joi, 15 octombrie 2015

Have We Been Wrong About Panda All Along? - Moz Blog

Have We Been Wrong About Panda All Along?

Thin content! Duplicate content! Everyone knows that these are huge Panda factors. But are they really? In this article, I will explore the possibility that Panda is about so much more than thin and duplicate content. I don't have a list of ten steps to follow to cure your Panda problems. But, I do hope that this article provokes some good discussion on how to improve our websites in the eyes of Google's Panda algorithm.

The duplicate content monster

Recently, Google employee John Mueller ran a webmaster help hangout that focused on duplicate content issues. It was one of the best hangouts I have seen in a while—full of excellent information. John commented that almost every website has some sort of duplicate content. Some duplicate content could be there because of a CMS that sets up multiple tag pages. Another example would be an eCommerce store that carries several sizes of a product and has a unique URL for each size.

He also said that when Google detects duplicate content, it generally does not do much harm, but rather, Google determines which page they think is the best and they display that page.

But wait! Isn't duplicate content a Panda issue? This is well believed in the SEO world. In fact, the Moz Q&A has almost 1800 pages indexed that ask about duplicate content and Panda!

I asked John Mueller whether duplicate content issues could be Panda issues. I wondered if perhaps duplicate content reduced crawl efficiency and this, in turn, would be a signal of low quality in the eyes of the Panda algorithm. He responded saying that these were not related, but were in fact two separate issues:

The purpose of this post is not to instruct you on how to deal with duplicate content. Google has some good guidelines here. Cleaning up your duplicate content can, in many cases, improve your crawl efficiency—which in some cases can result in an improvement in rankings. But I think that, contrary to what many of us have believed, duplicate content is NOT a huge component to the Panda algorithm.

Where duplicate content can get you in trouble is if you are purposely duplicating content in a spammy way in order to manipulate Google. For example, if a huge portion of your site consisted of articles duplicated from other sources, or if you are purposely trying to duplicate content with the intent of manipulating Google, then this can get you a manual penalty and can cause your site to be removed from the Google index:

These cases are not common, though. Google isn't talking about penalizing sites that have duplicate product pages or a boatload of Wordpress tag pages. While it's always good to have as clean a site as possible, I'm going to make a bold statement here and say that this type of issue likely is not important when it comes to Panda.

What about thin content?

This is where things can get a little bit tricky. Recently, Google employee Gary Illyes caused a stir when he stated that Google doesn't recommend removing thin content but rather, beefing up your site to make it "thick" and full of value.

Jen Slegg from The SEM Post had a great writeup covering this discussion; if you're interested in reading more, I wrote a long post discussing why I believe that we should indeed remove thin content when trying to recover from a Panda hit, along with a case study showing a site that made a nice Panda recovery after removing thin content.

The current general consensus amongst SEOs who work with Panda-hit sites is that thin content should be improved upon wherever possible. But, if a site has a good deal of thin, unhelpful pages, it does make sense to remove those pages from Google's index.

The reason for this is that Panda is all about quality. In the example which I wrote about where a site recovered from Panda after removing thin content, the site had hosted thousands of forum posts that contained unanswered questions. A user landing on one of these questions would not have found the page helpful and would likely have found another site to read in order to answer their query.

I believe that thin content can indeed be a Panda factor if that content consistently disappoints searchers who land on that page. If you have enough pages like this on your site, then yes, by all means, clean it up.

Panda is about so much MORE than duplicate and thin content

While some sites can recover from Panda after clearing out pages and pages of thin content, for most Panda-hit sites, the issues are much deeper and more complex. If you have a mediocre site that contains thousands of thin pages, removing those thin pages will not make the site excellent.

I believe Panda is entirely about excellence.

At Pubcon in Vegas, Rand Fishkin gave an excellent keynote speech in which he talked about living in a two-algo world. Rand spoke about the "regular algorithm," which, in years past, we've worked hard to figure out and conquer by optimizing our title tags, improving our page speed, and gaining good links. But then he also spoke of a machine learning algorithm.

When Rand said "We're talking about algorithms that build algorithms," something clicked in my head and I realized that this very well could be what's happening with Panda. Google has consistently said that Panda is about showing users the highest-quality sites. Rand suggested that machine learning algos may classify a site as a high quality one if they're able to do some of the following things:

Consistently garner a higher click-through rate than their competitors.
Get users to engage more with your site than others in your space.
Answer more questions than other sites.
Earn more shares and clicks that result in loyal users.
Be the site that ultimately fulfills the searcher's task.

There are no quick ways to fulfill these criteria. Your site ultimately has to be the best in order for Google to consider it the best.

I believe that Google is getting better and better at determining which sites are the most helpful ones to show users. If your site has been negatively affected by Panda, it may not be because you have technical on-site issues, but because your competitors' sites are of higher overall quality than yours.

Is this why we're not seeing many Panda recoveries?

In mid- to late 2014, Google was still refreshing Panda monthly. Then, after October of 2014, we had nine months of Panda silence. We all rejoiced when we heard that Google was refreshing Panda again in July of 2015. Google told us it would take a while for this algo to roll out. At the time of writing this, Panda has been supposedly rolling out for three months. I've seen some sporadic reports of mild recoveries, but I would say that probably 98% of the sites that have made on-site quality changes in hopes of a Panda recovery have seen no movement at all.

While it's possible that the slow rollout still hasn't affected the majority of sites, I think that there's another frightening possibility.

It's possible that sites that saw a Panda-related ranking demotion will only be able to recover if they can drastically improve the site to the point where users GREATLY prefer this site over their competitors' sites.

It is always good to do an on-site quality audit. I still recommend a thorough site audit for any website that has suffered a loss in traffic that coincides with a Panda rerun date. In many cases, fixing quality issues—such as page speed problems, canonical issues, and confusing URL structures—can result in ranking improvement. But I think that we also need to put a HUGE emphasis on making your site the best of its kind.

And that's not easy.

I've reviewed a lot of eCommerce sites that have been hit by Panda over the years. I have seen few of these recover. Many of them have had site audits done by several of the industry's recognized experts. In some cases, the sites haven't recovered because they have not implemented the recommended changes. However, there are quite a few sites that have made significant changes, yet still seem to be stuck under some type of ranking demotion.

In many cases like this, I've spent some time reviewing competitors' sites that are currently ranking well. What I'll do is try to complete a task, such as searching for and reaching the point of purchase on a particular product on the Panda hit-site, as well as the competitors' sites. In most cases, I'll find that the competitors offer a vastly better search experience. They may have a number of things that the Panda-hit site doesn't, such as the following:

A better search interface.
Better browsing options (i.e. search by color, size, etc.)
Pictures that are much better and more descriptive than the standard stock product photos.
Great, helpful reviews.
Buying guides that help the searcher determine which product is best to buy.
Video tutorials on using their products.
More competitive pricing.
A shopping cart that's easier to use.

The question that I ask myself is, "If I were buying this product, would I want to search for it and buy it on my clients' site, or on one of these competitors' sites?" The answer is almost always the latter.

And this is why Panda recovery is difficult. It's not easy for a site to simply improve their search interface, add legitimate reviews that are not just scraped from another source, or create guides and video tutorials for many of their products. Even if the site did add these features, this is only going to bring them to the level where they are perhaps just as good as their competitors. I believe that in order to recover from Panda, you need to show Google that by far, users prefer your website over any other one.

This doesn't just apply to eCommerce sites. I have reviewed a number of informational sites that have been hit by Panda. In some cases, clearing up thin content can result in Panda recoveries. But often, when an informational site is hit by Panda, it's because the overall quality of the content is sub-par.

If you run a news site and you're pushing out fifty stories a day that contain the same information as everyone else in your space, it's going to be hard to convince Google's algorithms that they should be showing your site's pages first. You've got to find a way to make your site the one that everyone wants to visit. You want to be the site that when people see you in the SERPS, even if you're not sitting at position #1, they say, "Oh…I want to get my news from THAT site…I know them and I trust them…and they always provide good information."

In the past, a mediocre site could be propelled to the top of the SERPS by tweaking things like keywords in title tags, improving internal linking, and building some links. But, as Google's algorithms get better and better at determining quality, the only sites that are going to rank well are the ones that are really good at providing value. Sure, they're not quite there yet, but they keep improving.

So should I just give up?

No! I still believe that Panda recovery is possible. In fact, I would say that we're in an age of the Internet where we have much potential for improvement. If you've been hit by Panda, then this is your opportunity to dig in deep, work hard, and make your site an incredible site that Google would be proud to recommend.

The following posts are good ones to read for people who are trying to improve their sites in the eyes of Panda:

How the Panda Algorithm Might Evaluate Your Site – A thorough post by Michael Martinez that looks at each of Amit Singhal's 23 Questions for Panda-hit sites in great detail.

Leveraging Panda To Get Out Of Product Feed Jail – An excellent post on the Moz blog in which Michael Cottam gives some tips to help make your product pages stand out and be much more valuable than your competitors' pages.

Google's Advice on Making a High-Quality Site – This is short, but contains many nuggets.

Case Study – One Site's Recovery from an Ugly SEO Mess – Alan Bleiweiss gives thorough detail on how implementing advice from a strong technical audit resulted in a huge Panda recovery.

Glenn Gabe's Panda 4.0 Analysis – This post contains a fantastic list of things to clean up and improve upon for Panda-hit sites.

If you have been hit by Panda, you absolutely must do the following:

Start with a thorough on-site quality audit.
Find and remove any large chunks of thin content.
Deal with anything that annoys users, such as huge popups or navigation that doesn't work.

But then we have to do more. In the first few years of Panda's existence, making significant changes in on-site quality could result in beautiful Panda recoveries. I am speculating though that now, as Google gets better at determining which sites provide the most value, this may not be enough for many sites.

If you have been hit by Panda, it is unlikely that there is a quick fix. It is unlikely that you can tweak a few things or remove a chunk of content and see a dramatic recovery. Most likely, you will need to DRAMATICALLY improve the overall usefulness of the site to the point where it's obvious to everyone that your pages are the best choices for Google to present to searchers.

What do you think?

I am seriously hoping that I'm wrong in predicting that the only sites we'll see make significant Panda recoveries are ones that have dramatically overhauled all of their content. Who knows…perhaps one day soon we'll start seeing awesome recoveries as this agonizingly slow iteration of Panda rolls out. But if we don't, then we all need to get working on making our sites far better than anyone else's site!

Do you think that technical changes alone can result in Panda recoveries? Or is vastly improving upon all of your content necessary as well?

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Seth's Blog : Infrastructure

Infrastructure

The ignored secret behind successful organizations (and nations) is infrastructure. Not the content of what's happening, but the things that allow that content to turn into something productive.

Here are some elements worth considering:

Transportation: Ideas and stuff have to move around. The more quickly, efficiently and safely, the better. This is not just roads, but wifi, community centers and even trade shows. Getting things, people and ideas from one place to another, safely and on time is essential to what we seek to build.

Expectation: When people wake up in the morning expecting good things to happen, believing that things are possible, open to new ideas--those beliefs become self-fulfilling. We expect that it's possible to travel somewhere safely, and we expect that speaking up about a new idea won't lead us to get fired. People in trauma can't learn or leap or produce very much.

Education: When we are surrounded by people who are skilled, smart and confident, far more gets done. When we learn something new, our productivity goes up.

Civility: Not just table manners, but an environment without bullying, without bribery, without coercion. Clean air, not just to breathe, but to speak in.

Infrastructure and culture overlap in a thousand ways.

At the organizational level, then, it's possible to invest in a workplace where things work, where the tools are at hand, where meetings don't paralyze progress, where decisions get made when they need to get made (and where they don't get undone).

It's possible to build a workplace where people expect good things, from their leaders and their peers and the market. Where we expect to be heard when we have something to say, and expect that with hard work, we can make a difference.

It's possible to invest in hiring people who are educated (not merely good grades, but good intent) and to keep those people trained and up to speed.

And it's essential for that workplace to be one where the rule of law prevails, where people are treated with dignity and respect and where short term urgency is never used as a chance to declare martial law and abandon the principles that built the organization in the first place.

Yes, I believe the same is true for nation states. It's not sexy to talk about building or maintaining an infrastructure, but just try to change the world without one.

Here's something that's unavoidably true: Investing in infrastructure always pays off. Always. Not just most of the time, but every single time. Sometimes the payoff takes longer than we'd like, sometimes there may be more efficient ways to get the same result, but every time we spend time and money on the four things, we're surprised at how much of a difference it makes.

It's also worth noting that for organizations and countries, infrastructure investments are most effective when they are centralized and consistent. Bootstrapping is a great concept, but it works best when we're in an environment that encourages it.

The biggest difference between 2015 and 1915 aren't the ideas we have or the humans around us. It's the technology, the civilization and the expectations in our infrastructure. Where you're born has more to do with your future than just about anything else, and that's because of infrastructure.

When we invest (and it's expensive) in all four of these elements, things get better. It's easy to take them for granted, which is why visiting an organization or nation that doesn't have them is such a powerful wake up call.

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miercuri, 14 octombrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Wal-Mart Shares Plunge 10 Percent; Retail Price Wars On the Way? Capital Investment Financial Engineering
Rate Hike Odds For March 2016, Fall Below 50%; GDP Forecast Slips to 0.9%
Business Sales Fall Sizable 0.6%; Inventories Weak with Last Month Revised Lower
Autos and Restaurants Positive in Overall Weak Retail Sales Report; Last Month's Sales Revised Lower

Wal-Mart Shares Plunge 10 Percent; Retail Price Wars On the Way? Capital Investment Financial Engineering

Posted: 14 Oct 2015 10:23 PM PDT

Wal-Mart Shares plunged 10% Wednesday on profit warnings, the biggest one day decline in 25 years. The company blamed higher wages, e-commerce competition, and lower prices.

Wal-Mart Chief Executive Doug McMillon said a $1.5 billion investment in wages and training, including raising the minimum store wage to $10 an hour from $9, were needed to improve customer service and would account for three-quarters of the expected 6 percent to 12 percent drop in earnings per share next year.

Wal-Mart also announced a $20 billion share buyback but the drop in its share price wiped out close to the same amount in market value, and the 10 percent drop was the worst one-day percentage performance since January 1988.

The world's largest retailer by revenue said it would invest several billion dollars to lower prices over the next three years. That sparked worries of a price war, and shares of rivals including Target and Home Depot also fell.

The company is building out a network of warehouses to handle e-commerce, a costly move Wal-Mart sees as essential to stopping Amazon and other rivals from stealing its best customers.

At the same time Wal-Mart projected slower growth in new stores, with 85-95 of the smaller Neighborhood Markets format planned for the fiscal year ending in January 2017, down from 160-170 planned for the current fiscal year. Supercenter openings would slow to 50-60 in fiscal 2017 from 60-70 this year.

Price competition was one reason for the slower growth. Foran said that Wal-Mart could not compete with local grocers in some markets, a factor that has played into its scaled back expansion plans for smaller stores.

Capital Investment Financial Engineering

In a press release Wal-Mart announced "Capital investments will be approximately $11.0 billion for fiscal year 2017 and will remain flat in fiscal years 2018 and 2019. This is below the revised fiscal year 2016 estimate of approximately $12.4 billion, primarily due to a moderation of physical store expansion."

Wolf Richter took Wal-Mart to task for that statement in his appraisal The Chilling Thing Wal-Mart Said about Financial Engineering.

Wal-Mart will goose "capital investments" by $11 billion in Fiscal 2017, on top of the $16.4 billion it's spending on "capital investments" in fiscal 2016. This will maul earnings per share. In 2017, they're expected to drop 6% to 12%, when the analyst community had forecast an increase of 4%. But 2019 is back in the rosy scenario of earnings growth.

These capital investments aren't computers, buildings, or new shelves. They're largely "investments in wages and training," which isn't a capital investment at all, but an ordinary expense.

"Seventy-five percent of next year's investment will be related to people," CEO Doug McMillon clarified. That's why they'll hit earnings right away. A true capital investment would be an asset that is depreciated over time, with little earnings impact upfront.

Then there was the announcement of a $20-billion share buyback program.

Share buybacks, usually funded with borrowed money, have been among the most powerful forces behind the multi-year stock market rally. It has been the most successful method of financial engineering. It worked practically every time. It didn't matter that revenues and earnings were going to heck as long as the share buybacks were big enough.

If that scheme has lost its appeal, and if Wal-Mart is a harbinger of how financial engineering fails to boost share prices of revenue-and-earnings challenged companies – which includes much of the S&P 500 – then more stocks, one after the other or perhaps together, will fall off their precariously swaying perch. In this era, once financial engineering fails to prop up stock prices, all bets are off.

Retail Price Wars On the Way?

It appears so, as Wal-Mart clearly intends to go head to head with Amazon. That's good for consumers of course, but the Fed will not see it that way.

Consumers actually need price relief given rents are soaring out of sight and are seriously under-counted in the CPI.

For details on rents, please see Hooray! Huge Rent Hikes Coming; How Will It Affect Price Inflation?

Weakening Economy

Regardless of how one views inflation, this economy is getting weaker and weaker.

Following two weak economic reports on Tuesday, the first on retail sales, the second on business sales, Rate Hike Odds for March 2016, Fell Below 50% as GDP Forecast Slipped to 0.9%.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Rate Hike Odds For March 2016, Fall Below 50%; GDP Forecast Slips to 0.9%

Posted: 14 Oct 2015 09:24 AM PDT

3rd Quarter GDP Forecast Slips to 0.9%

Following today's retail and business sales reports, the Atlanta Fed GDPNow Forecast for third quarter GDP slipped 0.1 percentage points to 0.9%.

Evolution of Rate Hike Odds

I don't think the Fed will hike this year and neither does the market. In fact, the market now thinks the Fed will not hike in March.

The above chart created with numbers from CME FedWatch.

Hike adds for March are now down to 47.6%. In fact, going all the way out to July 2016, the Fed Fund Future sits at 99.645 implying an interest rate of 0.355%.

Related Reports

Retail Sales: Autos and Restaurants Positive in Overall Weak Retail Sales Report; Last Month's Sales Revised Lower
Business Inventories and Sales: Business Sales Fall Sizable 0.6%; Inventories Weak with Last Month Revised Lower

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Business Sales Fall Sizable 0.6%; Inventories Weak with Last Month Revised Lower

Posted: 14 Oct 2015 08:43 AM PDT

As a follow-up to today's weak retail sales report (see Autos and Restaurants Positive in Overall Weak Retail Sales Report; Last Month's Sales Revised Lower), today's business inventory and sales report is downright anemic, also with negative revisions.

Bloomberg Econoday offers these comments on business inventories.

There's evidence of economic weakness coming from inventory data where inventories are being kept down but are still building relative to sales. Business inventories were unchanged for a second month in August while sales fell a sizable 0.6 percent, driving up the inventory-to-sales ratio to 1.37 from 1.36.

Inventory downscaling is underway in manufacturing which is being hurt by weak exports. Manufacturing inventories fell 0.3 percent in both August and July against a major sales decline of 0.7 percent in August and a 0.2 percent dip in July. There's less inventory downscaling, at least right now, among wholesalers where inventories rose 0.1 percent but sales at wholesalers are even weaker, down 1.0 percent in the month. Retail, the third component, is not immune with sales down 0.1 percent but inventories up 0.3 percent.

Inventories are looking heavy which could limit production and employment growth and could emerge as a new concern for the doves at the Fed.

It's not just the doves who will have concerns over today's reports.

By the way, note the very lagging nature of these business reports. It's October 14, and we are just now discussing business inventories and sales for August.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Autos and Restaurants Positive in Overall Weak Retail Sales Report; Last Month's Sales Revised Lower

Posted: 14 Oct 2015 07:44 AM PDT

Retail sales came as expected in today's release, but up only 0.1%. And last month was revised lower, from a 0.2% gain down to 0.0%. Once again autos were the strong point.

Looking on the bright side, as is typically the case, Bloomberg Econoday explains it like this.

Weakness at gasoline stations, where low prices are depressing sales totals, continues to exaggerate weakness in retail sales where the headline inched only 0.1 percent higher in September. Gasoline sales fell 3.2 percent in the month, excluding which the headline looks far more respectable at plus 0.4 percent.

And there are plenty of tangible positives in the data including a third straight solid gain for motor vehicles, at plus 1.7 percent in September, and a second straight outsized gain of 0.9 percent for restaurants. Both of these are discretionary categories and point to underlying consumer strength. Clothing stores are also posting strong gains, up 0.9 percent despite negative price effects from lower import prices.

Price weakness is not only pulling down gasoline sales but also sales at food & beverage stores which fell 0.3 percent. But there are signs of consumer retracement in the September report with the general merchandise category, which is very large, down 0.1 percent, and with health & personal care stores unchanged. Building materials fell 0.3 percent with electronics & appliance stores down 0.2 percent.

Looking at adjusted year-on-year rates helps clarify the trends. Excluding gasoline stations, retail sales are up a very respectable 4.9 percent which is well above the less impressive 2.4 percent gain for total sales. Sales at gasoline stations are down a year-on-year 19.7 percent. Leading the positive side are motor vehicles, up 8.8 percent, and restaurants, up 7.9 percent -- both robust gains. Core sales, that is ex-auto ex-gas, the year-on-year rate is a moderate plus 3.8 percent for a 1 tenth decline from August.

One of the very biggest positives for the consumer right now, aside from strength in labor demand, is the weakness in pump prices, which however in this report, where dollar totals are tracked and not sales volumes, turns into a negative. Still, the headline is weak and will likely lower third-quarter GDP estimates -- but for Fed policy, because the weakness is skewed due to gas prices, the results are harder to assess and may prove neutral.

Third quarter GDP is just at 1%. Given the downward revision last month, I would expect today's report will knock a couple ticks off the expectation.

There have been other reports since the Atlanta Fed updated its model forecast, and one is coming today. so we will see.

But even if flat, is the Fed really going to hike looking at GDP of 1.0%? I highly doubt it.

This report was nowhere near neutral.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Damn Cool Pics

The Hippo Roller Is The Perfect Solution For People That Need To Move Water

Posted: 14 Oct 2015 01:24 PM PDT

The Hippo Roller is an invention that's making many people's lives easier. The device can hold 24 gallons of water and it's making it possible for people who live far away from a water source to transport their liquids quickly and with little stress.

People Who Wore The Perfect Shirts While Meeting Celebrities

Posted: 14 Oct 2015 12:47 PM PDT

When it comes to celebrity meetings, they don't get much more perfect than this.

Why You Should Use Adjusted Bounce Rate and How to Set It Up - Moz Blog

Why You Should Use Adjusted Bounce Rate and How to Set It Up

Posted by RobBeirne

We need to talk about bounce rate.

Now, before I begin ranting, I'd just like to put on the record that bounce rate can, in certain cases, be a useful metric that can, when viewed in the context of other metrics, give you insights on the performance of the content on your website. I accept that. However, it is also a metric which is often misinterpreted and is, in a lot of cases, misleading.

We've gone on the record with our thoughts on bounce rate as a metric, but it's still something that crops up on a regular basis.

The problem with bounce rate

Put simply, bounce rate doesn't do what a lot of people think it does: It does not tell you whether people are reading and engaging with your content in any meaningful way.

Let's make sure we're all singing the same song on what exactly bounce rate means.

According to Google, "Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page)."

In simple terms, a bounce is recorded when someone lands on your website and then leaves the site without visiting another page or carrying out a tracked action (event) on the page.

The reality is that while bounce rate can give you a useful overview of user behaviour, there are too many unknowns that come with it as a metric to make it a bottom-line KPI for your advertising campaigns, your content marketing campaigns, or any of your marketing campaigns, for that matter.

When looked at in isolation, bounce rate gives you very little valuable information. There is a tendency to panic when bounce rate begins to climb or if it is deemed to be "too high." This highly subjective term is often used without consideration of what constitutes an average bounce rate (average bounce rate for a landing page is generally 70-90%).

There's a school of thought that a high bounce rate can be seen as a good thing, as it means that the user found no need to go looking any further for the information they needed. While there is some merit to this view, and in certain circumstances it can be the case, it seems to me to be overly simplistic and opaque.

It's also very important to bear in mind that if a user bounces, they are not included in site metrics such as average session duration.

There is, however, a simple way to turn bounce rate into a robust and useful metric. I'm a big fan of adjusted bounce rate, which gives a much better metric on how users are engaging with your website.

The solution: adjusted bounce rate

Essentially, you set up an event which is triggered after a user spends a certain amount of time on the landing page, telling Google Analytics not to count these users as bounces. A user may come to your website, find all of the information they need (a phone number, for example) and then leave the site without visiting another page. Without adjusted bounce rate, such a user would be considered a bounce, even though they had a successful experience.

One example we see frequently of when bounce rate can be a very misleading metric is when viewing the performance of your blog posts. A user could land on a blog post and read the whole thing, but if they then leave the site they'll be counted as a bounce. Again, this gives no insight whatsoever into how engaged this user was or if they had a good experience on your website.

By defining a time limit after which you can consider a user to be 'engaged,' that user would no longer count as a bounce, and you'd get a more accurate idea of whether they found what they were looking for.

When we implemented Adjusted Bounce Rate on our own website, we were able to see that a lot of our blog posts which had previously had high bounce rates, had actually been really engaging to those who read them.

For example, the bounce rate for a study we published on Facebook ad CTRs dropped by 87.32% (from 90.82% to 11.51%), while our Irish E-commerce Study dropped by 76.34% (from 82.59% to 19.54%).

When we look at Moz's own Google Analytics for Whiteboard Friday, we can see that they often see bounce rates of over 80%. While I don't know for sure (such is the uncertainty surrounding bounce rate as a metric), I'd be willing to bet that far more than 20% of visitors to the Whiteboard Friday pages are interested and engaged with what Rand has to say.

This is an excellent example of where adjusted bounce rate could be implemented to give a more accurate representation of how users are responding to your content.

The brilliant thing about digital marketing has always been the ability of marketers to make decisions based on data and to use what we learn to inform our strategy. Adjusted bounce rate gives us much more valuable data than your run-of-the-mill, classic bounce rate.

It gives us a much truer picture of on-site user behaviour.

Adjusted bounce rate is simple to implement, even if you're not familiar with code, requiring just a small one-line alteration to the Google Analytics code on your website. The below snippet of code is just the standard Google Analytics tag (be sure to add your own tracking ID in place of the "UA-XXXXXXX-1"), with one extra line added (the line beginning with "setTimeout", and marked with an "additional line" comment in the code). This extra line is all that needs to be added to your current tag to set up adjusted bounce rate.

It's a really simple job for your developer; simply replace the old snippet with the one above (that way you won't need to worry about your tracking going offline due to a code mishap).

In the code above, the time is set to 15 seconds, but this can be changed (both the '15_seconds' and the 15000) depending on when you consider the user to be "engaged". This '15_seconds' names your event, while the final part inside the parenthesis sets the time interval and must be input in milliseconds (e.g. 30 seconds would be 30000, 60 seconds would be 60000, etc.).

On our own website, we have it set to 30 seconds, which we feel is enough time for a user to decide whether or not they're in the right place and if they want to leave the site (bounce).

Switching over to adjusted bounce rate will mean you'll see fewer bouncers within Google Analytics, as well as improving the accuracy of other metrics, such as average session duration, but it won't affect the tracking in any other way.

Adjusted bounce rate isn't perfect, but its improved data and ease of implementation are a massive step in the right direction, and I firmly believe that every website should be using it. It helps answer the question we've always wanted bounce rate to answer: "Are people actually reading my content?"

I firmly believe that every website should be using adjusted bounce rate. Let me know what you think in the comments below.

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Seth's Blog : When in doubt, draw a bell curve

When in doubt, draw a bell curve

"All men are created equal." But after that, culture starts to change things.

Almost nothing is evenly distributed.

Some people seek out new technology in an area they are focused on... others fear new technology.

Some people can dunk a basketball, others will never be athletic enough to do so.

Some people are willing to put in the effort to be great at something, most people, by definition, are mediocre.

We're puzzled when we see uneven acceptance or uneven performance, because it's easy to imagine that any group of people is homogeneous. But they're not.

And the distribution of behaviors and traits is usually predictable. Most people are in the middle, but there are plenty of outliers.

Here's one for technology.

And for stories.

And for medicine.

Treat different people differently. Not because they're born this way, but because they choose to be this way.

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marți, 13 octombrie 2015

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Another Yuan Devaluation Already?
Hooray! Huge Rent Hikes Coming; How Will It Affect Price Inflation?
Dutch Report Concludes MH17 Shot Down by Ground-to-Air BUK Missile; Puzzle Still Missing Pieces

Another Yuan Devaluation Already?

Posted: 13 Oct 2015 08:37 PM PDT

I was intrigued by a Zerhedge post this evening entitled Gold Jumps As China Devalues Yuan By Most In 2 Months, "Boosts Reforms" Of Corporate Bond Bubble.

OK - Gold is up a bit, but I cannot find any reference to China devaluing the Yuan again.

ZH made this claim "The Yuan has been fixed stronger for 8 straight days... but tonight PBOC devalues Yuan by 177pips - the most in 2 months," accompanied with this chart.

I cannot find a reference to "China weakens yuan most since August 13" other than ZH. I assume Bloomberg made that statement as ZH claims "Charts: Bloomberg".

Here is a bit of perspective on the "devaluation" claim.

USD vs Yuan

Is that a devaluation, or is that a reversal of a correction to a previous devaluation?

The answer of course is the latter.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Hooray! Huge Rent Hikes Coming; How Will It Affect Price Inflation?

Posted: 13 Oct 2015 10:54 AM PDT

In news that is bound to make the inflationists at the Fed as well as property owners happy, Landlords Will Hike Rents by 8% this Year.

Some 88% of property managers raised their rent in the last 12 months and 68% predict that rental rates will continue to rise in the next year by an average of 8%, according to a survey of more than 500 of Rent.com's property management customers, which the site says represents thousands of rental properties and hundreds of thousands of rental units. That's nearly three times the wage increase that most employees can expect this year.

What's more, 55% of property managers said that they are less likely to offer concessions or lower rents in order to fill vacancies. One reason why they're getting even tougher: They are in a stronger position than they were this time last year.

More than 46% of property managers surveyed reported a decrease in rental vacancies in Rent.com's survey and, in the second quarter of 2015, vacancy rates in the U.S. for rental housing was 6.8%, the lowest it has been in almost 20 years, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Despite this, many renters are spending more than 30% of their income on rent (the amount generally recommended) and need help qualifying for the lease.

Yardi Survey

Reader "BJ" is retired but works part-time a number of hours each week, surveying apartments for rent. He reports ...

Hi Mish

I am retired but work part-time for Yardi from my home, surveying apartments for rents. Yardi runs a full survey 3 times a year, Jan, May and Sept. These generally run about 6 weeks.

Yardi has the country divided into 24 sectors and we normally work 6-7 sectors once a month for a week on a rotating basis. Toward the end of the survey, we can work any market and I've been keeping track of a few select places. From what I see, rents are up and up a lot. Some of the places I watch are up 7% or more than last year for the same apartments.

The absolute worst places to be looking for a rental unit are San Fran and North LA. If anyone does answer the phone in those areas, it's either a new building just opening, or they don't have anything. You can't even get on a waiting list. I've seen apartments in tight areas where they want you to make 3X net before they will talk to you.

Portland, Seattle, Washington DC, northern NJ, Miami and Boston are also difficult. I talked to a complex in Portland last week that had 3500 apartments under management with a total of 7 open apartments.

I am amazed by the amount of apartments that are either tax credit or subsidized in some manner. All of them have long waiting lists.

Measuring Housing Inflation

The Fed wants inflation. But how do they measure it?

The Fed's preferred measure is PCE (personal Consumption Expenditures) price changes, not the CPI. The housing components are quite dissimilar.

Sam Ro writing for Business Insider explains the Difference Between PCE And CPI.

Why does the Fed prefer PCE over CPI? Societe Generale's Aneta Markowska explained in a June 19 research note:

"The official switch from CPI to PCE occurred in 2000 when the FOMC stopped publishing CPI forecasts and began to frame its inflation projections in terms of the PCE price index. This shift, announced by Alan Greenspan during his testimony to Congress, came after extensive analysis done by the Fed. The conclusion was that the PCE has several advantages over the CPI, including (1) the changing composition of spending which is more consistent with actual consumer behavior, (2) the weights, which are based on a more comprehensive measure of expenditure, and (3) the fact that PCE data can be revised to account for newly available information and improved measurement techniques."

PCE vs CPI

Doug Short at Advisor perspectives Deconstructs the CPI as follows.

That pie chart was produced from the December 2014 BLS PDF on the Relative Importance of Components in the Consumer Price Index

But housing contains shelter, insurance, fuel, rents, and other items. Here is a breakdown of shelter.

Housing Components in CPI	42.173
….Shelter	32.711
……..Rent of Primary Residence	7.159
……..Lodging Away from Home	0.839
……..Owners' Equivalent Rent	24.339
……..Tenants' and Household Insurance	0.375
….Fuels and Utility	5.273
….Furnishings	4.189

Please note that home prices are nowhere to be found. The Fed believes homes are a capital expense.

The BLS also ignores home prices, and neither accurately count rents.

Of the 32.711% weighing to CPI "shelter" only 7.159 percentage points are assigned to rent. The largest single item is Owners' Equivalent Rent (OER) accounting for a whopping 24.339% of the CPI.

Owners' Equivalent Rent

The BLS Explains How the CPI Measures Price Change of Owners' Equivalent Rent.

The expenditure weight in the CPI market basket for Owners' equivalent rent of primary residence (OER) is based on the following question that the Consumer Expenditure Survey asks of consumers who own their primary residence: "If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it would rent for monthly, unfurnished and without utilities?"

The following questions, asked of consumers who rent their primary residence, are the basis of the weight for Rent: "What is the rental charge to your [household] for this unit including any extra charges for garage and parking facilities? Do not include direct payments by local, state or federal agencies. What period of time does this cover?"

From the responses to these questions, the CPI estimates the total shelter cost to all consumers living in each index area of the urban United States.

Essentially the BLS asks home owners how much rent they would pay if they rented their own homes from themselves. And that is the single largest component in the entire CPI.

Not only does the Fed and BLS miss housing bubbles, they do not even accurately measure "rent".

But hip, hip, hooray! This will have at least some impact on the CPI and PCE so the inflationist fools will be cheering as the average renter gets crushed.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Dutch Report Concludes MH17 Shot Down by Ground-to-Air BUK Missile; Puzzle Still Missing Pieces

Posted: 13 Oct 2015 08:21 AM PDT

The Dutch investigation into flight MH17, a shot down over Ukraine officially concluded today. The Official Report Confirms MH17 Shot Down by Missile.

Dutch officials have confirmed that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was brought down by a missile and criticised Ukraine for not closing its airspace over its eastern regions despite the conflict, in the first official investigation findings into the crash that killed 298 people in July last year.

The year-long investigation determined that MH17 was shot down by a Russian-made Buk anti-aircraft missile but did not seek to establish who fired it because this was not part of its mandate. "Flight MH17 crashed as the result of detonation of [a] warhead outside the airplane," said Mr Joustra, who chaired the investigation.

Kiev and its western allies blame Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists, while Russia has insisted it was the Ukrainian armed forces.

Earlier on Tuesday, Moscow gave its own version of events, which implicated Ukrainian troops on the frontline.

Yan Novikov, general director of the Russian state arms producer Almaz-Antey, which manufactures the Buk system, said experiments carried out by the company proved initial findings presented in June. These included evidence that the Buk M1 missile that brought down MH17 was fired not from the village of Snizhne that was controlled by pro-Russian rebels but from nearby Zaroshchenske.

There is a difference of opinion over who controlled Zaroshchenske at the time, with the Russian military claiming it was in the hands of the Ukrainian military while Kiev insists it was held by Russian-backed rebels. Mr Novikov declined to comment on who was in control when the plane crashed.

But he said tests had confirmed that the missile that brought down MH17 was an old model, the 9M38, which was first manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1986 and decommissioned by the Russian army in 2011. The statement implied that the missile complex could not have come from Russia.

The Dutch Safety Board report will not directly address the issue of who was responsible for the MH17 disaster. A separate Dutch-led criminal investigation is continuing.

In July, Russia vetoed a draft resolution at the UN Security Council to set up an international tribunal into the disaster.

BUK-Type

The type of BUK cannot determine whether the rebels or the Ukrainian troops fired the missile, but it does seem to rule out Russia directly.

The Guardian provides this interesting snip from the report:

"The damage observed on the wreckage is not consistent with the damage caused by the warhead of an air-to-air missile in use in the region in amount of damage, type of damage and type of fragments. The high-energy object damage on the wreckage of flight MH17 is therefore not caused by an air-to-air missile."

"Of the investigated warheads only the 9N314M contains the unique bowtie shaped fragments found in the wreckage. The damage observed on the wreckage in amount of damage, type of damage, boundary and impact angles of damage, number and density of hits, size of penetrations and bowtie fragments found in the wreckage, is consistent with the damage caused by the 9N314M warhead used in the 9M38 and 9M38M1 BUK surface-to-air missile."

The idea that Russia itself was responsible always seemed silly, at least to me. And evidence was clearly doctored to point the finger at the rebels. But that still does not mean the rebels did not launch the BUK.

Flight Path

Russia could have and should have closed down that airspace. But so could have Ukraine.

And countries may also have wisely decided on their own accord it does not make sense to fly over a war zone.

Tribunals

Mistakes are not grounds for a tribunal. The US never faced tribunals when it accidentally shot down planes.

On the other hand, if Kiev purposely directed MH17 into an area where rebels might make a mistake, that would be another indeed.

Missing Pieces

We are one step closer to understanding what happened.

But where are all the recordings in the black box that show why MH17 was at an altitude that could be hit by a BUK?

It was Kiev that would have benefited from a purposeful rebel mistake, not the rebels.

Lots of questions remain, even if the Rebels fired the BUK.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

joi, 15 octombrie 2015