Debt Sawp will enable the ECB to be made whole (at the expense of German and French taxpayers of course)
Dress Rehearsal

The Financial Times discusses the dress rehearsal in Athens rehearses the nightmare of default

On Friday afternoon, Constantine Michalos, president of the Athens chamber of commerce, sat in his office – around the corner from where protesters were hurling chunks of marble at riot police – and contemplated what was once unthinkable: that Greece would default on its debt and then be forced into a messy exit from the euro.

"All hell would break loose," Mr Michalos said, sketching a society that would quickly run short of fuel, food, medicine and necessities. "You would have social upheaval."

On Monday, eurozone finance ministers gather in Brussels to consider a €130bn bail-out that Greece counts on to avoid such a scenario.

What's likely early next week is a debt swap in which the ECB gets new bonds guaranteed in Euros, then immediately transferred to the EFSF making the ECB whole. Some relatively short time later, the Troika will refuse to lend more money to Greece forcing Greece to go back on the Drachma.

Germany Draws Up Plans for Greece to Leave Euro

Let's now get to the heart of the matter. The Telegraph reports Germany Draws Up Plans for Greece to Leave Euro

The German finance ministry is actively pushing for Greece to declare itself bankrupt and to agree a "haircut" on the bulk of its debts held by banks, a move that would be classed as a default by financial markets.

Eurozone finance ministers meet on Monday to approve the next tranche of loans from the EU and the International Monetary Fund, designed to stave off national bankruptcy while the new Greek government puts the country's finances in order.

But the severe austerity measures being demanded have caused such fury in Greece, and the cuts required are so deep, that Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, does not believe that any government would be able to implement them.

His pessimism has been tipped into despair with a secret European Commission, Central and IMF report that even if Greece made good on its promises, it would not be enough to reach the target of bringing total debt to 120 per cent of GDP by 2020.

"The idea instead is that the Greek government should officially declare itself bankrupt and begin negotiating an even bigger cut with its creditors. For Schäuble, it is more a question of when, not if."

The German finance minister's comments are certain to plunge the authorities in Athens into even deeper gloom. On Saturday they tried to sound optimistic, with a cabinet meeting to thrash out the final details of an austerity package.

With Greek morale at rock bottom, the national mood darkened yet further after armed thieves looted a museum on Friday in Olympia, birthplace of the Olympic Games, and stole bronze and pottery artifacts - just weeks after the country's National Gallery was burgled.

One Greek newspaper suggested the state could no longer properly look after the nation's immense cultural heritage. "The Greek state has gone bankrupt, let's face it," the conservative daily Kathimerini said in an editorial.

Mr Schäuble maintains that since Greece is already regarded by the financial world as bankrupt, a formal bankruptcy would have no negative consequences for other euro members.

Merkel's Denial Rings Hollow

I side with Schäuble. Moreover, I do not believe Merkel is sincere when she says "Greece going bust could cause a shock wave that buries other countries - with Spain and Italy among them".

Rather, Merkel simply does not want to be the scapegoat, preferring to make it look like this was Greece's choice, not hers. She will be a hero in Germany when Greece leaves the Euro, in spite of her façade, pretending she does not want that to happen.

The irony is shock waves will indeed come later when Portugal and Spain exit the Euro, given that all the bureaucrats still think "Greece is unique". In reality, the Euro is a failed idea with too many structural flaws to paper over.

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

China Exports "Grim"; Bad Loans Rise in Fourth Quarter; China Cuts Bank Reserve Requirements; Looking for Miracles

Posted: 18 Feb 2012 08:42 AM PST

Given the previous misguided stimulus efforts in China, it is not surprising to discover Chinese Banks' Bad Loans Rise in Fourth Quarter.

Chinese commercial banks' bad loans increased in the fourth quarter of last year, highlighting pressures the lenders face in maintaining asset quality as the economy slows.

Non-performing loans rose 20.1 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) to 427.9 billion yuan as of Dec. 31, the China Banking Regulatory Commission said in a report on its website today. Bad loans accounted for 0.96 percent of total lending, up from 0.95 percent in September and 0.17 percentage point lower than a year earlier.

Chinese banks are struggling to keep bad loans in check as the country's economic expansion slows and the housing market cools under government curbs. Lenders' non-performing loan ratio had not increased quarter-on-quarter since the end of 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

China Cuts Bank Reserve Requirements

Bad loans or not, in an attempt to keep its faltering economy together, China Cuts Bank Reserve Requirements.

China cut the amount of cash that banks must set aside as reserves for the second time in three months to spur lending as Europe's debt crisis and a cooling property market threaten economic growth.

Reserve requirements will fall by 50 basis points effective Feb. 24 the People's Bank of China said on its website this evening. Before today's move, the ratio for the nation's largest lenders stood at 21 percent.

Premier Wen Jiabao aims to steer the world's second-biggest economy through a property market slowdown and the weakest export growth since 2009, with the commerce ministry last week calling the trade outlook "grim." The International Monetary Fund said this month that China's expansion may be cut almost in half if Europe's debt crisis worsens.

"Growth remains the top concern for policy makers," Zhu Haibin, a Hong Kong-based economist for JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), said before today's release. "Monetary policy will be biased toward easing this year."

Export Slide

China's exports and imports fell for the first time in two years last month and new lending was the lowest for a January in five years.

Before today's announcement, Ken Peng, a Beijing-based economist at BNP Paribas SA, said the government needs to be "careful not to overshoot monetary loosening, as it did in the financial crisis." Lingering effects of record lending in 2009 and 2010 include the risk for banks that local government financing vehicles will default, saddling lenders with bad loans.

The government also aims to avoid fueling consumer and property prices. Inflation unexpectedly rebounded to 4.5 percent in January, accelerating for the first time in six months, as a week-long Chinese New Year holiday boosted spending and prices.

China's Problems

Inflation
Bad loans
Property bubbles
Massive problems with SOEs State Owned Enterprise
Pollution
Unsustainable growth

Loosening lending standards is the very thing that fueled property bubbles, price inflation, bad loans, and gargantuan problems with SOEs. For more on the SOE problem, please see China Financial Markets: When Will China Emerge From the Global Crisis?

Looking for Miracles

Damn the consequences, central banks everywhere inevitably respond to slowdowns with two actions: print money and loosen lending standards. That holds true for the US, China, Europe, and Japan.

There are no miracle cures because printing money and loosening lending standards are why we are in this global fiscal mess in the first place.

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

Location: A Ranking Factor in Organic SERPs

Posted: 17 Feb 2012 03:07 AM PST

Posted by MichaelC

We're all familiar with: personalization, SPYW, and the mix of organic + local + shopping + news etc. we call "universal search". Today, we're going to talk about the results that APPEAR to be pure organic, ignoring AdWords, Google Places results, image, news, video, shopping, social influenced results, etc.

Now, looking just at these ordinary organic results, you might expect that if you're signed out, cookies blocked, pws=0, and a ski mask on, you'd get the same results for a given search as you see from any one of a number of rank-checking tools.

But you'd be wrong. Well...in some cases, you'd be wrong. If your location is set (auto-detected via your IP address, or set manually by you), in some cases Google is using your location as a ranking factor.

Mini glossary

Before we dive into some examples, allow me to fabricate some terminology so we're all talking about the same things:

pure organic - this is what I'm calling the regular organic, non-Google-Places results that do NOT appear to be location-influenced
local-ish: this is what I'm calling the regular organic, non-Google-Places results that DO appear to be location-influenced

Now let's look at some examples

For each, we're going to look at the results for our location set to three US cities: Portland, OR; Chicago, IL; Brooklyn, NY. To set our location, we'll use the "Change Location" option in Google's left menu:

Set location in Google search

First, we'll start with a search phrase that we'd expect to have a strong local bias in Google Places results.

Search term: "thai restaurant"

Let's start with Portland, OR:

SERPs for thai restaurant, with location set to Portland

As expected, there's a lot of Google Places results there. But look at result #1: Typhoon. It's got reasonable PA/DA, but not enough to rank nationwide (unlike oshathai.com and sawatdee.com, which rank on page 1 if you set your location to "USA"). It's a Portland restaurant--Google might know this because of its Google Places page; also, it's got Portland in 2 of the footer links. No hCard markup on the address itself anywhere on the site however.

The 2nd result happens to be near Portland, but really located in Beaverton, and is ranking simply because of a near-match domain, in my opinion (it ranks #2 if your location is set to "USA"). Just to be sure Google wasn't still using my IP address and geo-locating me in Portland when I specified my location as "USA", I had Dr. Pete confirm this from his cave in Chicago (thanks Pete!).

In Dr. Pete's honor, we'll look at Chicago next, for this same term:

SERPs for thai restaurant, with location set to Chicago

Now this is getting a little more interesting. Results 1, 3, and 4 are clearly not there because of a Google Places page, but rather, because on-page factors would make the page do pretty well if we'd actually typed in "Chicago thai restaurant", i.e. with the location name behaving like any other keyword. Result #2 is most likely there because of its Google Places page: it's an all-Flash site, with no mention of Chicago anywhere in the HTML; and, of course, Google's helpful "show map of..." link is a clue :-).

Just to be certain, I peered into the guts of a number of these all-Flash restaurant sites using FlashProbe to see if there was location-specific text in there....and for most of them, found nothing of significance.

Next up: Brooklyn.

SERPs for thai restaurant, with location set to Brooklyn, NY

Google Places results all up top, then the rest of the page is all local-ish results. The menupages.com result is clearly not Google-Places related but has "Brooklyn" all over the page, whereas most of the rest must be getting identified via Google Places as "Brooklyn" doesn't appear on their websites at all.

Next, let's look at a search for "auto parts", where you might imagine that what's going to be useful to the user is going to be a mix of the national parts websites and also local parts stores.

Search term: "auto parts"

First up: Portland.

SERPs for auto parts, with location set to Portland

As expected: dominated by about an even mix of Google Places and pure organic. But the last two are local-ish: the first could either be Google-Places influenced, but more likely it's a near exact match domain if you considered the city name to be one of the search terms. And a near exact match page title doesn't hurt either.

Back to Chicago now:

SERPs for auto parts, with location set to Chicago

Conclusions

For some search phrases, the results that we've come to think of as "pure organic" are heavily influenced by location, in addition to the Google Places results.
There are at least two factors that Google is using to rank local-ish results:
1. the name of the searcher's current location is found in traditional on-page areas (page title, body text, etc.), and
2. because the Google Places page indicates the location matches the searcher's location.
Clearly the mix of ranking factors for Google Places and local-ish organic results is quite different, as in general, we're seeing the local-ish organic results NOT match the top local results from Google Places.
Certain search terms generate a higher % of local-ish results than others, just like certain search terms generate a higher % of image, or news, or video, or shopping results, BUT the mix of non-local organic and local-ish organic results varies not just by search term, but also by location.
It seems that it's more about a page's overall score in the ranking algorithm getting bumped by either being local (via Google Places) or containing the user's location name in traditional on-page elements, rather than slots in the page 1 results being set aside for local-ish results for a given term.

So what do I do with this information?

Directory-type websites: you've got a shot at ranking your city-specific pages...even if the user doesn't type their city name in as part of the search.
Local businesses: tune your pages for your city name as well as doing your Google Places page properly (but do NOT put your location name in your Google Places category), as you've got a shot at 2 listings on page 1: a Google Places listing, and a local-ish listing.

I look forward to seeing ideas/theories in the comments that are different from, crazier than, and more accurate than mine. Thanks to David Mihm, Tom Critchlow, Tom Anthony, Wil Reynolds, Carson Ward, Kate Morris, and Pete Meyers for their thoughts and research.

luni, 20 februarie 2012

Seth's Blog : Too far from the center?

Too far from the center?

More Recent Articles

duminică, 19 februarie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Help with Nomenclature for Links & Brand Mentions

Help with Nomenclature for Links & Brand Mentions

Seth's Blog : "How'd it work out?"

"How'd it work out?"

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 18 februarie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Location: A Ranking Factor in Organic SERPs

Location: A Ranking Factor in Organic SERPs

Mini glossary

Now let's look at some examples

Search term: "thai restaurant"

Search term: "auto parts"

Conclusions

So what do I do with this information?

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 20 februarie 2012

More Recent Articles

duminică, 19 februarie 2012

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 18 februarie 2012

Mini glossary

Now let's look at some examples

Search term: "thai restaurant"

Search term: "auto parts"

Conclusions

So what do I do with this information?

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

Subscribe to