joi, 20 septembrie 2012

Damn Cool Pics

Damn Cool Pics


Gangnam Style from Hitler [Video]

Posted: 19 Sep 2012 09:18 PM PDT


Check out this clips of Adolf Hitler from the famous German film Downfall mashed with a viral Korean-pop anthem by PSY. Not only is this video hilarious, but catchy too.


New on Mozcast - 5 Real-time Top-view Metrics

New on Mozcast - 5 Real-time Top-view Metrics


New on Mozcast - 5 Real-time Top-view Metrics

Posted: 19 Sep 2012 08:02 PM PDT

Posted by Dr. Pete

When we started reporting the Google “weather” on MozCast, we knew that one number could never paint the entire picture of something as complex as the Google algorithm. Over the last few months, we’ve been exploring other ways to look at ranking data from high altitude, and have reported on metrics like domain diversity and EMD influence. Today, I’m happy to announce that we’re rolling out five of these “top-view” metrics on MozCast, updated daily.

From the new “METRICS” page (top menu), you’ll see five tabs:

Domain Diversity, SERP Count, EMD Influence, PMD Influence, Daily Big 10

Each metric defaults to a 30-day view, but you can also see 60-day and 90-day data. Please note that Y-axes all auto-scale to emphasize daily changes, so make sure to note the scale when interpreting this data. I trust you all to be grown-ups and draw your own conclusions.

So, let’s dive right into the five top-view metrics…

(1) Domain Diversity

The domain diversity graph shows the percentage of URLs across the MozCast data set that have unique subdomains. Put more simply, it’s the number of unique subdomains divided by the number of total URLs/rankings. The more diversity, the less SERP “crowding” – here’s a 30-day view:

Domain Diversity Graph (30-day)

Keep in mind that the range over the past 30 days has been pretty narrow (less than 1%), so let’s take a look at the broader, 90-day view:

Domain Diversity Graph (90-day)

You can hover over any data point for dates and more precise percentages. Here, you can see that diversity increased when Google rolled out 7-result SERPs (from about 8/12-8/14), but has gradually declined over the past 90 days. When we started collecting data in early April, domain diversity was closer to 61%, but it dropped significantly after the Penguin update (on 4/24).

On September 14, Matt Cutts announced on Twitter that Google had made a change to improve SERP diversity:

Matt Cutts tweet

We saw a small bump (about 0.4%) from 9/6 to 9/9, but otherwise have no evidence for major improvements. Please keep in mind that this is one data set and one way of measuring “diversity” – I’m not calling a Matt a liar, and I’d welcome other analyses and points of view. My goal is to create transparency where we currently have very little of it.

(2) SERP Count (“Shrinkage”)

Over a roughly 2-day period in mid-August, Google rolled out 7-result SERPs (for page 1), and our data shows that it impacted roughly 18% of the queries we track. We originally reported this as the number of SERPs with <10 results, but that presented two problems: (1) less results made the graph go up – which is a bit confusing, and (2) that metric doesn’t change if the result count changes. In other words (hat tip to Moz teammate Myron on this one), if all of the 7-result SERPs suddenly changed to 6-result SERPs, our original metric would never show it. So, we’ve replaced that metric with the average result count. Here’s a 60-day view:

Average Result Count (60-day)

In this case, an average drop of 0.5 results is massive, and the graph tells the story pretty well. The 30-day data shows much, much smaller variations, but this metric will help us track any future changes, including a return to 10-result SERPs (if that were to happen).

(3) EMD Influence

The influence of Exact-Match Domains (EMDs) is a hot topic in SEO. Our EMD influence metric shows the percentage of Top 10 rankings that are currently occupied by EMDs. Specifically, if the keyphrase is “buy widgets”, than we consider only “buywidgets.tld” (any TLD) to be an exact match. Here’s the 90-day data:

EMD Influence Graph (90-day)

My recent post goes into more detail and there are a lot of ways to dig into this data, but we’re seeing a slight uptick in EMD influence recently over the past 3 months.

(4) PMD Influence

Similarly, PMD influence measures the influence of Partial-Match Domains on the Top 10. For the keyphrase “buy widgets”, we count any URL with either “buywidgets” or “buy-widgets” in the subdomain as a partial match. This metric does not include EMDs. Here’s the 90-day view:

PMD Influence (90-day)

In line with the broader history reported earlier, PMDs seem to be steadily declining in influence. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that any particular PMD won’t rank (they still hold over 4% of Top 10 rankings) – it just means that their overall impact is trending downward.

(5) Daily Big 10

Finally, we have a new metric I haven’t covered in any previous blog post, the “Big 10.” Apologies to college football fans (I’m a former Hawkeye), but I didn’t want to confuse this with the “Top 10.” The Big 10 influence is the percentage of Top 10 rankings accounted for by the ten most powerful subdomains on any given day. This list changes daily, and any single day’s data represents the influence of the Big 10 for that day. Currently, the Big 10 domains account for about 13.6% of Top 10 rankings in our data set:

Big 10 Graph (90-day)

Below the graph for this metric, we also list the Big 10 subdomains for the most recent day. Like all of the MozCast stats, this list is currently recalculated each morning. Here’s the data from 9/18:

  1. en.wikipedia.org
  2. www.amazon.com
  3. www.youtube.com
  4. www.facebook.com
  5. www.ebay.com
  6. www.walmart.com
  7. www.webmd.com
  8. www.yelp.com
  9. www.overstock.com
  10. allrecipes.com

Currently, the roughly 9,500 URLs in our data set (Top 7-10 for 1,000 keywords) represent about 5,300 unique subdomains, so the fact that just ten of them take up almost 14% of the real estate is pretty amazing. Wikipedia alone holds 4.6% of the Top 10 URLs that we track (today). There’s a fair amount of movement in the bottom couple of domains, and Twitter dropped out of the Top 10 earlier this year.

What Would You Like to See?

There are a lot of ways to slice the data and we have quite a few ideas in the pipe, but if there are specific, large-scale metrics you’re interested in, let me know. We’re trying to incorporate community feedback into the product development plan. Also, feel free to make suggestions on the @mozcast Twitter account.

I’d like to quickly thank Devin and Casey for doing the behind-the-scenes work to get this page integrated, and to Devin in particular for turning my single, rambling page of stats into a pretty slick design. Thanks as usual to Dr. Matt Peters for feedback on the math, and to Rand for putting up with dozens of emails and somehow reading them all on top of his other 23 hours/day of work.

Pardon a shameless plug, but if you’d like to hear more about the history of MozCast, I gave an hour-long presentation about it at MozCon in July. The online MozCon videos just went on sale yesterday. Even if you hate me, there’s 16 hours of other great content and you can just fast-forward over my part – I won’t mind, really *sniff.*


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President Obama Meets with Aung San Suu Kyi

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012
 
President Obama Meets with Aung San Suu Kyi

Yesterday, President Obama met with Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese Nobel Laureate and leader of the National League for Democracy Party.

The President expressed his admiration for her courage, determination, and personal sacrifice in championing democracy and human rights over the years. Bo, the First Dog, was kind enough to sit in on the meeting as well.

Read more about Aung San Suu Kyi's visit.

President Barack Obama reacts to a photograph during an interview with David Letterman during a taping of the

President Barack Obama and Burmese Opposition Leader Aung San Suu Kyi pet Bo, the Obama family dog, at the conclusion of their meeting in the Oval Office, Sept. 19, 2012. Attendees included Danny Russel, Senior Director for Asian Affairs, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In Case You Missed It

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

Administration's Efforts to Promote Travel and Tourism Are Working
A new report by the U.S. Department of Commerce reveals that real spending on travel and tourism increased at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2012 after increasing 4.9 percent (revised) in the first quarter of 2012, supporting 7.6 million jobs.

Celebrating the 2011 WNBA Champions
President Obama welcomes the Minnesota Lynx to the White House.

You're Invited: Join the White House Fall Garden Tour
White House followers on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are invited to attend a special preview of the White House Fall Garden Tour and share their experience through social media. Learn how you can join us.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

9:30 AM: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing

10:45 AM: The President departs the White House en route Joint Base Andrews

11:00 AM: The President departs Joint Base Andrews

1:20 PM: The President arrives Miami, Florida

2:20 PM: The President participates in a town hall hosted by Univision

2:30 PM: The Vice President meets with Steve Beecroft, currently the United States Chargé d’Affaires in Baghdad and the Administration’s nominee to be Ambassador to Iraq.

5:25 PM: The President departs Miami, Florida

6:20 PM: The President arrives Tampa, Florida

6:50 PM: The President delivers remarks at a campaign event

9:05 PM: The President departs Tampa, Florida

11:10 PM: The President arrives Joint Base Andrews

11:25 PM: The President arrives the White House

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Seth's Blog : Hurrying almost always makes it take longer

Hurrying almost always makes it take longer

If you don't have time to do it right, how you will find time to do it over?

PS stalling is even worse than hurrying.



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miercuri, 19 septembrie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis


FedEx Package Volume Down 5% in US; FedEx Shipments vs. Real GDP; Preliminary Petroleum Use Figures for September

Posted: 19 Sep 2012 01:06 PM PDT

MarketWatch reports FedEx profit down 1.1% on manufacturing slowdown

  • FedEx says a weak economy drove a shift to non-premium services
  • Volume in its priority international export segment was down 2%
  • Company plans to detail its cost-cutting effort during a meeting next month
  • "Exports and trade have gone down at a faster rate than global trade has" says CEO
  • Company lowered its full-year earnings view, now seeing $6.20 to $6.60 a share, down from an already-disappointing forecast of $6.90 to $7.40 in June
  • Daily package volume fell 5% in the U.S. but rose 1% abroad on improvement in Europe and Asia

FedEx Shipments vs. GDP



The above chart from Bloomberg. I picked up in "tweet" by Kevin Depew.

Petroleum Usage

Tim Wallace pinged me this morning with a note "Aug-Sep early numbers are running 3% negative to last year, September actually running -3.5% now. This is not a good sign."

For detailed charts of monthly petroleum, gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel numbers please see Email From Lead Analyst, Weekly Petroleum Supply Team on Possibility of Recession.

Also note dismal retail sales numbers as posted in California August Sales Tax Collection Down 20% From Year Ago, Total Revenues Down 5.5%, Income Tax Up 11.6%; Spending Out Of Control By $3 Billion

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


California August Sales Tax Collection Down 20% From Year Ago, Total Revenues Down 5.5%, Income Tax Up 11.6%; Spending Out Of Control By $3 Billion

Posted: 19 Sep 2012 09:23 AM PDT

A summary of California State Finances for August 2012 looks like this:



Except for corporate income taxes (down a whopping 71.5% vs. projections), the state is doing better in August than budgeted.

However, compared to a year ago, revenues are down, sales taxes are down, and corporate taxes are down, all by significant amounts.

Moreover, the two-month totals for July and August are much worse as the following table shows.

General Fund Receipts July-August 2012



For July and August, sales Tax Collections are $108 million under budget. August sales tax collection is down 20% from a year ago, a huge decline of $633 million.

This clearly shows people in California have cut back spending. I suggest people have cut back in other states as well, regardless of reported increases in retail sales, typically based on the flawed methodology of "same store sales".

Sales tax collections show the real story, and the real story is "recession", the reason for Fed Panic!

Spending Nearly $3 Billion Over Budget!



For the complete report, please see Statement of General Fund Cash Receipts and Disbursements

So California, what are you going to do? Cut spending or hike taxes? I suggest spending is way out of control and retail sales will continue to disappoint.

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


QE to Infinity and Beyond; Mish for President?

Posted: 18 Sep 2012 11:58 PM PDT

Once again I had the pleasure of being on Capital Account with Lauren Lyster on Tuesday. We discussed the election, my comments on  "Mitt Romney's Foot-in-Mouth Disease", a US recession, "QE to Eternity", and other topics.



Mish for President?

Lauren Lyster mentioned my statement that I would not vote for Obama nor Romney. I received several email from readers on that wondering if I was going to opt out of the election.

I will vote. I have voted in every election since 1972. I believe people should vote. I just cannot stand the choices presented. In the previous two elections I wrote-in Ron Paul.

However, Ron Paul is retiring from Congress, having served the nation well. So I am considering instead other possibilities such as Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or perhaps even myself.

The latter possibility came up when a close friend made an out-of-the-blue yet sincere statement that he was writing-in me. Well, why not? If he can write-in me, why shouldn't I write-in me?

I do not expect to win, and I will not hire an exploratory commission led by Donald Trump to prove it. However, Ron Paul and Gary Johnson will not win either.

Moreover, a handful of write-in votes  for Ron Paul would not merit much media attention, but 50 wrote-in votes in every state for "Mish" might conceivably get a mention.

So if you think as I do, that Obama and Romney are bad choices for America, then please go ahead and write-in "Mish".

Unlike the others, I pledge to spend zero dollars on my campaign, I pledge to bring all the troops home, I will end collective bargaining of public unions by decree (reversing what President Kennedy did by decree), and I will get rid of Ben Bernanke, appointing someone who will work out a plan to get rid of the Fed entirely as well as eliminate fractional reserve lending.

Those are things a president can do, without support of Congress, and I will do them if elected. If you like that platform, please write-in "Mish" in November.

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