Central Perk

joi, 1 mai 2014

Link Audit Guide for Effective Link Removals & Risk Mitigation

Posted: 30 Apr 2014 05:01 PM PDT

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of Moz, Inc.

This step-by-step guide aims to help users with the link auditing process relying on own judgment, without blindly relying on automation. Because links are still a very important ranking factor, link audits should be carried out by experienced link auditors rather than third party automated services. A flawed link audit can have detrimental implications.

The guide consists of the following sections:

How to make sure that your site's issues are links-related.
Which common misconceptions you should to avoid when judging the impact of backlinks.
How to shape a solid link removal strategy.
How to improve the backlink data collection process.
Why you need to re-crawl all collected backlink data.
Why you need to find the genuine URLs of your backlinks.
How to build a bespoke backlink classification model.
Why you need to weight and aggregate all negative signals.
How to prioritise backlinks for removal.
How to measure success after having removed/disavowed links.

In the process that follows, automation is required only for data collection, crawling and metric gathering purposes.

Disclaimer: The present process is by no means panacea to all link-related issues – feel free to share your thoughts, processes, experiences or questions within the comments section - we can all learn from each other :)

1. Rule out all other possibilities

Nowadays link removals and/or making use of Google's disavow tool are the first courses of action that come to mind following typical negative events such as ranking drops, traffic loss or de-indexation of one or more key-pages on a website.

However, this doesn't necessarily mean that whenever rankings drop or traffic dips links are the sole culprits.

For instance, some of the actual reasons that these events may have occurred can relate to:

Tracking issues – Before trying anything else, make sure the reported traffic data are accurate. If traffic appears to be down make sure there aren't any issues with your analytics tracking. It happens sometimes that the tracking code goes missing from one or more pages for no immediately apparent reason.
Content issues - E.g. the content of the site is shallow, scraped or of very low quality, meaning that the site could have been hit by an algorithm (Panda) or by a manual penalty.
Technical issues - E.g. a poorly planned or executed site migration, a disallow directive in robots.txt, wrong implementation of rel="canonical", severe site performance issues etc.
Outbound linking issues – These may arise when a website is linking out to spam sites or websites operating in untrustworthy niches i.e. adult, gambling etc. Linking out to such sites isn't always deliberate and in many cases, webmasters have no idea where their websites are linking out to. Outbound follow links need to be regularly checked because the hijacking of external links is a very common hacking practice. Equally risky are outbound links pointing to pages that have been redirected to bad neighborhood sites.
Hacking – This includes unintentional hosting of spam, malware or viruses that come as a consequence because of hacking.

In all these cases, trying to recover any loss in traffic has nothing to do with the quality of the inbound links as the real reasons are to be found elsewhere.

Remember: There is nothing worse than spending time on link removals when in reality your site is suffering by non-link-related issues.

2. Avoid common misconceptions

If you have lost rankings or traffic and you can't spot any of issues presented in previous step, you are left with the possibility of checking out your backlinks.

Nevertheless, you should avoid the falling victim of the following three misconceptions before being reassured that there aren't any issues with your sites backlinks.

a) It's not just about Penguin

The problem: Minor algorithm updates take place pretty much every day and not just on the dates Google's reps announce them, such as the Penguin updates. According to Matt Cutts, in 2012 alone Google launched 665 algorithmic updates, which averages at about two per day during the entire year!

If your site hasn't gained or lost rankings on the exact dates Penguin was refreshed or other official updates rolled out, this does not mean that your site is immune to all Google updates. In fact, your site may have been hit already by less commonly known updates.

The solution: The best ways to spot unofficial Google updates is by regularly keeping an eye on the various SERP volatility tools as well as on updates from credible forums where many site owners and SEOs whose sites have been hit share their own experiences.

SERPs volatility (credit: SERPs.com)

b) Total organic traffic has not dropped

The problem: Even though year-over-year traffic is a great KPI, when it's not correlated with rankings, many issues may remain invisible. To make things even more complicated, "not provided" makes it almost impossible to break down your organic traffic into brand and non-brand queries.

The solution: Check your rankings regularly (i.e. weekly) so you can easily spot manual penalties or algorithmic devaluations that may be attributed to your site's link graph. Make sure that you not only track the keywords with the highest search volumes but also other several mid- or even long-tail ones. This will help you diagnose which keyword groups or pages have been affected.

c) It's not just about the links you have built

The problem: Another common misconception is to assume that because you haven't built any unnatural links your site's backlink profile is squeaky-clean. Google evaluates all links pointing to your site, even the ones that were built five or 10 years ago and are still live, which you may or may not be aware of. In a similar fashion, any new links coming into your site do equally matter, whether they're organic, inorganic, built by you or someone else. Whether you like it or not, every site is accountable and responsible for all inbound links pointing at it.

The solution: First, make sure you're regularly auditing your links against potential negative SEO attempts. Check out Glen Gabe's 4 ways of carrying out negative SEO checks and try adopting at least two of them. In addition, carry out a thorough backlink audit to get a better understanding of your site's backlinks. You may be very surprised finding out which sites have been linking to your site without being aware of it.

3. Shape a solid link removal strategy

Coming up with a solid strategy should largely depend on whether:

You have received a manual penalty.
You have lost traffic following an official or unofficial algorithmic update (e.g. Penguin).
You want to remove links proactively to mitigate risk.

I have covered thoroughly in another post the cases where link removals can be worthwhile so let's move on into the details of each one of the three scenarios.

Manual penalties Vs. Algorithmic devaluations

If you've concluded that the ranking drops and/or traffic loss seem to relate to backlink issues, the first thing you need to figure out is whether your site has been hit manually or algorithmically.

Many people confuse manually imposed penalties with algorithmic devaluations, hence making strategic mistakes.

If you have received a Google notification and/or a manual 'Impacts Links' action (like the one below) appears within Webmaster Tools it means that your site has already been flagged for unnatural links and sooner or later it will receive a manual penalty. In this case, you should definitely try to identify which the violating links may be and try to remove them.

If no site-wide or partial manual actions appear in your Webmaster Tools account, your entire site or just a few pages may have been affected by an official (e.g. Penguin update/refresh) or unofficial algorithmic update in Google's link valuation. For more information on unofficial updates keep an eye on Moz's Google update history.

There is also the possibility that a site has been hit manually and algorithmically at the same time, although this is a rather rare case.

Tips for manual penalties

If you've received a manual penalty, you'll need to remove as many unnatural links as possible to please Google's webspam team when requesting a review. But before you get there, you need to figure out what type of penalty you have received:

Keyword level penalty – Rankings for one or more keywords appear to have dropped significantly.
Page (URL) level penalty – The pages no longer ranks for any of its targeted keywords, including head and long-tail ones. In some cases, the affected page may even appear to be de-indexed.
Site-wide penalty – The entire site has been de-indexed and consequently no longer ranks for any keywords, including the site's own domain name.

1. If one (or more) targeted keyword(s) has received a penalty, you should first focus on the backlinks pointing to the page(s) that used to rank for the penalized keyword(s) BEFORE the penalty took place. Carrying out granular audits against the pages of your best ranking competitors can give you a rough idea of how much work you need to do in order to rebalance your backlink profile.

Also, make sure you review all backlinks pointing to URLs that 301 redirect or have a rel="canonical" to the penalized pages. Penalties can flow in the same way PageRank flows through 301 redirects or rel="canonical" tags.

2. If one (or more) pages (URLs) have received a penalty, you should definitely focus on the backlinks pointing to these pages first. Although there are no guarantees that resolving the issues with the backlinks of the penalized pages may be enough to lift the penalty, it makes sense not making drastic changes on the backlinks of other parts of the site unless you really have to e.g. after failing a first reconsideration request.

3. If the penalty is site-wide, you should look at all backlinks pointing to the penalized domain or subdomain.

In terms of the process you can follow to manually identify and document the toxic links, Lewis Seller's excellent Ultimate Guide to Google Penalty Removal covers pretty much all you need to be doing.

Tips for algorithmic devaluations

Pleasing Google's algorithm is quite different to pleasing a human reviewer. If you have lost rankings due to an algorithmic update, the first thing you need to do is to carry out a backlink audit against the top 3-4 best-ranking websites in your niche.

It is really important to study the backlink profile of the sites, which are still ranking well, making sure you exclude Exact Match Domains (EMDs) and Partial Match Domains (PMDs).

This will help you spot:

Unnatural signals when comparing your site's backlink profile to your best ranking competitors.
Common trends amongst the best ranking websites.

Once you have done the above you should then be in a much better position to decide which actions you need to take in order to rebalance the site's backlink profile.

Tips for proactive link removals

Making sure that your site's backlink profile is in better shape compared to your competitors should always be one of your top priorities, regardless of whether or not you've been penalized. Mitigating potential link-related risks that may arise as a result of the next Penguin update, or a future manual review of your site from Google's webspam team, can help you stay safe.

There is nothing wrong with proactively removing and/or disavowing inorganic links because some of the most notorious links from the past may one day in the future hold you back for an indefinite period of time, or in extreme cases, ruin your entire business.

Removing obsolete low quality links is highly unlikely to cause any ranking drops as Google is already discounting (most of) these unnatural links. However, by not removing them you're risking getting a manual penalty or getting hit by the next algorithm update.

Undoubtedly, proactively removing links may not be the easiest thing to sell a client. Those in charge of sites that have been penalized in the past are always much more likely to invest in this activity, without any having any hesitations.

Dealing with unrealistic growth expectations it can be easily avoided when honestly educating clients about the current stance of Google towards SEO. Investing on this may save you later from a lot of troubles, avoiding misconceptions or misunderstandings.

A reasonable site owner would rather invest today into minimizing the risks and sacrifice growth for a few months rather than risk the long-term sustainability of their business. Growth is what makes site owners happy, but sustaining what has already been achieved should be their number one priority.

So, if you have doubts about how your client may perceive your suggestion about spending the next few months into re-balancing their site's backlink profile so it conforms with Google's latest quality guidelines, try challenging them with the following questions:

How long could you afford running your business without getting any organic traffic from Google?
What would be the impact to your business if you five best performing keywords stop ranking for six months?

4. Perfect the data collection process

Contrary to Google's recommendation, relying on link data from Webmaster Tools alone in most cases isn't enough, as Google doesn't provide every piece of link data that is known to them. A great justification for this argument is the fact that many webmasters have received from Google examples of unnatural links that do not appear in the available backlink data in WMT.

Therefore, it makes perfect sense to try combining link data from as many different data sources as possible.

Try including ALL data from at least one of the services with the biggest indexes (Majestic SEO, Ahrefs) as well as the ones provided by the two major search engines (Google and Bing webmaster tools) for free, to all verified owners of the sites.
Take advantage of the backlink data provided by additional third party services such as Open Site Explorer, Blekko, Open Link Profiler, SEO Kicks etc.

Note that most of the automated link audit tools aren't very transparent about the data sources they're using, nor about the percentage of data they are pulling in for processing.

Being in charge of the data to be analyzed will give you a big advantage and the more you increase the quantity and quality of your backlink data the better chances you will have to rectify the issues.

5. Re-crawl all collected data

Now that have collected as much backlink data as possible, you now need to separate the chaff from the wheat. This is necessary because:

Not all the links you have already collected may still be pointing to your site.
Not all links pose the same risk e.g Google discounts no follow links.

All you need to do is crawl all backlink data and filter out the following:

Dead links – Not all links reported by Webmaster Tools, Majestic SEO, OSE and Ahrefs are still live as most of them were discovered weeks or even months ago. Make sure you get rid of URLs that do no longer link to your site such as URLs that return a 403, 404, 410, 503 server response. Disavowing links (or domains) that no longer exist can reduce the chances of a reconsideration request from& being successful.
Nofollow links – Because nofollow links do not pass PageRank nor anchor text, there is no immediate need trying to remove them - unless their number is in excess when compared to your site's follow links or the follow/nofollow split of your competitors.

Tip: There are many tools which can help crawling the backlink data but I would strongly recommend Cognitive SEO because of its high accuracy, speed and low cost per crawled link.

6. Identify the authentic URLs

Once you have identified all live and follow links, you should then try identifying the authentic (canonical) URLs of the links. Note that this step is essential only in case you want to try to remove the toxic links. Otherwise, if you just want to disavow the links you can skip this step making sure you disavow the entire domain of each toxic-linking site rather than the specific pages linking to your site.

Often, a link appearing on a web page can be discovered and reported by a crawler several times as in most cases it would appear under many different URLs. Such URLs may include a blog's homepage, category pages, paginated pages, feeds, pages with parameters in the URL and other typical duplicate pages.

Identifying the authentic URL of the page where the link was originally placed on (and getting rid the URLs of all other duplicate pages) is very important because:

It will help with making reasonable link removal requests, which in turn can result in a higher success rate. For example, it's pretty pointless contacting a Webmaster and requesting link removals from feeds, archived or paginated pages.
It will help with monitoring progress, as well as gathering evidence for all the hard work you have carried out. The latter will be extremely important later if you need to request a review from Google.

Example 1 – Press release

In this example the first URL is the "authentic" one and all the others ones need to be removed. Removing the links contained in the canonical URL will remove the links from all the other URLs too.

Example 2 – Directory URLs

In the below example it isn't immediately obvious on which page the actual link sits on:

http://www.192.com/business/derby-de24/telecom-services/comex-2000-uk/18991da6-6025-4617-9cc0-627117122e08/ugc/?sk=c6670c37-0b01-4ab1-845d-99de47e8032a (non canonical URL with appended parameter/value pair: disregard)

http://www.192.com/atoz/business/derby-de24/telecom-services/comex-2000-uk/18991da6-6025-4617-9cc0-627117122e08/ugc/ (canonical page: keep URL)

http://www.192.com/places/de/de24-8/de24-8hp/ (directory category page: disregard URL)

Unfortunately, this step can be quite time-consuming and I haven't as yet come across an automated service able to automatically detect the authentic URL and instantly get rid of the redundant ones. If you are aware of any accurate and reliable ones, please feel free to share examples of these in the comments :)

7. Build your own link classification model

There are many good reasons for building your own link classification model rather than relying on fully automated services, most of which aren't transparent about their toxic link classification formulas.

Although there are many commercial tools available, all claiming to offer the most accurate link classification methodology, the decision whether a link qualifies or not for removal should sit with you and not with a (secret) algorithm. If Google, a multi-billion dollar business, is still failing in many occasions to detect manipulative links and relies up to some extent on humans to carry out manual reviews of backlinks, you should do the same rather than relying on a $99/month tool.

Unnatural link signals check-list

What you need to do in this stage is to check each one of the "authentic" URLs (you have identified from the previous step) against the most common and easily detectable signals of manipulative and unnatural links, including:

Links with commercial anchor text, including both exact and broad match.
Links with an obvious manipulative intent e.g. footer/sidebar text links, links placed on low quality sites (with/without commercial anchor text), blog comments sitting on irrelevant sites, duplicate listings on generic directories, low quality guest posts, widget links, press releases, site-wide links, blog-rolls etc. Just take a look at Google's constantly expanding link-schemes page for the entire and up-to-date list.
Links placed on authoritative yet untrustworthy websites. Typically these are sites that have bumped up their SEO metrics with unnatural links, so they look attractive for paid link placements. They can be identified when one (or more) of the below conditions are met:

MozRank is significantly greater than MozTrust.
PageRank if much greater than MozRank.
Citation flow is much greater than Trust Flow.

Links appearing on pages or sites with low quality content, poor language and poor readability such as spun, scraped, translated or paraphrased content.
Links sitting on domains with little or no topical relevance. E.g. too many links placed on generic directories or too many technology sites linking to financial pages.
Links, which are part of a link network. Although these aren't always easy to detect you can try identifying footprints including backlink commonality, identical or similar IP addresses, identical Whois registration details etc.
Links placed only on the homepages of referring sites. As the homepage is the most authoritative page on most websites, links appearing there can be easily deemed as paid links – especially if their number is excessive. Pay extra attention to these links and make sure they are organic.
Links appearing on sites with content in foreign languages e.g. Articles about gadgets in Chinese linking to a US site with commercial anchor text in English.
Site-wide links. Not all site-wide links are toxic but it is worth manually checking them for manipulative intent e.g. when combined with commercial anchor text or when there is no topical relevance between the linked sites.
Links appearing on hacked, adult, pharmaceutical and other "bad neighborhood" spam sites.
Links appearing on de-indexed domains. Google de-indexes websites that add no value to users (i.e. low quality directories), hence getting links from de-indexed websites isn't a quality signal.
Redirected domains to specific money-making pages. These can include EMDs or just authoritative domains carrying historical backlinks, usually unnatural and irrelevant.

Note that the above checklist isn't exhaustive but should be sufficient to assess the overall risk score of each one of your backlinks. Each backlink profile is different and depending on its size, history and niche you may not need to carry out all of the aforementioned 12 checks.

Handy Tools

There are several paid and free tools that can massively help speeding things up when checking your backlinks against the above checklist.

Cognitive SEO – Ideal for points 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9
Google Backlink Tool for Penguin & Disavow Analysis – Can greatly help with point 2 to identify unnatural links based on various footprints.
Netpeak Checker (Free) – Can extract all metrics needed in point 3 and help with WhoIs scrapping in 6.
LinkStat by MattSight – Can assist with 4.
Scrabebox – Can assist with 6 , 11.
Net Comber – Can help with points 6, 12.

Although some automated solutions can assist with points 2, 4, 5, 8 and 10, it is recommended to manually carry out these activities for more accurate results.

Jim Boykin's Google Backlink Tool for Penguin & Disavow in action

8. Weighting & aggregating the negative signals

Now that you have audited all links you can calculate the total risk score for each one of them. To do that you just need to aggregate all manipulative signals that have been identified in the previous step.

In the most simplistic form of this classification model, you can allocate one point to each one of the detected negative signals. Later, you can try up-weighting some of the most important signals – usually I do this for commercial anchor text, hacked /spam sites etc.

However, because each niche is unique and consists of a different ecosystem, a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn't work. Therefore, I would recommend trying out a few different combinations to improve the efficiency of your unnatural link detection formula.

Sample of weighted and aggregated unnatural link signals

Turning the data into a pivot chart makes it much easier to summarize the risk of all backlinks in a visual way. This will also help estimating the effort and resources needed, depending on the number of links you decide to remove.

9. Prioritizing links for removal

Unfortunately, there isn't a magic number (or percentage) of links you need to remove in order to rebalance your site's backlink profile. The decision of how much is enough would largely depend on whether:

You have already lost rankings/traffic.
Your site has been manually penalized or hit by an algorithm update.
You are trying to avoid a future penalty.
Your competitors have healthier backlink profiles.

No matter which the case is it makes common sense to focus first on those pages (and keywords), which are more critical to your business. Therefore, unnatural links pointing to pages with high commercial value should be prioritized for link removals.

Often, these pages are the ones that have been heavily targeted with links in the past, hence it's always worth paying extra attention into the backlinks of the most heavily linked pages. On the other hand, it would be pretty pointless spending time analyzing the backlinks pointing at pages with very few inbound links and these should be de-prioritized.

To get an idea of your most important page's backlink vulnerability score you should try Virante's Penguin Analysis tool.

10. Defining & measuring success

After all backlinks have been assessed and the most unnatural ones have been identified for removal, you need to figure out a way to measure the effectiveness of your actions. This would largely depend on the situation you're in (see step 3). There are 3 different scenarios:

If you have received a manual penalty and have worked hard before requesting Google to review your backlinks, receiving a "Manual spam action revoked" message is the ultimate goal. However, this isn't to say that if you get rid of the penalty your site's traffic levels will recover to their pre-penalty levels.
If you have been hit algorithmically you may need to wait for several weeks or even months until you notice the impact of your work. Penguin updates are rare and typically there is one every 3-6 months, therefore you need to be very patient. In any case, recovering fully from Penguin is very difficult and can take a very long time.
If you have proactively removed links things are vaguer. Certainly avoiding a manual penalty or future algorithmic devaluations should be considered a success, especially on sites that have engaged in the past with heavy unnatural linking activities.

Marie Haynes has written a very thorough post about traffic increases following the removal of link-based penalties.

Summary

Links may not always be the sole reason why a site has lost rankings and/or organic search visibility. Therefore before making any decision about removing or disavowing links you need to rule out other potential reasons such as technical or content issues.

If you are convinced that there are link based issues at play then you should carry out an extensive manual backlink audit. Building your own link classification model will help assessing the overall risk score of each backlink based on the most common signals of manipulation. This way you can effectively identify the most inorganic links and prioritize which ones should be removed/disavowed.

Remember: All automated unnatural link risk diagnosis solutions come with many and significant caveats. Study your site's ecosystem, make your own decisions based on your gut feeling and avoid taking blanket approaches.

…and if you still feel nervous or uncomfortable sacrificing resources from other SEO activities to spend time on link removals, I've recently written a post highlighting the reasons why link removals can be very valuable, if done correctly.

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!

Google AdWords Review Extensions – The Complete Guide

Posted: 01 May 2014 02:30 AM PDT

If you are not already harnessing the power of Review Extensions within your Google AdWords account, then you are most definitely missing a trick.

In this guide I will be showing you what review extensions actually are, how to set them up and how to optimise them. I'll also share with you some real data from one of the accounts I manage that has the extensions installed.

You, as the business owner or account manager, already know that your company is great, so why not spread the word with Google AdWords Review Extensions? Review Extensions let your potential customers know that a respectable third-party source agrees with your view. Adding a paraphrase or exact quote from a positive review, award, or accolade not only promotes a positive “third-party” endorsement of your company and/or service, but also provides you with greater real-estate when it comes to the SERP. It also increases the chance of a customer clicking on your ad rather than on a competitor's ad that does not have a Review Extension enabled.

How Google AdWords Review Extensions work:

There are two types of Review Extensions – quote and paraphrased. You can use either, so as long as they are attributed and linked to the published source where the review is displayed.

Here’s how an ‘exact quote’ review extension looks:

And here is how a paraphrased review extension looks:

(Image credits to the good old Example.com)

If you have a review written in your creative adtext, migrate it to Review Extensions now and free up valuable space for further keyword insertion to help promote your product or service.

However, you should be aware that Review Extensions are not always displayed. There are a number of factors that attribute to the extension showing, including your bid, ad relevance and many more wonderful Google algorithms.

Don’t have Review Extensions installed? Let’s walk through it now…

(If you do already, bravo, you can skip this bit)

Rules, regulations, red tape, rules etc. etc. etc.:

Review Extensions are currently only supported in English (désolé).
Reviews should be business related as a whole, and not attributed to a particular product. Why promote a product when you should be promoting how great your company is, right?
Reviews from individuals are not allowed.
Include the year for an annual award.
Ensure you have permission from the third-party to utilise the review; don’t get yourself in trouble with the Google Policy Police.
Best practice, keep the Review Extension text out of the creative adtext
Press releases are not allowed.
Amending the review from the original text is also a no-no.

How to create Review Extensions: (better than an Ikea DIY manual)

Sign in to your AdWords account
Click the Campaigns tab.
On the left-side navigation, choose the campaign you’d like to add the review to.
Click the Ad extensions tab.
From the View drop-down menu, choose Review Extensions.
Click Account extension, Campaign extensions or Ad group extension, based on which level you want the extension to show, and then click the + Extension button.
To create a new review, click the + New review button at the bottom of the window. (You can also add an existing review to your campaign by clicking the arrow next to the review you want to add.)
In the "New review" window, select the "Format" of the review, either "Paraphrased" or "Exact quote". Write the paraphrased or quoted review in the "Text" field and the name of the review's source in the "Source" field. Remember, you are limited to no more than 67 characters for these two fields combined. Include the URL of the web page where the review can be found in the "Source URL" field. The Source URL must match the Source name.
Click Save.
The new review will appear in the window under "Selected reviews". Click Save.
Google reviews all Review Extension submissions. This can take a day or two, so be patient; it’s worth it.

Here's how to see basic reporting statistics for your review extensions (you want to see how they’re performing, right?):

Choose the campaign or ad group that contains the review that you're interested in.
Click the Ad extensions tab.
Choose View: Review Extensions from the drop-down menu.
You'll see a table with the associated reviews and performance statistics including clicks, impressions and click-through rate (CTR).

NB: You can also filter your statistics by clicking the Segment drop-down menu and selecting the type of stats you're interested in. My favourite is ‘Click type’, which will indicate where users are clicking on your ad – the extension, sitelink extension, main headline etc. (Note: Click type only reports metrics on ads whereby the review extension was displayed).

Real findings:

(real data, real report, I couldn’t think of a catchy sub-heading here)

So, I thought it might be a good idea to share some metrics with you from a live account that I manage… what is it they say? ‘The proof is in the pudding’?

Click to enlarge.

In the image above, I am comparing the Overall Performance of each campaign, whereby all data is reported, against the Review Extension Performance data only.

In summary:

CTR increased from 3.80% to 8.39% on average.
Average CPC decreased from $1.22 to $1.16.
Average Ad Position increased from 4.1 to 2.4.
Cost / Conversion decreased from $67.89 to $65.67 whilst maintaining a relatively identical Conversion Rate of 1.77% to 1.80%.

So, the results look pretty good eh? Now I am not saying that all of you will see the same results, but I would certainly suggest that you give it a try today.

Now, I’m sure some of you are saying that the data in the image above looks great, but what were the costs of the extension? Well, wait for it….. £0.00. A click on the review extension does not cost a penny, thrupenny bit, shilling, nada. As always though, you are charged a standard CPC for anywhere else a user clicks on your ad, headline, sitelink etc.

So there we have it, a complete guide to review extensions, what they are, the benefits, how to set them up, monitoring and some real-life results.

I hope you have enjoyed this post and, as always, I welcome your feedback. Have you recently experimented with review extensions? Let me know how they have performed for you.

Flickr Image Credit

The post Google AdWords Review Extensions – The Complete Guide appeared first on White.net.

Seth's Blog : Get rich (quick)

Get rich (quick)

Enrich your world by creating value for others.

Enrich your health by walking twenty minutes a day.

Enrich your community by contributing to someone, without keeping score.

Enrich your relationships by saying what needs to be said.

Enrich your standing by trusting someone else.

Enrich your organization by doing more than you're asked.

Enrich your skills by learning something new, something scary.

Enrich your productivity by rejecting false shortcuts.

Enrich your peace of mind by being trusted.

The connection economy pays dividends in ways that the industrial one rarely did.

• Email to a friend •

miercuri, 30 aprilie 2014

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

3D Printer Builds 10 Small Houses a Day for $5,000 Each
Separatism Spreads; Kiev Admits Losing Grip in Eastern Ukraine; Putin Threatens to Retaliate Against Sanctions
Japan Output and New Orders Decline at Fastest Pace Since 2012; Abenomics in Review

3D Printer Builds 10 Small Houses a Day for $5,000 Each

Posted: 30 Apr 2014 11:58 AM PDT

Chinese construction firms can 3-D print 10 low-cost houses a day with machines that add layer after layer of quick-drying cement in a process called "contour crafting".

A private company in east China recently used a giant printer set to print out ten full-sized houses within just one day.

The stand-alone one-story houses in the Shanghai Hi-Tech Industrial Park look just like ordinary buildings. They were created using an intelligent printing array in east China's city of Suzhou.

The array consists of four printers that are 10 meters wide and 6.6 meters high and use multi-directional automated sprays. The sprays emit a combination of cement and construction waste that is used to print building walls layer-by-layer.

Ma Yihe, the inventor of the printers, said he and his team are especially proud of their core technology of quick-drying cement. Ma said he hopes his printers can be used to build skyscrapers in the future.

This technology allows for the printed material to dry rapidly. Ma has been cautious not to reveal the secrets of this technology.

MarketWatch provides this image of the 33 foot wide by 22 foot tall building.

To label aesthetics as "unappealing" would be a huge understatement. But what do you expect for a house that costs $5,000?

2,500 Sq Ft Printed Home

Using similar technology, and larger printers, MSN notes 3D Printer Can Build 2,500 Square Foot House in 24 Hours.

The University of Southern California is testing a giant 3D printer that could be used to build a whole house in under 24 hours.

Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis has designed the giant robot that replaces construction workers with a nozzle on a gantry, this squirts out concrete and can quickly build a home according to a computer pattern. It is "basically scaling up 3D printing to the scale of building," says Khoshnevis. The technology, known as Contour Crafting, could revolutionise the construction industry.

As Khoshnevis points out, if you look around you pretty much everything is made automatically these days – "your shoes, your clothes, home appliances, your car. The only thing that is still built by hand are these buildings."

"It's a CAD/CAM solution," says Khoshnevis. The buildings are "designed on computer and built by a computer". Contour Crafting hopes to generate "entire neighbourhoods built at a fraction of the cost, in a fraction of the time, far more safely, and with architectural flexibility that is unprecedented."

The Contour Crafting solution also produces much stronger structures than traditional building methods. According to Contour Crafting the tested wall is a 10,000PSI (pounds per square inch) strength compared to an average of 3,000PSI for a regular wall.

They would not be as homogenous as the suburbs, says Khoshnevis, because "every [Contour Crafted] building can be different. They do not have to look like track houses because all you have to do is change a computer program" to get a completely different house.

Because the buildings are printed with a nozzle, they can also be far more creative than current constructions. "The walls can be curved" says Khoshnevis and "you can have very exotic architectural features without incurring additional costs."

Will builders be out of work?

What the implications are for builders is, of course, a major concern. Building and construction has largely escaped the construction line automation of other industries and remains solid employment for millions worldwide. According to the International Labour Organisation construction employs nearly 110 million people worldwide and "plays a major role in combating the high levels of unemployment and in absorbing surplus labour from the rural areas."

That's a lot of people Contour Crafting could make redundant, which raises the question of whether the system could do more harm than good.

Contour Crafting

The idea that such technology would do more harm than good is of course preposterous. Falling prices and improved productivity should always be welcome. With this technology, we can easily build "affordable homes".

Here is an interesting video on the "contour crafting" process.

Improvements in technology inevitably raise standards of living. Curiously, people are concerned about it. Central banks will even attempt to fight it.

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

Separatism Spreads; Kiev Admits Losing Grip in Eastern Ukraine; Putin Threatens to Retaliate Against Sanctions

Posted: 30 Apr 2014 10:19 AM PDT

Pro-Russia forces seized administration buildings in Horlivka today forcing Kiev to admit reality. Please consider Kiev Admits Losing Grip in Eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine's acting president on Wednesday admitted that government authorities had lost control of the eastern Donetsk and Lugansk provinces to separatists, and said the challenge now was to "prevent terrorism from spreading to other regions".

Oleksandr Turchynov also warned that pro-Russian groups were planning "subversive acts" in six other eastern and southern Ukrainian regions during Thursday's May Day holiday, formerly one of the biggest events in the Soviet calendar for mass marches.

In Lugansk, capital of Ukraine's easternmost province, gunmen were on Wednesday in control of several government buildings after easily overpowering them late on Tuesday, using weapons and explosives from the state security headquarters, which they seized control of earlier this month.

Lugansk's regional administration building was also in separatist hands after a crowd easily seized control on Tuesday from police, who remained in the building and surrendered control. Residents of the depressed mining city, population 450,000, approached men guarding the building with gifts of cigarettes.

"We saw policemen in anti-riot gear guarding the building, but they didn't put up any resistance to the occupiers," Andrea Cellino, leader of an Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe monitoring team in Lugansk who witnessed Tuesday's government building takeover. "The population is mostly either sympathetic or openly supports the occupiers and their motives."

Ukraine Vows to Stanch Separatism

Bloomberg reports Ukraine Vows to Stanch Separatism as Militants Spread

Ukraine's acting president vowed to create a special police force to staunch the spread of separatism in the country's east, vowing to overcome unrest he says is stoked by Russia and hold an election slated for May 25.

As part of a creeping campaign by pro-Russian militants across Ukraine's east, armed men seized government buildings in the city of Horlivka today, while news service Unian reported a member of the Donetsk electoral commission was kidnapped by "terrorists." The U.S. and EU say Putin's government is helping the separatists to destabilize the country of 45 million people in the run-up to next month's presidential ballot in their worst standoff with Russia since the Cold War.

"Our first and main task is to prevent the spread of the terrorist threat to other regions," Ukraine's acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said in Kiev today. "Because there is a real threat of Russia starting a continental war, our army is on full combat alert."

About 1,000 gunmen have seized buildings in more than 10 cities in eastern Ukraine, according to the country's Interior Ministry. About 20 seized the Horlivka city council and regional police headquarters today, Interfax said. Yesterday, hundreds of activists wielding sticks and waving Russian flags stormed the Luhansk regional administration.

Putin Threatens to Retaliate Against Sanctions

Europe wants to "do something" as long as it does not cost anything, an impossible challenge. For example, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said today that officials should make sure any future actions don't harm the European economy.

Meanwhile, Putin Threatens to Retaliate for Sanctions.

President Vladimir Putin's threats to retaliate for further sanctions on Russia set the stage for escalating economic warfare that may have painful effects for U.S. and European companies.

"I would expect Putin to make life somewhat difficult for foreign companies in Russia whose governments are doing the sanctioning," said Gary Hufbauer, a sanctions specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Putin's warning yesterday of consequences for U.S. and European companies came hours after the EU announced new measures over the crisis in Ukraine. His comments took aim at the interests of companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), which has drilling rights to 11.4 million net acres (46,134 square kilometers) in Russia, the company's biggest single cache of drilling rights outside the U.S. Exxon also is planning Arctic drilling in an alliance with state-owned OAO Rosneft.

"The Russian government has already proposed some retaliatory steps," Putin said at a Supreme Eurasian Economic Council summit in Minsk. "I consider these not necessary. But if something like this continues, then of course we will have to consider who's working and how in the Russian Federation, in the key sectors of the Russian economy, including energy."

Hufbauer said in an interview that Putin's response is likely to be limited, because any pain he inflicts on Russia's trade partners and investors can boomerang on him. "I don't think he'll over-escalate, but he'll show he can play the sanctions game, as well."

Economic retaliation by Putin -- whether punishing foreign investors or cutting off gas exports to Europe -- would rebound back to Russia, harming its $2 trillion economy more than the $16.8 trillion U.S. economy or the EU's $17.4 trillion gross domestic product, according to Michael Corgan, a professor of international relations at Boston University.

Negative Sum Game

I don't think it is at all clear that Russia would lose more than Europe if it shuts off gas, but it is clear that both Europe and Russia would suffer.

If the US turns the screws hard enough, Russia will respond in some fashion.

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

Japan Output and New Orders Decline at Fastest Pace Since 2012; Abenomics in Review

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 11:51 PM PDT

Abenomics said Japanese stimulus efforts would offset tax hikes. I disagreed. Although one month is not proof, Markit reports Japanese Output and New Orders Decline For First Time in 14 Months Following Tax Hike

Key points:

Output falls at fastest pace since December 2012
New orders also down; exports decline slightly
Rate of job creation accelerates to highest since February 2007

Summary: Japanese manufacturing firms saw a decline in output for the first time in 14 months in April. Alongside this fall in output was a deterioration in new orders which also decreased for the first time in 14 months. In both cases, firms linked the reductions to the rise in the sales tax.

The headline seasonally adjusted Markit/JMMA Purchasing Managers' Index™ (PMI™ ) – a composite indicator designed to provide a single - figure snapshot of the performance of the manufacturing economy – posted at 49.4 in April, down from 53.9 in March. This was the first time in 14 months that the Japanese manufacturing sector saw a deterioration in business conditions. Output fell to the greatest extent seen since December 2012.

The main contributor according to anecdotal evidence was a decline in demand. Indeed, similar to output, new orders decreased, with evidence suggesting the increase in the sales tax was the main factor behind lower new orders, as clients had brought forward purchases in March to avoid paying additional costs the following month.

Japan Manufacturing PMI

Abenomics in Review

One month does not present a complete picture. However, Abenomics has so far resulted in a declining Japanese balance of trade, inflation (foolishly wanted), little to no increase in exports, and soaring import costs (especially food and energy).

For those results, many leading world economists think prime minister Shinzo Abe is a hero. In contrast, I think he is a fool.

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

The Best Costumes From Wondercon 2014

Posted: 30 Apr 2014 06:02 PM PDT

Comic conventions have now become a destination for people who want to show off their best costumes. These are some of the best costumes you're ever going to see.

Iron Man's House is up for Sale

Posted: 30 Apr 2014 05:46 PM PDT

Are you a big fan of the Iron Man films? Do you want to live in the house Tony Stark owned in the movie? For only 14 million dollars it can be all yours.