joi, 10 septembrie 2015

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Case Study: Can You Fake Blog Post Freshness? - Moz Blog

Case Study: Can You Fake Blog Post Freshness?

Posted by anthonydnelson

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.

Over the years, you've certainly read something about how Google loves fresh content. Perhaps you've read that sometimes it takes its love of freshness too far.

Now it's the middle of 2015. Does freshness still play a significant role in how Google ranks search results?

To find out, I decided to conduct a small experiment on a blog. Specifically, I wanted to see if my test could answer the following questions:

If you update a blog post's date, will it receive a boost in the search engine results pages (SERPs)?
Can you fake freshness?
Do you have to make changes to the content?
If there is a boost present, how long does it last?

Details of the test

This test was performed on 16 blog posts on the same site
All posts were originally published between September 2010 and March 2014. Each post was at least one year old at the time of this experiment.
Each post (except No. 16) received organic traffic throughout 2014, showing an ability to consistently rank in the SERPs
URLs for these posts did not change
The content was not edited at all
The content of focused on evergreen topics (not the type of queries that would be obvious for Query Deserves Freshness (QDF)
Only the publishing date was changed. On April 17th, the dates of these posts were set to either April 16th or April 15th, making them all look like they were one to two days old.
Each blog post shows the publishing date on-page
Posts were not intentionally shared on social media. A few of the more trafficked posts likely received a couple of tweets/likes/pins, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Google Search Console, Ahrefs and Open Site Explorer (OSE) did not show any new external links pointed at the posts during the time of testing

Baseline organic traffic

Before starting the test, I took a look at how the test posts were performing in organic search.

The graph below shows the organic traffic received by each of the 16 test posts for the four full weeks (March 15 - April 11) prior to the test beginning.

The important thing to note here is the organic traffic received by each page was relatively static. These posts were not bouncing around, going from 200 visits to 800 visits each week. There is little variation.

baseline organic traffic

The blue line and corresponding number highlights the weekly average for each post, which we will compare to the graph below.

Turning the test on

This one was pretty easy to implement. It took me about 15 minutes to update all of the publishing dates for the blog posts.

All posts were updated on April 17th. I began collecting traffic data again on April 26th, giving Google a week to crawl and process the changes.

Organic traffic after republishing

All 16 posts received a boost in organic traffic.

This graph shows the average organic traffic that each post received for the first four full weeks (April 26 through May 23) after republishing.

organic traffic after republishing blog posts

I expected a lift, but I was surprised at how significant it was.

Look at some of those posts, doubling in average traffic over a one month period. Crazy.

Faking the date on a blog post had a major impact on my traffic levels.

Post No. 16 received a lift as well, but was too small to register on the graph. The traffic numbers for that post were too low to be statistically significant in any way. It was thrown into the test to see if a post with almost no organic traffic could become relevant entirely from freshness alone.

Percentage lift

The graph below shows the percentage lift each post received in organic traffic.

organic lift from updating blog dates

Post No. 14 above actually received a 663% lift, but it skewed the visibility of the chart data so much that I intentionally cut it off.

The 16 posts received 3,601 organic visits in four weeks, beginning March 15 and ending April 11. (That's an average of 225 organic visits per post, per week.) In the four weeks following republishing, these 16 posts received 6,003 organic visits (an average of 375 organic visits per post, per week).

Overall, there was a 66% lift.

Search impressions (individual post view)

Below you will find a few screenshots from Google Search Console showing the search impressions for a couple of these posts.

Note: Sixteen screenshots seemed like overkill, so here are a few that show a dramatic change. The rest look very similar.

lift in organic impressions

organic impressions

increase in organic impressions

search console organic impressions

What surprised me the most was how quickly their visibility in the SERPs jumped up.

Keyword rankings

It's safe to assume the lift in search impressions was caused by improved keyword rankings.

I wasn't tracking rankings for all of the queries these posts were targeting, but I was tracking a few.

keyword ranking after republishing

faking blog date improves ranking

ranking boost from faked freshness

The first two graphs above show a dramatic improvement in rankings, both going from the middle of the second page to the middle of the first page. The third graph appears to show a smaller boost, but moving a post that is stuck around No. 6 up to the No. 2 spot in Google can lead to a large traffic increase.

Organic traffic (individual posts view)

Here is the weekly organic traffic data for four of the posts in this test.

You can see an annotation in each screenshot below on the week each post was republished. You will notice how relatively flat the traffic is prior to the test, followed by an immediate jump in organic traffic.

republished blog posts get temporary increase in traffic

organic traffic lift after republishing blog post

increase in organic traffic

google analytics organic traffic

These only contain one annotation for the sake of this test, but I recommend that you heavily annotate your analytics accounts when you make website changes.

Why does this work?

Did these posts all receive a major traffic boost just from faking the publishing date alone?

Better internal linking? Updating a post date brings a post from deep in the archive closer to your blog's home page. Link equity should flow through to it more easily. While that is certainly true, six of the 16 posts above were linked sitewide from the blog sidebar or top navigation. I wouldn't expect those posts to see a dramatic lift from moving up in the feed because they were already well linked from the blog's navigation.
Mobilegeddon update? In the Search Console screenshots above, you will see the Mobilegeddon update highlighted just a couple of days after the test began. It is clear that each post jumped dramatically before this update hit. The blog that it was tested on had been responsive for over a year, and no other posts saw a dramatic lift during this time period.
Google loves freshness? I certainly think this is still the case. Old posts that rank well appear to see an immediate boost when their publishing date is updated.

Conclusions

Let's take a second look at the questions I originally hoped this small test would answer:

If you update a blog post's date, will it receive a boost in the SERPs? Maybe.
Can you fake freshness? Yes.
Do you have to make changes to the content? No.
If there is a boost present, how long does it last? In this case, approximately two months, but you should test!

Should you go update all your post dates?

Go ahead and update a few blog post dates of your own. It's possible you'll see a similar lift in the SERPs. Then report back in a few weeks with the results in the comments on this post.

First, though, remember that the posts used in my test were solid posts that already brought in organic traffic. If your post never ranked to begin with, changing the date isn't going to do much, if anything.

Don't mistake this as a trick for sustained growth or as a significant finding. This is just a small test I ran to satisfy my curiosity. There are a lot of variables that can influence SEO tests, so be sure to run your own tests. Instead of blinding trusting that what you read about working for others on SEO blogs will work for you, draw your own conclusions from your own data.

For now, though, "fresh" content still wins.

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Seth's Blog : How idea adoption works--The Idea Progression

How idea adoption works--The Idea Progression

I've been sharing Rogers production adoption curve for a long time, but I realize that it doesn't viscerally explain what's actually happening. Here's a better way to think about it:

[Click to enlarge]

Different people have different mindsets when encountering various markets. Some people are eager to try new foods, but always rely on proven fashions or cars. Some people live on the edge of popular culture when it comes to lifestyle, but want to be in the back of the room when it comes to their understanding of the latest science...

Every important idea starts out on the fringe. It's not obvious, proven or readily explained. And a tiny group of people, people who like the fringe, engage with it.

Sometimes, that fringe idea begins to resonate with those around the fringe-loving. This might have been what happened to punk music at CBGB. Now it's risky, but there are more people doing it. Again, these are the kind of people who like to seek out things that are risky (but hey, not fringe, they're not crazy.)

Sometimes, more rarely, the risky idea is seen by some culture watchers as a 'new thing'. They alert their audience, the folks that want to be in on the new thing, but can't risk being wrong, so they avoid the risky.

When enough people embrace a new thing, it becomes a hot thing, and then the hot thing might go mass.

The numbers don't lie: There are more people in the mass group! There are people who only buy pop hits, who only go to restaurant chains, who only drive the most popular car. In fact, it's the decision of this group in aggregate that makes the thing they choose the big hit.

Finally, when enough people with the mass worldview accept an idea, they begin to pressure the rest of the people around them, insisting that they accept the new idea as if it's always been the right thing to do, because that's what this group seeks, the certainty of the idea that has always been true.

You can apply this cycle to Talking Heads, diet ideas, the role of various genders and races in society, precepts of organized religion, political movements, sushi, wedding practices... Things that are accepted now, things that virtually everyone believes in as universal, timeless truths, were fringe practices a century or less ago.

The mistake idea merchants make is that they bring their fringe ideas to people who don't like fringe ideas, instead of taking their time and working their way through the progression.

• Email to a friend •

miercuri, 9 septembrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

German Reader on "Political Correctness"; Denmark Cancels All Trains From Germany; Juncker Pleads for Compulsory Refugee Quotas
Tracking "Emailgate" and "Apologygate"; Clinton's Half-Baked Apology; Lightning Strikes Twice
Plotting the Number of Banks: Is the Goal One "TBTF" Bank?
Dollar Based Loans Jump 600% in Saudi Arabia as Companies Raise Cash; What’s the Risk?

German Reader on "Political Correctness"; Denmark Cancels All Trains From Germany; Juncker Pleads for Compulsory Refugee Quotas

Posted: 09 Sep 2015 04:17 PM PDT

Denmark Cancels Trains For Indefinite Period

The BBC reports Denmark-Germany Rail Links Suspended

Denmark's DSB rail operator said trains to and from Germany had been suspended for an indefinite period because of exceptional passport checks.

Police also closed part of the E45 motorway - the main road link between Germany and Denmark - after about 300 migrants left another train and set off on foot towards Sweden near the border town of Padborg.

Sweden has become a top destination for refugees after it promised to issue residency papers to all Syrian asylum seekers.

Compulsory Refugee Quotas

European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker has upped the stakes in the refugee crisis with a push for Compulsory Refugee Quotas.

Delivering an unusually blunt warning that the EU "is not in a good state", Mr Juncker laid out his plans for asylum reform in an 80-minute speech that featured frequent heckles and an interruption from an Italian MEP wearing an Angela Merkel mask.

The crisis shifted on Wednesday to Denmark, where police ordered the cancellation of all trains to and from Germany in an attempt to thwart migrants. The country's new centre-right government has taken a tough line on immigration, even buying advertising space in Middle Eastern newspapers to dissuade people from travelling to the Nordic country.

Meanwhile, the wealthy south-west German region of Baden-Württemberg temporarily closed its doors to new refugees on Wednesday, saying it could take no more because its reception centres were full.

Proposals to win over reluctant member states include a temporary opt-out clause, in exchange for a fine amounting to 0.002 per cent of gross domestic product. In order to qualify, states must demonstrate that they are presently unable to take extra refugees due to extraordinary circumstances, such as a natural disaster.

The fines, however, are hardly punitive. Poland, which had a GDP of $548bn in 2014 and is a net recipient of EU funds, would pay a bit over $10m back to the EU to opt out of the scheme temporarily.

People from former Yugoslavian states such as Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina are estimated to comprise almost 40 per cent of the 800,000 asylum seekers that Germany is set to receive each year. Nearly all of these asylum applications are rejected, but they can still take months or even years to process.

Political Correctness

Politically Incorrect writes ....

Hi Mish,

I live in Germany and see firsthand how it is politically incorrect to question our current refugee policy. If you do not stand by it 100%, then some consider you a right wing radical or a neo-Nazi.

Nobody bothers to differentiate between persecuted refugees and economic refugees. I suspect most are actually economic refugees, and by the German law would have to be deported after their applications for asylum are denied. However, it can take up to a year for the asylum application to be processed. Until then, refugees can have a nice vacation in Germany at the taxpayers' expense. If it is too easy to get in and get benefits, then even more will come. That's basic human nature.

The average asylum seeker costs the taxpayer 12,500 euro/year. The Government insists that they will still balance the budget despite the huge new costs. Many assert the ridiculous Keynesian dogma that the new economic activity from the refugees will generate enough new tax revenue to pay for itself. What a joke, but you can't even question that without being labeled insensitive and a radical right extremist.

There was a big sob story in the newspaper recently about a gypsy woman from Macedonia and her two kids who are now being deported after three years. In that period, the family collected 700 Euros/month and had a place to stay as well. Yet, she still spoke no German and did not have a job after three years. When she returns to Macedonia she will get 20 Euros/month in welfare. No wonder she is upset about having to leave. The Total cost was something like 36,000 euros, not including the cost of day care and schooling for the kids.

There's a lot of positive feeling and hope for the refugees now, but when they introduce a tax levy to pay for it, hearts will start to change.

Regards,
Politically Incorrect

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Tracking "Emailgate" and "Apologygate"; Clinton's Half-Baked Apology; Lightning Strikes Twice

Posted: 09 Sep 2015 01:16 PM PDT

In the wake of a major flip-flop by Hillary Clinton as to whether she would or would not issue an apology over "Emailgate", I thought it might be interesting to review the details and denials from the beginning.

Emailgate Background

From 2009 to 2013, when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, she sent and received emails using a home-brew email server setup in her house. This was a violation of protocol as she was supposed to use secure government channels.

Her use of a private server and email account prompted congressional and FBI investigations. She denied any classified documents were on her server, but a quick check proved otherwise.

Despite all of her efforts, the server story will not go away, it has been in the news for months, and Hillary's popularity has plunged.

Clinton's Favorable Rating

Gallup reports ...

Dogged by continued scrutiny of her email practices as secretary of state, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's favorability with the American public has sunk to one of its lowest levels in Gallup's 23-year trend. Currently, 41% of U.S. adults say they have a favorable opinion of the Democratic front-runner, while 51% hold an unfavorable view.

Clinton's sub-40% favorable ratings in 1992 were mostly a product of the public's lack of familiarity with her, rather than any kind of broad unpopularity. By contrast, her current 41% favorable rating is arguably her worst, given her nearly universal name recognition. Her present rating is about as low as it was in March 2001, during her first few months in office as a U.S. senator from New York.

Perhaps more importantly, it was also after controversial pardons that her husband, President Bill Clinton, granted at the end of his presidency, and after the Clintons took furnishings and other gifts that were White House property when they left.

Clinton's Defense

"I did not send or receive any information marked classified. I take the responsibilities of handling classified materials very seriously and did so," said Hillary.

Flashback March 10: Hillary Clinton Tries to Quell Controversy Over Private Email.

Hillary Rodham Clinton revealed on Tuesday that she had deleted about half her emails from her years as secretary of state, saying she had turned over to the Obama administration all correspondence about government business but had erased records of communications about private matters, like yoga routines, her daughter's wedding and her mother's funeral.

"I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two," she explained.

Mrs. Clinton's explanation that it was more convenient to carry only one device seemed at odds with her remark last month, at a technology conference in Silicon Valley, that she uses multiple devices, including two kinds of iPads, an iPhone and a BlackBerry. She said then: "I don't throw anything away. I'm like two steps short of a hoarder."

At one point on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton said the emails she had deleted contained "personal communications from my husband and me." But on Sunday, a spokesman for Mr. Clinton told reporters that the former president had "sent two emails in his life."

Refusal to Apologize

Flash Forward September 4, 2015: The Hill reports Hillary Clinton refuses to apologize for email choices.

Hillary Clinton on Friday declined on two occasions to apologize for using a personal email account and server while serving as secretary of State. 

 In a rare national interview, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell asked Clinton if she was sorry that she had bucked traditional protocol and routed her work email through a private email account and server.

Clinton responded by acknowledging that "it wasn't the best choice," and said that she "should have had two accounts." But she also continued to defend the decision as "above board" and something that was "allowed by the State Department." 

Half Baked Apology

In an interview last Friday, Clinton offered a quasi-apology.

It was an apology that made many of Hillary Clinton's closest supporters bristle.

"At the end of the day, I am sorry that this has been confusing to people and has raised a lot of questions, but there are answers to all these questions," Hillary Clinton told NBC's Andrea Mitchell in an interview last Friday, when asked whether she should apologize for the email controversy dogging her campaign.

The classic "I'm sorry your feelings are hurt" response left many Clinton insiders troubled that the statement felt more like an insult than an apology -- and over the weekend, a growing chorus of advisors and donors ratcheted up the pressure on Clinton and her campaign to take the apology a step further in order to put it to bed, multiple sources close to the campaign said.

Real Apology?

On September 8, Bloomberg reported Hillary Clinton Offers Apology for E-Mail Practices.

"That was a mistake. I'm sorry about that. I take responsibility," she said in an interview with ABC's David Muir [on Tuesday].

On Monday, Clinton again refused an all-encompassing apology, telling the Associated Press that she didn't need to apologize for relying on her personal account because it was allowed by the State Department. "It was fully above board. Everybody in the government with whom I e-mailed knew that I was using a personal e-mail, and I have said it would have been a better choice to have had two separate e-mail accounts," she said. "And I've also tried to not only take responsibility, because it was my decision, but to be as transparent as possible."

Clinton said she regrets how she's handled the e-mail issue since her use of a private account first came to light six months ago. "I do think I could have and should have done a better job answering questions earlier. I really didn't perhaps appreciate the need to do that," she said.

Got that?

Lets' go over that last paragraph above one more time.

Hillary did not "appreciate the need to do a better job answering questions" about why she used a private email server when she should not have, about denials of classified documents on the server, and about all kinds of inconsistencies in her make-up-answers-as-you-go-along story.

Emailgate Timeline

March 10: New York Times: Hillary Clinton Tries to Quell Controversy Over Private Email.
July 24: New York Times: Hillary Clinton Emails Said to Contain Classified Data
August 8: Daily Beast: Spy Satellite Secrets in Hillary's Emails
August 11: McClatchy: Clinton probe expands to key aides.
August 17: Washington Times: 305 Documents With Potentially Classified Information. Key Idea - 5.1 percent of emails processed so far — have been flagged for potential secret information, the State Department reported to a federal court Monday.
August 21: Town Hall: Confirmed: Despite Clinton's Claims, Documents on Her Server Were Always Classified
August 23: Fox News: Questions arise about existence of second, private Clinton email server
September 3: Bloomberg: FBI Scours Clinton Server for Evidence of Spying
September 4: The Week: Hillary Clinton again refuses to apologize for email server
September 7: Yahoo!News: Clinton says no need for apology for email server
September 7: Washington Examiner: Clinton: I don't need to apologize for private email server
September 8: Politico: Clinton seeks to assuage supporters on emails
September 8: Bloomberg: Hillary Clinton Offers Apology for E-Mail Practices.
September 8: Christian Science Monitor: CIA says Hillary Clinton's emails contained 'Top Secret' info. Subtitle - A CIA official claims Hillary Clinton's personal emails included information about North Korean nukes, but Clinton insists she 'did not send or receive any information marked classified.'

Lesson on Mistakes and Lies

Hillary Clinton's approval rating was over 60% in 2013. It's near a record low 41% now. Lies are the reason.

Please consider Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton and authorizing the war in IraqMay 12th, 2015

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's comments on Fox News about the Iraq War brought up more questions than answers.

Kelly: "On the subject of Iraq, very controversial, knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?"

Bush: "I would have, and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody, and so would almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got."

In her 2014 book Hard Choices, Clinton said this about her vote:

"While many were never going to look past my 2002 vote no matter what I did or said, I should have stated my regret sooner and in the plainest, most direct language possible. I'd gone most of the way there by saying I regretted the way President Bush used his authority and by saying that if we knew then what we later learned, there wouldn't have been a vote. But I held out against using the word mistake."

Lightning Strikes Twice

Hillary "regrets the way Bush used his authority". What kind of apology is that? Heck it's not even an admission of a mistake.

I have always maintained that Hillary would have won the Democratic nomination in 2008 over Obama had she only had the common sense to admit she made a mistake in siding with President Bush on the War in Iraq.

I made that claim in 2008, well before Hillary realized it.

Moreover, I highly doubt she believed the ridiculous evidence Bush presented in the first place. Rather, I strongly suspect she believed in war-mongering and nation-building.

There was never any evidence, just easy-to-see lies. Most of our allies laughed at us.

It did Hillary no good to issue a half-baked apology in her self-serving book on "Hard Choices".

By once again refusing to apologize or admit a mistake in a timely fashion, she may have done it to herself once again.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Plotting the Number of Banks: Is the Goal One "TBTF" Bank?

Posted: 09 Sep 2015 10:11 AM PDT

Reader Tim Wallace sent in a spreadsheet on the total number of banks.

click on chart for sharper image

Whatever happened to the idea that something needs to be done about "Too Big to Fail Banks"?

Consolidation numbers do not tell the full story, but the largest banks do keep getting bigger in the slow but steady march towards one bank.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Dollar Based Loans Jump 600% in Saudi Arabia as Companies Raise Cash; What’s the Risk?

Posted: 09 Sep 2015 03:01 AM PDT

In yet another oil price crash side effect, Dollar Denominated Loans in Saudi Arabia Jump 600%.

Dollar borrowing in Saudi Arabia has surged seven-fold this year as the kingdom's companies switch out of increasingly expensive local currency-denominated loans.

About 65 percent of all loans taken out in Saudi Arabia through Tuesday were in dollars, compared with 13 percent for all of 2014, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Borrowers raised more than $11 billion in U.S. currency, compared to $1.7 billion for all of last year. Riyal borrowing fell 45 percent.

The shift underscores the knock-on effects of oil's 50 percent plunge in the past 12 months. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's biggest crude exporter, is tapping local debt capital markets with long-term bonds for the first time in eight years to plug a growing budget deficit. That reduced bank liquidity and helped send the three-month Saudi Interbank Offered Rate, a benchmark used to price many Islamic and conventional loans, to its highest since November.

"Local liquidity is weakening, so they have to go and borrow in other currencies," said Apostolos Bantis, a Dubai-based credit analyst at Commerzbank AG. "If Saibor is rising faster than the U.S. rates, then it makes more sense for Saudi borrowers to go externally and borrow at a cheaper rate." There aren't many risks as long as Saudi Arabia maintains its peg to the dollar, he said.

While bets for a devaluation of the riyal reached the highest in more than a decade last month after China weakened the yuan, the governor of the kingdom's central bank Governor Fahad Al-Mubarak said last week the peg at 3.75 per dollar will remain as long as oil underpins the Saudi economy.

Saibor was at 0.8775 percent on Tuesday, compared with 0.332 percent for the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is used as a benchmark for many dollar loans. While comparatively high, the Saudi rate remains at a historically low level. It rose as high as 5.3 percent in 2006.

No Risk Unless

"There aren't many risks as long as Saudi Arabia maintains its peg to the dollar," said a Dubai-based credit analyst.

And what if they don't?

Didn't we see a nice blow-up in Swiss Franc bets earlier this year? And what about all the countries that were forced to drop a dollar peg for one reason or another?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock