miercuri, 14 martie 2012

A Visual Guide to Rich Snippets

A Visual Guide to Rich Snippets


A Visual Guide to Rich Snippets

Posted: 13 Mar 2012 01:57 PM PDT

Posted by snarayanasamy

Rich snippets -- we see them everywhere in the SERPs, with some verticals having a higher abundance of them than others. For the average searcher, these rich snippets help show them what they're searching for is within reach on a particular site.

A few benefits of rich snippets include:

1) Drawing a user's attention to your relevant result.

2) Providing instant information as related to their query.

3) Increasing click-through rates and lessen the amount of bounces due to not searchers not finding the content they were looking for.

For companies leveraging content strategies, there's an especially large benefit of having mark up for authors being displayed in the SERPs with the emergence of AuthorRank. For instance, a "know" based query (informational search) that displays an author with a photo, name, and a link other articles they've written creates a feeling of trust and authority. It can also encourage them to click-through and read other articles they're written, essentially making that author a new resource. 

As another example, "do" based queries, such as going to a concert or event, can end up displaying results from ticket sites that have a quick and instant snippet breakdown to help them in the purchasing process. 

In order to consolidate and decode some of the information you need to sift through when learning about rich snippets, we've created this visual guide to walk through the basics, fundamental types, implementation, and benefits of utilizing them.   

Enjoy! Some food for thought: How do you see rich snippets evolving in the future?

Rich Snippets Guide

Feel free to display this Infographic on your site. Just please use the code below. Thanks!

<a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-visual-guide-to-rich-snippets"><img src="http://static.seomoz.org/user_files/blog_imges/Rich-Snippets-Guide.png" alt="Guide to Rich Snippets by BlueGlass Interactive on SEOmoz" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-visual-guide-to-rich-snippets">Visual Guide to Rich Snippets on SEOmoz</a> created by <a href="http://www.blueglass.com">BlueGlass Interactive</a>.

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Watch Live: UK Arrival Ceremony

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
 

Watch Live: UK Arrival Ceremony

Outside the White House, the Union Jack is flying alongside the flags of the United States and the District of Columbia on street lamps down Pennsylvania Avenue.

This morning, President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will welcome Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife, Samantha Cameron, to the White House with a formal arrival ceremony at 9 am EDT and a State Dinner to follow this evening.

Watch the arrival ceremony on WhiteHouse.gov/Live starting at 9 a.m. EST. WhiteHouse.gov/live

Check out a slideshow of notable British visitors to the White House since World War II.

In Case You Missed It

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

From the Archives: Notable British Visitors to the White House Since World War II
A slideshow from the White House Historical Society looks back at some of the special meetings between U.S. Presidents and U.K. leaders over the past decades

The U.S. Will Bring a New Trade Case Against China
President Obama is taking additional steps to ensure that American products are competing on a level playing field with the rest of the world.

An Announcement From FEMA and AmeriCorps
The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Corporation for National and Community Service announce a new partnership designed to strengthen the nation's ability to respond to and recover from disasters.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Standard Time (EST).

9:00 AM: The President, the Vice President, the First Lady, and Dr. Biden welcome Prime Minister Cameron and Mrs. Cameron to the White House WhiteHouse.gov/live

10:00 AM: The President holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Cameron

10:35 AM: The President holds an expanded bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Cameron and Official U.S. and Official U.K. Delegations; the Vice President also attends

12:05 PM: The President and Prime Minister Cameron hold a joint press conference WhiteHouse.gov/live

7:00 PM: The President and the First Lady welcome Prime Minister Cameron and Mrs. Cameron WhiteHouse.gov/live

7:30 PM: The President and the First Lady take official photo with Prime Minister Cameron and Mrs. Cameron Grand Staircase

8:30 PM: The President and the First Lady attend the State Dinner with Prime Minister Cameron and Mrs. Cameron; The President and Prime Minister Cameron will each deliver a toast; the Vice President and Dr. Biden also attend

9:40 PM: The President and the First Lady attend the State Dinner Reception with Prime Minister Cameron and Mrs. Cameron

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

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Seth's Blog : Speaking when they care (reorganizing the economics and attitude of customer service)

Speaking when they care (reorganizing the economics and attitude of customer service)

Advertisers struggle to be heard through the noise. Customer service reps, on the other hand, can whisper.

A few organizations have figured out how to turn customer service into a marketing opportunity and thus a profit center. They figure if they've got your attention, if they're talking to you at a moment when you care a great deal, they can turn that into an opportunity to delight. And being delighted is remarkable and worth talking about.

That means that if your organization has a stall, deny and avoid policy when it comes to customer interaction, you will almost certainly be defeated if a competitor comes up with a scalable way to delight.

Overseas call centers and online chat handled by untrained workers with no incentives seem like clever ways to cut costs during stressful times. What they actually are is scalable engines of annoyance, time-sucking processeses that raise expectations and then totally dash them. Better to not even have a phone number. (You can't call Google but you don't want to call Adobe--which one generates more animus--the inability to call, or the promise, unfilled, of respect and thoughtful help?)

Or consider: Some airlines are starting to realize that a delayed or cancelled flight is actually a chance to earn some remarkability. In the two hours that someone is stranded, they're paying very careful attention to your brand. What are you doing? Notifying them by email that the flight is late, offering them free wifi, even giving them a link to a free book or movie online--none of that costs more than caring...all of them important opportunities to be heard and remembered.

Investing in delight via customer service is cheap to experiment with and easy to prove. Just siphon off 1% of your calls to a trained person who actually cares and wants to help--and see what happens to customer satisfaction and word of mouth. Cancel a few TV ads and you can pay for it--soon it will pay for itself.

 

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marți, 13 martie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


Cheap Loans From the ECB: What Banks Have Borrowed the Most as Percentage of Funded Assets?

Posted: 13 Mar 2012 12:40 PM PDT

Inquiring minds might be interested in knowing which banks have borrowed the most in absolute and percentage terms from the ECB via LTROs.

Courtesy of Google Translate, please consider a Ranking of Borrowings from the ECB.
After two rounds of cheap financing of the ECB European banks via LTRO (3-year loans at 1% interest) the ECB Balance sheet looks like a Botero sculpture, swollen to represent over 30% of euro area GDP.

Detail is now available that shows the level of funding requested by each bank individually. According to estimates by UBS, in a ranking where it relates the amount of funds borrowed to balance the size of each entity, the list of financial institutions that have most filled their balance sheets with cheap loans from the ECB.

Euro System Borrowing by Institution



The Portuguese Commercial Bank is in first place, followed by Bankinter, Bank of Ireland, the Portuguese also Holy Spirit, the Banco de Sabadell, Mediobanca, and BFA (Bankia). In these first 8 entities, the ECB's cheap financing represents over 10% of bank assets, a huge figure.

Graphic via Finacial Times Alhpaville
Euro System Names n' Numbers

A link back to Alphaville Euro System Names n' Numbers sports an additional chart by absolute numbers.



The reference to Botero piqued my curiosity. Here is a link to 17 pages of Botero Sculpture Images.

I believe I found the perfect one that represents Mario Draghi's LTRO programs.



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


Video: "Day Made of Glass" Provides Fascinating Look at Future Possibilities for Photovoltaic Glass

Posted: 13 Mar 2012 09:33 AM PDT

Here is a very interesting video that came my way called a "Day Made of Glass". It is effectively an ad for Corning, but the technology shown is well worth a play.



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


How Far Have Home Prices "Really" Fallen? HPI Upcoming Changes; HPI and the CPI

Posted: 13 Mar 2012 12:01 AM PDT

Various charts show home prices are now back to levels last seen in September-October 2002. I posted such a chart constructed from the LPS Home Price Index (HPI) in LPS Home Price Index Shows U.S. Home Prices Accelerated Decline.

Real vs. Nominal Prices

Nominal prices are arguably not the best way of looking at things. I asked Doug Short at Advisor Perspectives if he would chart "Real" home prices. His answer was "In a heartbeat, if I can get the data".

"Real" in this case means "Inflation Adjusted" price, nominal simply means the "Current Price".

After receiving an Excel spreadsheet of the HPI data from LPI, I passed the spreadsheet on to Doug Short. I suspect he did not know what he was getting into, because once I supplied the data, I started asking for all kinds of charts.

I asked Doug for help for the simple reason his charts and the charts by Calculated Risk are in a class of their own. Advisor Perspectives frequently uses my articles so I went that route.

Note that "Inflation Adjusted" itself can mean many things, and indeed this post will take a look at "Real" home prices from several angles.

HPI Nominal Price, PCE Adjusted, and CPI Adjusted



click on any chart for sharper image

The two most common ways to adjust for price inflation are the CPI (consumer price index) and the PCE (personal consumption expenditures index). We use the CPI in the rest of the charts below because individual components' percentage weights are readily available.

HPI Comparison

  • Nominal prices have fallen to a level first surpassed in August 2002
  • PCE adjusted prices have fallen to a level first surpassed in March 1999
  • CPI adjusted prices have fallen to a level first surpassed in March 1998

That sounds pretty dramatic and it is. However, I propose the bubble is bigger and the crash worse than using the CPI deflator straight up.

CPI Flaws

One of the biggest flaws in the CPI is its measure of home prices. The CPI does not track hope prices per se, rather the BLS uses a concept called "Owners' Equivalent Rent" (OER) as a proxy for home prices.

The BLS determines OER by asking the question "If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it would rent for monthly, unfurnished and without utilities?"

If you find that preposterous, I am sure you are not the only one. Regardless, rental prices are simply not a valid measure of home prices.

Indeed, home prices rose three standard deviations from rental prices, a sure sign of a a housing bubble, and the Fed ignored it every step of the way.

I propose home prices straight up do belong in the CPI. Homes may have a longer lifetime than other consumables, but homes (not the land they are sitting on), are indeed consumed. Without maintenance, painting, upkeep, air conditioning, heat, etc., homes will slowly but surely rot away.

Whether or not one holds that view, it is absurd for the Fed to have ignored (more precisely cheered) the housing boom every step of the way.

Please check out the following graph of OER compared to the HPI.

OER vs. HPI



To the Fed, everything looked "hunky-dory" in the face of the biggest housing bubble in history because they paid attention to OER rather than actual prices.

OER Weighting in CPI

OER has the single largest weight of any component in the CPI, at 23.957%.



Let's play "What If?" Specifically, "What if the BLS used actual home prices instead of OER in calculating the CPI?"

I asked Doug Short to graph that concept. By the way, I did this once before using Case-Shiller data with help of a friend "TC" who also put together some fine charts made by substituting the Case-Shiller index for OER in the CPI.

I called that result Case-Shiller CPI. See CPI and CS-CPI vs. Fed Funds Rate from November, 2008 for a description of Case-Shiller CPI.

Let's call these results HPI-CPI.

HPI-CPI



The Fed kept interest rates at historic lows between 2002 and mid-2004. The last two rate cuts by Alan Greenspan were not justified at all, by any measure, and downright absurd considering the bubble brewing in housing prices vs. rent.

Allegedly the Fed held interest rates low to prevent "deflation". Instead it exacerbated "price deflation".

Clearly the Fed had no idea what it was doing, and still doesn't, (unless of course you believe this is a Fed conspiracy to deliberately screw the middle class). The result is bubbles and crashes of ever-increasing amplitude as the Fed chases its own tail. New bubbles have formed in the stock market and commodities right now.

HPI Upcoming Changes

Changes are coming up next month in the calculation of the HPI index. Here is a relevant snip from LPS via email.
"Beginning next month, LPS will be basing its findings on an updated view of market structure to more accurately reflect the dramatically increased proportion of short sales transactions as compared to historical norms," said Raj Dosaj, who leads the HPI team for LPS Applied Analytics. "Starting with January 2012 transactions, the base HPI will shift, as short sales are excluded; though given the fact that there were few short sales prior to 2007, the impact will be most pronounced on data from that point forward."
Fed Policies Devastated the Middle Class

Inflation benefits those with first access to money, namely the banks and the already wealthy. In the case of housing, by the time money was made available to those lowest on the totem pole, a housing crash was baked into the cake.

In that manner, Fed policies have devastated the middle class, complete with bank bailouts at taxpayer expense, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts at taxpayer expense, and the robbing by inflation of those on fixed income struggling to get by on 0% interest rates on their savings while the Fed holds interest rates at zero.

This concludes part one of two-part series on HPI data, the CPI, and interest rates. Still more charts and an analysis of treasury rates are coming up shortly.

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


Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Meet the Slovak Batman

Posted: 13 Mar 2012 02:20 PM PDT

The Slovak town of Dunajska Streda has its own local superhero, Zoltan Kohari. Zoltan is a 26-year-old guy living in a derelict house without heat, water and electricity. He wanted to make a difference in his hometown so he equipped himself with an all-leather Batman suit and some homemade gadgets and started patrolling the streets.

Although he doesn't fight criminals, he waters people's plants, trims various lawns, helps to clean up the local area by picking up trash and he also calls the police whenever he sees anything suspicious in the neighborhood. Local dwellers like Zoltan and sometimes give him food in return for his efforts.
































Photo credit: Radovan Stoklasa / Reuters


Exotic Dancers of the 1890s

Posted: 13 Mar 2012 02:08 PM PDT

Dr. Charles H. McCaghy, a professor of sociology at Bowling Green State University, specializes in the study of deviance and his interest in the topic has led to a collection of materials documenting the history of stripping.

These portraits of exotic dancers of the 19th century probably appeared scandalous at one time, but they are SFW. What is fascinating is that, outside of wearing corsets, these professional exotic dancers display the size and shape of average women who would never be offered a professional position in entertainment today.












































Via: Retronaut


Anatomy of Sun Storms & Solar Flares [Infographic]

Posted: 13 Mar 2012 01:19 PM PDT



The sun is an active star, one that teems with flares and solar eruptions on an 11-year solar weather cycle. See how solar flares, sun storms and huge eruptions from the sun work in this SPACE.com infographic.

Click on Image to Enlarge.
See how solar flares, sun storms and huge eruptions from the sun work in this SPACE.com infographic.
Source: Space.com


Russian Fox Licks Window

Posted: 12 Mar 2012 11:06 PM PDT



It seems Firefox has encountered a problem with windows.

The Russian site where the video was first posted, suspect the fox is part of a mini-zoo, along with the birds honking in the background.


Kaarina Kaikkonen Hangs Laundry to Create Art

Posted: 12 Mar 2012 09:58 PM PDT

Finnish artist Kaarina Kaikkonen gives new meaning to hanging your laundry out to dry, with her site-specific installations which use recycled secondhand clothing.

According to the Liverpool Daily Post, the artist initially worked with men's jackets, shirts, and ties, finding inspiration from memories of her late father.

In recent years, Kaikkonen has turned her attention onto the memory of her late mother, utilizing women's clothing and shoes.
























Via: environmentalart


Cockatiel Really Loves Chocolate

Posted: 12 Mar 2012 05:20 PM PDT

This cockatoo sure loves chocolate. When I saw this picture, no joke, laughed so hard I started crying. Cause the little bird is all like, "Forget it. I'm going to drink some damn chocolate from the fountain like a boss."