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vineri, 21 octombrie 2011

Whiteboard Takeover - Branded SEO for Page 1 Domination

Posted: 21 Oct 2011 03:43 AM PDT

Posted by Koozai

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 SEOmoz, Inc.

The Koozai team are taking over the SEOmoz Whiteboard today with Mike Essex and Samantha Stratton presenting on effective techniques for controlling branded term searches. So if you want to stop negative press, counterfeit goods and bad reviews appearing for your product or brand name searches we will show you how. So for more sales with Page One Domination, watch on:

Video Transcription

Howdy SEOmoz fans. Today's video is brought to you by the Koozai team, and we're taking over the SEOmoz whiteboard to show you how to make more money for brand term searches. Now, we're calling this presentation Page One Domination because that's effectively what it is.

You want to dominate your brand when people search for it online in order to make more sales. You don't want people to see negative reviews, bad comments like, "I hate this product." You don't want to see affiliates on there taking money or a cut off your sales, and you don't want to see counterfeit goods on there taking money away and misleading your customers.

Bad PR, as well, if that's on there for your brand term search, you're going to damage customers' perception of your brand.

Now typical SEO, we will optimise for short tail and long tail keywords to get people to our website initially, which works really well. But the problem is that if they've never heard of your website before, they're going to go back and research you by putting your brand in the search engine.

What they see at that stage is a little bit out of your hands, or at least it's thought to be. But what we've seen is that by having strong profiles registered on other properties that are optimised for your brand terms, you can inject extra content into here to push these negative entries down.

In this video, we're going to show you how to do that and how the top brands in the world do it as well. What we've done is research the top hundred companies to see how they have positive page ones. We've drawn up a list of ten different strategies that you can use that I'm going to go through now in order.

At the bottom we've got videos. Now these are really at the bottom of the list because they're used less frequently, not necessarily because they aren't as good as what is to come next. There is definitely a time investment here, but videos are fantastic for when the search engines want to show multimedia content and results.

When people search for your brand, Google doesn't just want to show them text links. In fact, for any search now Google wants to show a nice mixture of content. So if you can have a video entry in here, it will make your brand look more interesting for the people searching for you, and it's better content for the search engines to show. Videos are absolutely worth doing, and it doesn't just have to be a boring corporate advert. You can also show people using your product to help demonstrate the effectiveness of it, or you can have fun videos as well, educational videos about what you do or that help your industry niche.

Videos are the first step. Then we've got industry profiles. Industry directories would be a great example of this or local directories as well for people searching in your local area. Registering them as well allows you to have a nice bit of corporate information about your brand that you control as well. So they're nice, safe profiles that brand well.

Then we've got voucher websites. Now people always want a bargain. It doesn't matter what the product is or how cheap it is or how expensive it is, if I can find a website that will save me money, I'm always going to search for brand name plus vouchers in the search results. What you want to do is make sure that it's your website that appears for that type of search. If you register your brand name plus the word vouchers, that's a good way to be there every time. Also, you can give vouchers away to other voucher websites that are out there in the industry. So see where your competitors have got them or just see extra voucher websites that rank well for the term "vouchers."

If you don't feel that you want to give people any money off your product, the voucher could literally just be free postage and packaging or a 30-day trial. Something that you probably offer already could just be repackaged as a voucher.

Then we've got niche websites. These are things like bloggers talking about your product. Your typical blogger engagement here is to go out and find the bloggers who are talking about people and things in your niche, then give them your product to review. Give them your information about your product as well so they can post it on their sites. Keep them informed in what you're doing, and the more times they reference your brand, the more chance they've got of appearing in this set of results for your products.

Next up we've got social profiles. We've got Twitter, we've got Facebook and there's LinkedIn. I've grouped them all together here because it seems to be a little bit random what Google will show. The nice thing about social profiles is you control the content. Also, if people search for your brand and they see a social profile with a company that's engaging with their customers and it's got a lot of fans, that helps build trust in the research stage and will help them come back to your website to make that all important sale.

Then we've got our customers. We mentioned earlier that customers can actually be a bad thing. Customers can write bad things about you and they can damage your brand. They can also write good things about you as well. They're the type of entries that we want to seek out. We want to search for our brand name, find people who are saying nice things about us, and then optimise those profiles so they rank higher, and that's what Sam is going to show you in the next step of this video.

Number four, we've got financial information. This is something I rarely see companies doing, but which is really, really effective, which is why it's so high. If you're a limited company or you've been trading for a while you've already got publicly available financial information, so just provide it to the likes of The Financial Times and other financial websites to track things like share prices and company profits. It'll rank well, and also if your company is performing well, that will help add extra customer confidence when they search for you.

News is another one which can be bad for you, but which can be good as well. One thing I always recommend is to always have a press release in reserve that is positive. Write up a press release that isn't time- specific, that could go out any time of year or maybe even in a years' time. Then if someone publishes a bad piece of news about you, you just submit your good piece of news through PR services. It gets picked up over the Internet, and then because it's fresher than the other news stories, a lot of the time it will outrank them straightaway and you can push that bad news down before it's even been read.

Number two, we've got Wikipedia. If you search for most one-word, two-word generic phrases, a Wikipedia page is what will appear. This is the same concept. It's a very generic term even though it's a brand name. So Wikipedia entries appear almost all the time when you search for big brands. They are hard to get, but it's really worth trying to get one, asking people to create one for you, adding citations, maybe even doing things for charity so your company seems a bit more worthwhile to appear on Wikipedia will help. Fundamentally, it's the second most important step on here. So try, try, try to get a Wikipedia page whenever you can.

The number one tip, register more domains. I really can't emphasise the importance of this one. We've seen exact-matched domains rank really well for generic terms, and they also rank really well for brand. Why do you think your brand website appears and ranks so well? It's because of the exact match relevance of the term. So buy extra domains with your brand name in there and a little bit of extra information. We talked earlier about brand name vouchers. That would be a fantastic example of something to register and put here. But you could also just take a section off your website, put it on another domain, and just link to it from your main website. That's got a very high chance, the number one chance in fact, of ranking on here for your brand name searches. Whatever you do don't copy content off your website. Either pull content and paste it over here or write entirely new content, but don't have two identical sections, because you could get your main website penalised, which really isn't what we're trying to do.

These are the steps that I recommend you take. Register these profiles, and the next step that we need to do is to optimise them so that they start to appear in the SERPs, because this isn't enough in isolation. What I'm going to do now is hand you over to Samantha Stratton, who has been instrumental in a lot of these projects here at Koozai, and she'll run you through just that.

Samantha Stratton

Howdy SEOmoz fans. Thanks for the introduction Mike. What I want to talk to you about now is what you can do to gain domination for your branded searches so that if your potential customers or clients or suppliers are doing a bit of research about your brand, they're going to come across all these nice, positive things for you.

There are six points to gaining domination. I'm going to talk through the first four points here, and then I'm going to move over to this part of the whiteboard where I'm going to show you exactly what you need to be doing to gain that domination.

First up is research. This is probably one of the most important stages of this process. You need to start researching your branded searches as well as your, say two, three, four competitors that you want to look at. By doing this you're going to be looking at pages one to three of Google, so putting in your brand and then also doing exactly the same thing for your competition, and start making a list of all of those positive mentions that you've already got and also do exactly the same thing for your competitors.

What you'll end up with is a spreadsheet of URLs that you're seeing already ranked for your branded searches and those that your competitors are also ranking for. From this, your profiles that you've uncovered that are positive, you need to go through all of them and update them with unique, compelling content, talking about your brands, talking about what your brand offers as a company. You may even have mentions of all your employees, anything that is going to make that profile credible and more authoritative to highlight that as being something associated to your brand.

You can include things like images, whether it's your company logo, images of your employees, shopfronts, services, any of the products that you own, any sort of events that you do with your company, any kind of images that you can get to give that page more authority, add those on there. You want to include a URL. So again, that's going to help you with your main SEO for your main site because you've got all these links coming back from various profiles into your main domain. But it's also going to allow anybody that finds these profiles, whether it's your potential customers or the search engines, it gives them another opportunity of a quick route back into your main domain.

Finally, you want to go back to your competitor research and register any profiles that you haven't already got. This is where you're going to go through all your competitor listings and look at the ones you don't have, register them, and update them in the same way that you've done with your other profiles& before.

Thirdly, Mike talked earlier about the importance of domains and how well they can rank. They're the top thing in all of the items that we've researched. So if you can get your hands on an additional domain, an exact match domain, these can really help you rank. Whether it's something like 'brand'jobs.com or 'brand'careers.com or 'brand'store.com, any type of permutation of your brand plus an additional domain there can help rank for your brand. The importance here is do not copy what you've done on your main site. They need to be standalone sites with unique content throughout them. Otherwise this is not going to work.

Fourth on the list is you need to start creating unique content that you can use later on in the process to start link building through to these various profiles. You want to start writing articles. You want to start writing hubs lenses. If there are any press releases, any news is good news, whether you've got a new employee that started, any promotions, a new store opening. Any news that you can write about and you're happy to get out there in the public domain, get press releases written so that you've got stuff there ready to publish out on the Internet and build up these profiles.

Now I want to talk to you about link building. What we now need to do if we move over to this area of the board is look at building up the authority of all of these different profiles that we've registered and updated. Back up here, we went out and we registered all of the different profiles and updated our existing ones.

Now what we want to do is build the authority around them. We're going to use the content that we've written at stage four to go and build up these profiles. First take Wikipedia. So you've managed to get a Wikipedia page for your site. You might want to link to that from a press release that you've written, because obviously Wikipedia is a really good source of information and it's a very authoritative domain that's going to be talking about your own website.

You might also have a hub page that's pointing through to here. The third thing you might want to do is use some of your social profiles. So you might have your Facebook page linking through to your Wikipedia page. So here we're using content and we're also using social to boost your Wikipedia profile.

Now down here, your domain, if you've been able to secure a domain that's relevant and appropriate for your brand, you might link that from your press releases. You could have an article coming into that. You may also have directories. There are so many people out there that think oh, directories, boring, not very good, they're not going to work. But we have done a number of projects where we've only used directories to gain page one domination for a brand.

Over here you've got your different social platforms. There are over 300 social platforms available. Any of those that you can get out there and register, you've got all these profiles then that have got the potential of getting onto page one for your brand. The beauty of social is that it's not uncommon to use social to link to social.

Say this is your YouTube page that you've created for your brand. You can link to that from your Facebook page. You might also link to it from your Twitter account and any other social profiles that you've got. Again, you might also use your articles to drive links into here. You might even talk about using deep link directories in this instance.

Here you've got your press releases. You might want to link to your press release from your own website. You've got some great news out there. So linking to that from your own site, as an authoritative site already, that can then drive additional links into your press release. Again, here you might have an article that you want to drive into it, and you might see it fit to link it from your Twitter account.

Essentially, what we're doing here is rather than just focusing on SEO-ing to your main site, you're going to be SEO-ing your various other profiles that you've registered and all that nice content that you've got, and you're going to be link building to all of them and using all these different methods that we've spoken about here.

Coming back over to point six, this is the final point, and this is by far the most important point if you're going to take anything away from this presentation here. You want to be talking about tracking. There is no point starting a project like this if you're not going to have the time or the resource to actually track it.

Creating spreadsheets like we have at the start here at the research stage, you've got a list of all your profiles there. Then you can start to register and track what you're actually driving links into for each of the profiles. That's point number one. At the start of the project, the first thing that you should be doing is taking screen shots of pages one to three for your branded searches. Doing this on a weekly basis will allow you to benchmark against what you started off with, so seeing which profiles are moving quickly. Looking at this on a month-by-month basis you can then compare starting point to month one. If you do see certain profiles moving up the rankings a lot faster than others, these are the ones that you want to focus your priority on first because you're seeing the movement there and you know that the search engines are receptive to those profiles.

Then, coming back, once you start seeing movement in those ones, you then start to go back over the profiles that you haven't seen as much movement in and start link building a bit more to those. Is there any way you can add some more content? Start then focusing on those profiles that you haven't seen the movement in.

This is an ongoing sort of project here. You can't get to the end of month four and think, oh, done, I've got the whole page in page one domination because moving on from there other people can start to creep into that marketplace as well. Constantly looking at new ways of creating new profiles, creating unique content, and just getting the mentions out there for your brand is going to overall help you gain domination for your branded searches.

If you do need any more information, please visit our website, which is Koozai.com, and thank you very much for your time.

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Pump Up The Bing - Whiteboard Friday

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 02:04 PM PDT

Posted by caseyhen

This week Rand is joined by Duane Forrester of Bing to talk about all things Bing. Rand and Duane will be talking about the shut down of Yahoo Site Explorer, the early stages of social search, the return of the meta keyword tag as a spam signal, and some new features in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Speaking of Bing, there are a few great posts that came out this week talking about Bing. First, Slingshot SEO released a study on Google & Bing click-through rates which revealed some interesting information and is worth a read. Second, Yahoo announced that they have completed the algorithmic transition to Bing in all global markets.

Enjoy and of course we look forward to hearing from you in the comments!

Video Transcription

Rand: Howdy SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I'm joined by my friend from Bing, Duane Forester. Duane, thank you for coming.

Duane: Always a pleasure and thanks guys for your time. We'll try to use it wisely.

Rand: We'll see about that. I've been known to spin all sorts of things. So, Duane, thrilled to have you back.

Duane: Thank you.

Rand: Thrilled to be talking about Bing. Some exciting news coming out of Bing. The first thing we're coving on our list, Bing now bigger than Italy?

Duane: Yes, bigger than Italy. Bigger than Italy.

Rand: Describe this for me. Bing, obviously, has way, way more users than 59 million, but you're talking about the pure ecosystem of Bing being of this particular size.

Duane: Yeah. So, the actual ecosystem within Bing, the Yahoo and Bing ecosystem, essentially, we serve about 59 million people, 57 million, somewhere in that range of people. Now, what's important about these people is not that they comprise a group that is larger than Italy. That's kind of nice. Right? And it looks really good. But the reality is that these almost 60 million people only interact with the Bing ecosystem. They do not interact with any other search ecosystem.

Rand: Interesting. So this is more of the exclusive. These are the Bing exclusive people.

Duane: Exactly. Now, I'll through a couple more stats out there for you. 4% higher spend rate than other search engines. 23% more likely to make an online purchase.

Rand: Okay. We've seen those stats previously.

Duane: Exactly. So when you actually look at the value of those users, those 59 million people of that ecosystem, that has a net positive effect for a lot of businesses. So it really is something folks need to pay attention to. I mean, the search engine, we're 30% plus market share now.

Rand: Yeah.

Duane: I mean, I still meet people every day that are like, "Oh, well, really? I didn't know." I'm like, "You're doing your business a disservice. You have to pay attention."

Rand: So what we should say to SEOs is, go tell all your competitors not to use Bing, so that you can use it and take advantage of the great customer base that they've got.

Duane: And the higher conversion rates. Who doesn't want more money? I mean really? Who's got your back? Bing's got your back.

Rand: And speaking of Bing having your back, Bing Webmaster Tools has some cool new stuff.

Duane: Yes.

Rand: You guys just completed this email alert integration over the last few months.

Duane: We do. We have, right now, some integrated email alerts coming out for malware alerts. So, if we hit your website and find out that there's a problem, the net effect for the website is we block that in the search results and we alert the searcher that there's a problem there. They shouldn't go there, obviously. If it's an overt problem, we remove it completely from the index, so that somebody won't get hurt by going to the website. We also alert you in the Webmaster Tools. And, more importantly, now we're starting to send out email alerts to you. So you may not come into the tools today, but we'll get you an email alerting you that today we found a problem. Now that, that technology we're using is actually going to expand, and we're going to include other types of alerts. So, if there's a particular data point that you're looking at or information that we think is important to you -crawler went to an area, it's blocked, we can't get in, we think there's something valuable - maybe we'll send you an email and tell you, "Hey, open that up for us."

Rand: You can't call your own product database anymore. Interesting

Duane: Exactly. Exactly. So, if there are things that you guys, data that you see inside Bing Webmaster Tools, and you think is really highly valuable and you want to get an update on it, get a hold of me. Okay? Ping us. Talk to us here through SEOmoz. Hit me up.

Rand: @DuaneForester.

Duane: @DuaneForester on Twitter. I am a real person. I'm only a bot half the time. The rest of the time it's me. I swear. And get that conversation going. Let us know what matters.

Rand: Cool. And you guys have been trying to improve Webmaster Tools, as well, through some survey feedback.

Duane: Absolutely.

Rand: What are the early results from that? What are we going to see?

Duane: I'm really impressed with it. First off, I want to say a thank you to everyone who took the time and was involved with the webmaster survey. I know that some of you guys watching out there, they will have been involved with this, and they would have given us our feedback. Thank you so much. I'm in the middle of going through it all right now. Right? So, I went through about almost 600 individual suggestions yesterday, of people saying, "I want this tool. You need to do this. This feature needs a better UX on it." These kinds of things. And we're seeing everything, a broad range, from people saying, "We want an organic keyword research tool," right down to some confusing things like people asking for a "SERP view tool," which I'm not entirely sure how to interpret that. So, if you sent that in, ring-a-ding-ding, because I need a little more info.

But, yeah. So, we're digging down on that. This week I'm pulling together the deck at work that actually informs our engineering team what we need to invest in. We go through triaging. We get to a stage where we do some cutting on it, so that we can actually fit it into the amount of work time we have available. Probably in the next two months or so we'll hit the green light stage. Then after that, it's build, build, build, and roll out new features.

Rand: I really appreciate this about Bing, about what you guys are doing, that you not only take the time to collect feedback, but then you have a process. You'll tell us what that process is, and here's how the process goes. And then we'll get features out of Bing.

Duane: Absolutely.

Rand: Some of the crawling stuff and the linked data stuff that we requested, now it's in there. Some of the other stuff is out.

Duane: Exactly.

Rand: UX is better.

Duane: Yup.

Rand: It's very nice.

Duane: This is kind of one of the benefits of having an SEO inside helping with this. I kind of know how to interpret what folks are looking for, but I'm only one mind. So we need this survey data to help me understand what's important now to businesses who are online, what they need. In fact, we're going to be running this survey again in another six months. To get included in it, open up a Bing Webmaster Tools account. That live ID you have, we capture those, and that's the email list that we send out to.

Rand: Very cool.

Duane: You get the benefit of the tools, and you're also included automatically.

Rand: That's great. A bunch of reasons to sign up for that.

Duane: Yes.

Rand: So one of the things that I also appreciate about you guys is right now Google, in fact, this morning announced this change, so we're filming this a little earlier. But basically, right now, if I go to the Google search box, which I'm drawing in red for some reason . . .

Duane: Primary color.

Rand: . . . and type in a keyword like "Duane from Bing," and I want to find you. I'm looking maybe for your Twitter account. If this goes to your personal website and I am logged into my account, so it will say RandFish@gmail logged in, which I actually don't check that account, so don't email me there. Rand@SEOmoz. But, if I'm logged into this account, Google will stop this keyword data from passing any information through the referral string, meaning that Google Analytics, Webtrends, whatever you're using, AW Stats, it doesn't matter the service you're using or your log files, you will not be able to capture the information that's being sent, that's passing in the search referrer's string. Is Bing also making this change?

Duane: No.

Rand: No.

Duane: That's not on our radar at the moment.

Rand: Bless you, sir. Bless you all.

Duane: I'll be honest. I was surprised as everybody else when I heard about this. I was like, not really what I want, but I'm sure there's a good reason. I'm certain there is.

Rand: I mean there's the top line reason given by Google, which I think is the privacy, user privacy is to get more personalization. But I think you guys do a great job with privacy and still pass this information.

Duane: We're very keen on privacy. Absolutely.

Rand: Certainly this hasn't come up as a problem in the past. I think the other, of course, there are folks on the Twitter suggesting that this is a change that could help boost AdWords' revenue, because people will be unable to see the organic search traffic and think. The only way that you can get this data is if someone clicks on the "Search ads."

Duane: Paid search ads.

Rand: Right. The paid ads on the right or on the top. Even if I'm logged in, the paid search ads will still pass through.

Duane: Shows up in AdWords and there are your metrics for it.

Rand: Yeah. That's sad.

Duane: I have no comment other than to say we're status quo right now. Bing's in here.

Rand: Cool. Very cool. We appreciate that. Speaking of things that are not going to be status quo, we saw the announcements publicly that Yahoo Site Explorer is formally going away.

Duane: Yes, it is.

Rand: Do we have any more news on when exactly that's happening?

Duane: We don't have a definitive deadline on it. But what people should be taking from this is, if this is the sort of thing that you have a high reliance on, now's the time to start finding another data source. Now, part of that data source will come through Webmaster Tools. We do consume part of the fee that comes directly from the Yahoo Site Explorer team, and the link data that we show inside Webmaster Tools is partially fueled by that data.

Rand: Gotcha. So you're taking essentially Bing data and Yahoo index data, and then sort of combining those, and that's what I see in Bing Webmaster Tools.

Duane: Exactly. Now, it's not a complete replacement. All right? I'm not going to lie to you guys. It is not a complete replacement. A big part of the reasons it's not a complete replacement is we believe in the one on one partnership that we have with webmasters, which essentially precludes us from sharing competitive data. So, I will tell you about what I have about your website, and you can have hundreds of websites and I'll tell you about all of those individually through the tool set. But I won't give you the facility to simply enter another domain of your choosing and get similar data back.

Rand: So does this mean that even after Yahoo Site Explorer's demise, we should not plan on being able to go to Bing, either Webmaster Tools or another tool, and seeing competitive link data from you?

Duane: Immediately, yes, but you guys get a vote in this. These surveys, contacting me, talking to me at the conferences, all of that data goes to inform how we build out tools. We may run into a wall, and I'm going to include myself with you guys in wanting that kind of data. Right? I run my own websites. I know what the value of this stuff is. But if we actually have a large enough voice, then I can take that, put my Bing hat back on, walk down the hall and go, "Look guys. Here's why it matters. It is important. Here's how people are using it. This is what it allows them to do. So, how do we get them their competitive intelligence without giving away the farm, or creating other problems?" We could hit a wall, and the answer is it's simply not possible.

Rand: Okay.

Duane: Or we may end up with some kind of split view that allows competitive information. So, for example, we feel these websites are related to you in some way, same topic, they rank near you, these kinds of things. We won't tell you the domains, but we will tell you the links that are pointing at them.

Rand: Oh, interesting. That would be very useful. So something like, "Here's links that point to sites like yours."

Duane: Right. Exactly. And, ultimately, that's the type of competitive stuff that you're kind of after.

Rand: Yeah, that would be very interesting to see, even anonymous. So let's move on to this other topic. You and I were exchanging some information about how you believe it's still very early in this transition from social data making its way into organic search and into SEO, and how Bing is trying to provide all of the relevancy involved in collecting multiple data sources and putting them together, with none of the creepy.

Duane: Exactly.

Rand: I appreciate that. I like a good slogan as much as the next guy.

Duane: Yup. More relevancy, less creepy. This is a very real thing, because when you get into the social graph and pulling that information in, there's a lot of personalization that's happening. That's the whole reason for it. The story that I use, and this is a real story, I want new tires for my truck. I need the search engine to understand who I am in context of this search. So I have to be willing to explain more about myself, share who I am socially, what my interests are, what my hobbies are, so that the engine can go out and put together a view of who Duane is on the Internet to answer that question about the tires I want.

Rand: As opposed to just here are things your friends liked.

Duane: Right. Or here's an online web store that sells tires. Now go into their search functionality and go all over again and through it to find out what's in there. No, no, no. Get me out of that kludgy and get me to the point where I take out my phone and say, "Tires for my truck. You know who I am. You know the make and model of my truck. You have the statistics on the vehicle, so you know what came with it. You also have a history that explains Duane likes to tinker. He doesn't leave anything alone, which means I'm going to modify. I don't want the stock tire. I want a big, meaty, aggressive tire that can take myself and Rand to the top of Mount Rainier."

Rand: Whoa.

Duane: That's what I'm after.

Rand: I'm just going to draw this tire and try to illustrate how cool it's going to be.

Duane: It's got to be bigger.

Rand: See, look at those treads.

Duane: Right? That right there is the future of search.

Rand: That's just the top of your tire.

Duane: That's the top of my tire? On the top of Mount Rainier.

Rand: Oh, damn.

Duane: Right? And you and me sucking on oxygen bottles so we don't pass out.

Rand: Amazing.

Duane: So anyway, the point behind it is that we're not quite at that stage yet. Right? All of these pieces, I've left this footprint out there. They're not being connected yet.

Rand: I guess one of the things that webmasters want to know is, are we going to have to manually try and connect some of these things through formats like Schema.org?

Duane: Yes. This is a large part of the move where the Web will evolve from a collection of links to a collection of objects.

Rand: Yeah.

Duane: Right now the objects are black holes. Pictures, videos, a person, or an object, like our tire, that isn't adequately defined. So if Schema.org, rich snippets of any kind, those things get implemented, they describe the objects, now suddenly the search engine understands not just the context of me but the context of the object. Now it can start bringing back relevant results to me. And not just, okay Duane, here's an aggressive tire to meet your needs, but your friends, their feedback, the communities you are involved in, that extended friendship, those start to influence the search results.

Rand: So how much is Bing going to be doing things like adopting the rel="me", and the author profiles, and the sort of references to where I can say, "Hey, these are my profiles on the Web. So now go pull from these and learn more about me."

Duane: Again, we are so early stages. We're not really committed to those, per se. So if people want to know what we're committed to and invested in, Schema.org. That's where it all lives. That's what we adhere to right now.

Rand: You guys are on that right now. Okay.

Duane: Additions to that can happen at any time. If we feel that the rel="author" is going to make a substantial difference in relevancy to some degree, we're going to hop on board.

Rand: Okay.

Duane: Okay?

Rand: Cool.

Duane: There's no question about it. But it's, again, early and it hasn't been proven. Is it going to accomplish what it's intended to accomplish? Look back at sitemaps. Right? Sitemap's a great idea. Relevancy. Why is everybody a 0.9? Not everything is a 0.9. So these things evolve over time.

Rand: Sure. Another question I guess is, today, right now, Bing is pulling in a ton of data from Facebook. Should we be anticipating that other networks may make their way in there?

Duane: I think it would be fantastic. I have no official word on it. We, obviously, are very tightly aligned and happily aligned with Facebook. We get a lot of integrated data from them.

Rand: They're obviously the largest by a long shot.

Duane: Currently, yes. But, you know, at one time there was only Google, and now, 30% market share. Tada! So, it can happen, right? You get competitive forces in there and it makes a difference. So really what we want to be able to do is, we're asking ourselves, "Have we done enough with the data we have? Have we maximized this data in a way that really improves relevancy, improves it broadly, but also on a personalized level? Take out the creepy, leave the relevancy." That type of thing.

Rand: So let's go to our last thing. The Search Engine Land folks wrote a really interesting article where they cited some discussions with you, some sort of email back and forth, and a mention that you had had that, "Oh well, we don't completely ignore the meta keywords." And suddenly, oh my god, all hell breaks loose.

Duane: Yeah, it was an interesting day.

Rand: Then there was this sort of indication from you that, hey, putting more keywords of the things that you're trying to rank for into your meta keywords, that is not a good use. That's not going to help you. But if we see some signals, and maybe you can explain those signals, we might view pages in a different way. The meta keywords is one of many things that we might even look at.

Duane: Exactly. So meta keywords, in and of themselves, aren't going to suddenly boost your ranking. Let's get that clear right off the bat.

Rand: He just said that.

Duane: It's not like if I go and put words in there, and it's blank today, I will jump up in relevancy. Not going to happen. However, for people that are filling in their meta keywords, good for you. These are good things to do, and this is why they're good to do. If you're willing to take the time to get your meta keywords correct, you're paying a lot of attention to details. That is going to translate to everything you do, content creation, link building approaches, absolutely everything you do. Social will be picked up in the same way, because it's who you are.

Rand: So, you're saying this is correlation but not causation.

Duane: Right. Right. Now, let's say you're not filling in your meta keywords tag, and you're doing this for efficiency sake. You know there's no lift for it. You're not going to put the time into it. Again, not a problem. That is totally relevant. Just keep in mind though that there are services around the Internet that actually pull data from the meta keywords tags, that may take a cue from these things. So you want to be careful.

Rand: These are things like internal search.

Duane: Right. It could be internal search. I know that there are some contextual programs that will take a look at them. So you want to be careful and ask yourself, "I'm skipping this. Am I hurting any of my other services in any way by not giving that signal?"

Now let's talk about the big one. You go in and you think to yourself, wow, I'm relevant for everything, including Viagra. You know what? Seriously guys, it is an old topic. But we see this all the time, still, today. My core search guy came to me on Friday and gave me an example of keyword stuffing that was implemented on Thursday on a brand new website. So people out there still think this is a valid tactic. Right? It's not. Although, as Danny points out in the article on Search Engine Land, if you're a spammer, by all means, please, stuff that keyword tag for us.

Rand: Because we really want to know.

Duane: It just makes it so easy to know to take another look.

Rand: It's like putting on your black hat when you go out in public.

Duane: Totally. Right? Absolutely. If you're going to use the keyword tag, follow the best practices. Get it right.

Rand: Just to be clear, meta keywords is not the only place that you're going to be looking at spam signals.

Duane: No, absolutely not.

Rand: If you see that triggered in other places . . .

Duane: Absolutely. So you can get your meta keywords tag right and spam in other areas. We'll still find out about it. We'll still give you the boot.

Rand: Good to know. Duane, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for coming. I hope we'll have you back again.

Duane: Absolutely. Definitely.

Rand: Congratulations on the growth with Bing and on the growth of Webmaster Tools.

Duane: Thank you.

Rand: And thanks everyone for watching. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Duane: Thanks for your time guys.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Bringing our troops home from Iraq

Good evening,

I'm writing to tell you that all US troops will return home from Iraq by the end of December. After nearly nine years, the American war in Iraq will end. Our servicemen and women will be with their families for the holidays.

The war in Iraq came with tremendous cost. More than a million Americans served in Iraq, and nearly 4,500 gave their lives in service to the rest of us. Today, as always, we honor these patriots.

When I came into office, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end. As Commander in Chief, I ended our combat mission last year and pledged to keep our commitment to remove all our troops by the end of 2011. To date, we’ve removed more than 100,000 troops from Iraq.

This is a significant moment in our history. For more information, including video, please visit WhiteHouse.gov/BringingTroopsHome.

The end of the war in Iraq reflects a larger trend. The wars of the past decade are drawing to a close.

As we have removed troops from Iraq, we have refocused our fight against al Qaeda and secured major victories in taking out its leadership–including Osama bin Laden. And we’ve begun a transition in Afghanistan.

On the first day of my Administration, roughly 180,000 troops were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of this year that number will be cut in half, and we’ll continue to draw it down.

As we welcome home our newest veterans, we’ll enlist their talents in meeting our greatest challenges as a nation—restoring our economic strength at home. Because after a decade of war, the nation that we need to build is our own.

Today the United States moves forward, from a position of strength.

Thank you,

President Barack Obama

This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com.
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Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

Home for the Holidays

Your Daily Snapshot for
Friday, October 21, 2011

Home for the Holidays

Last year, President Obama brought an end to the combat mission in Iraq, and through the course of the past 14 months, more than 100,000 troops have returned to their families.

Today, President Obama announced that the rest of our troops will be home by the holidays. Watch the video and learn more.

Seth's Blog : Cities don't die (but corporations do)

Cities don't die (but corporations do)

In modern times, it's almost unheard of for a city to run out of steam, to disappear or to become obsolete. It happens to companies all the time. They go out of business, fail, merge, get bought and disappear.

What's the difference?

It's about control and the fringes.

Corporations have CEOs, investors and a disdain for failure. Because they fear failure, they legislate behavior that they believe will avoid it.

Cities, on the other hand, don't regulate what their citizens do all day (they might prohibit certain activities, but generally, market economies permit their citizens to fail all they like).

This failure at the fringes, this deviant behavior, almost always leads to failure. Except when it doesn't.

Ecosystems outlast organisms.

• Email to a friend •

joi, 20 octombrie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Feedback on China Video Story from Mike "In Tokyo" Rogers, Sculptor Hopen, Others; Reserve Currency Reflections
EU Given Rope, Hangs Itself
Euro Summit Statement "Leaked" Draft Looks Like Swiss Cheese; 10-Point Proposal for More Meetings
Merkel Cancels Speech to Parliament; "Merkozy Marbles"
EU Commissioner Seeks to Prohibit Rating Agencies from Rating Stressed Debt; IMF Report on Greece Held Up in Dispute with EU
Blatant Arrogance of France

Feedback on China Video Story from Mike "In Tokyo" Rogers, Sculptor Hopen, Others; Reserve Currency Reflections

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 05:11 PM PDT

In response to A "Must See" Heart Wrenching Video of Moral Deterioration in China I received several emails saying I should have posted a warming about graphic content.

Yes, I could have done that.

I also received emails from several people who were upset at this video thinking it does not belong in an economic blog at all. They are mistaken.

The often repeated story regarding China is that the country will grow without end, it will overtake the US, and rule the world.

Instead, I propose the China story is really about rampant credit expansion, malinvestments, unproductive assets, no free capital markets, centralized planning that people mistake for capitalism, no legal system of merit, no freedom of speech, no respect for either property rights or human rights, and that peak-oil will in and of itself kill the story.

In short, all the people who think China is some sort of miracle savior for the world economy are going to find out otherwise.

Let's move on to emails from readers.

Mike "In Tokyo" Rogers Replies

Mish,

You are absolutely 100% correct in showing this video. Even though I live in Japan, I have been to China many times and even handled marketing in promotion in Japan for Chinese companies.

The reason I have never commented on these things is because China and Japan have had a bad and contentious and violent enough history without me throwing in my 2-cents.

In Japan, perhaps because of of a "Japanese homogeneous" mind-set or a common history this sort of thing would be an incredibly rare experience. In general, the Japanese feel like they are all part of the same family. This is an important thing that keeps the fabric of society here stable.

This is also why Japan does not have crime and social problems like the rest of the world.

Anyway, thanks for the video.

Mike

Reader "Larry" Writes

Dear Mish,

I regard your comments on this video wholly appropriate. Basic economic hardship drives people to terrible inhumanity. Allowing choice is very important but there is no choice without truth.

The trouble is we are told so many lies that proper choices are very hard to make without a strong commitment to the facts.

Thank you for your integrity in this vital matter even if I don't always agree with you when the figures don't add up but the heart is quite clear on the matter.

Larry

Bill Hopen, Sculptor Replies

Hello Mish

Mike, you and I live in a different culture, different economy, different head space. Americans who help strangers are a curiosity in China, often applauded in the media.

This is because most urban Chinese people stay to themselves, don't get involved, don't help, unless it is a friend or family. I, like you, are of the boy scout persuasion, I stop to help if there is trouble.

Once I interceded in a NYC street incident, saving two women who were being beaten by a drug crazed person. I was the only one to act. Still this horrible neglect of this poor little run down girl is beyond belief.

Shanghai is a city squared, 30 million, in its poorer areas, the residents work 14-16 hours a day for survival, for several dollars a day.

If you get sick with no money, you die. If you lose your job you starve. There is no social net to save you. The message a Chinese feels is: "No One Cares if I Live or Die".

Within living memory, 20 million people starved in China. The ones who made it through that time were hardened with the attitude "take care of yourself and do what you need to do. Don't waste time and effort on strangers. There are too many and you have too little to help."

Everyone knows of this incident in China now. The Chinese public is horrified and outraged by the video. They feel shame at what their society has become.....the cars scooters, pedestrians running over or passing by without regard for this poor little injured human being in need.

This video hit me like a punch in the gut, I have 5 little ones now, an almost two and a three year old among them.

Regards
Bill Hopen, Sculptor www.billhopen.com

Bill Hopen lives part-time in China, part-time in the US. He met his wife in China. For more on his story please see Inside China: A Sculptor's View.

His latest work is "Dedication of the Wedding Feast of Cana" in bronze.

Final Comments

There is quite a difference between failing to act out of fear for yourself or life vs. complete indifference as to what happens to a little girl run over by a van. The video represents the tragic state of everyday affairs in China.

The Yuan will not become the new world reserve currency.

China does not have deep enough capital markets or deep enough bond markets. China does not respect human or property rights, and contrary to popular belief there are so many problems with being the world's reserve currency that Chinese leadership does not even want it.

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

EU Given Rope, Hangs Itself

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 12:04 PM PDT

Here is the latest piece of Fantasyland thinking as reported by the following Bloomberg headline.

*EU MAY DROP 500 BILLION-EURO CEILING ON BAILOUT FUNDS
2011-10-20 17:45:07.290 GMT

STORY TO FOLLOW.

JAMES HERTLING

No Story, Just Imagination

Regardless of what follows from Hertling, the "story" is pure imagination.

Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank in Denmark, sent that news headline along with his comments as follows:

It's very important for me to stress all these headlines are pure imagination.

The facts remains:

German Constitutional ruling plus EFSF vote in German Parliament makes it impossible for Germany to go ahead with any solutions which means bigger, permanent or increased liabilities.
Furthermore the last 24 hrs has proved that ALL German agreement is subject to later approval by German Parliamentary finance committee
Two summits are needed now, an EU summit then an internal German one, making it harder and less likely to succeed.

The latest rumors and leaks are all part of extend-and-pretend. All solutions will be back loaded with actions taken in 2012 and 2014 rather than here and now.

Time is up, but the next 48 hrs will give us plenty of leaks and management of expectations via PR.

The conclusion however, remains the same: The EU was given a rope - it decided to use it for hanging itself and not to tie down the rudderless ship.

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

Euro Summit Statement "Leaked" Draft Looks Like Swiss Cheese; 10-Point Proposal for More Meetings

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 10:46 AM PDT

A leaked draft of the Euro Summit Statement is sparse on details and long on hot air. They only item of "substance" and I really use that world lightly, is an 10-point action item plan detailing an agreement to setup more meetings.

The Telegraph presents The Leaked Draft.

I would like to provide details on resolutions to the economic crisis including the EFSF, however there are no details to present (and there will be none as long as the Merkozy feud lingers, which may be through the end of the summit).

With nothing but holes everywhere else, I am pleased to present the 10-point agenda to establish more meetings.

10-Point Proposal for More Meetings

There will be regular Euro Summit meetings bringing together the Heads of State or government (HoSG) of the euro area and the President of the Commission. These meetings will take place at least twice a year, at key moments of the annual economic governance circle. The President of the European Council will ensure the preparation of the Euro Summit, in close cooperation with the President of the Commission, on the basis of the work of the Eurogroup.
The President of the Euro Summit will be designated by the HoSG of the euro area at the same time the European Council elects its President and for the same term of office. Pending the next such election, the present President of the European Council will chair the Euro Summit meetings.
The President of the Euro summit will keep the non euro area Member States closely informed of the preparation and outcome of the Summits. The President will also inform the European Parliament of the outcome of the Euro Summits.
As is presently the case, the Eurogroup will ensure ever closer coordination of the economic policies and promoting financial stability.
The President of the Eurogroup is elected in line with Protocol n°14 annexed to the Treaties. A decision on whether he/she should be elected among Members of the Eurogroup or be a full-time President based in Brussels will be taken at the time of the expiry of the mandate of the current incumbent.
The President of the Euro Summit will be consulted on the Eurogroup work plan and may invite the President of the Eurogroup to convene a meeting of the Eurogroup, notably to prepare Euro Summits or to follow up on its orientations. The President of the Euro summit will meet regularly, at least once a month, with the President of the Commission, the President of the Eurogroup and the President of the ECB. The Presidents of the supervisory agencies and the EFSF/ESM chair may be invited on an ad hoc basis. These meetings will be used to establish clear lines of responsibility and reporting between the Euro Summit, the Eurogroup and the preparatory bodies.
Work at the preparatory level will continue to be carried out by the Eurogroup Working Group(EWG), drawing on input mainly provided by the Commission. The EWG also prepares Eurogroup meetings. It should benefit from a more permanent sub-group consisting of alternates/officials representative of the Finance Ministers, meeting more frequently, working under the authority of the President of the EWG.
The EWG will be chaired by a full-time Brussels-based President. He/she should preferably also chair the Economic and Financial Committee.
The existing administrative structures (i.e. the Council General Secretariat and the EFC Secretariat) will be strengthened and co-operate in a well coordinated way to provide adequate support to the Euro summit President and the President of the Eurogroup, under the guidance of the President of the EFC/EWG. External expertise will be drawn upon as appropriate, on an ad hoc basis.
Clear rules and mechanisms will be set up to improve communication and ensure more consistent messages. The President of the Euro Summit and the President of the Eurogroup have a special responsibility in this respect.

Synopsis

There were six items actually pertaining to the Eurozone crisis in the draft. None of them had any details.

However, there were 10 items pertaining to agreements to meet more often, including plenty of details regarding ad-hoc meetings, who gets to be the chairman, special working groups, preparatory bodies, additional consulting groups, and heads-of-state protocols.

Competing Theories

Eurozone bureaucrats are purposely hoping to downplay this now-failed summit into the gutter so that any results at the meeting will look good

Eurozone bureaucrats are as clueless as they look and sound. If there is a positive result of any kind, it will be by accident.

As a big fan of Occam's razor. Thus I favor choice number two.

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

Merkel Cancels Speech to Parliament; "Merkozy Marbles"

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 09:31 AM PDT

How often do politicians cancel speeches? One might think never, except in case of death or accident, but I have stunning proof it can happen.

Bloomberg reports U.S. Stocks Extend Losses as Merkel Cancels Speech

U.S. stocks extended losses as German Chancellor Angela Merkel canceled a speech to parliament on the European bailout fund because of disagreements on the role of the region's central bank.

German Chancellor Merkel has canceled her planned speech to parliament in Berlin tomorrow because of a deadlock over proposals to leverage the European Financial Stability Facility to give it more firepower, three German lawmakers said.

More than a Merkozy Feud

This is far more than a Merkel-Sarkozy feud.

Merkel is feuding with the German Parliament
Sarkozy is feuding with Merkel
Sarkozy is feuding with the ECB
The IMF is feuding with the EU

Part of the Merkel-Parliament feud is in regards to oversight. The German supreme court said the Bundestag (German Parliament) must be consulted on EFSF and bailout matters and Merkel does not want to give up control.

Like a child who loses at marbles, Merkel took her marbles and left the room. It would be fitting if Sarkozy took his marbles from the game as well. Of course all eyes are on the next release of the tranche to Greece, unless of course the IMF takes its marbles from the game.

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

EU Commissioner Seeks to Prohibit Rating Agencies from Rating Stressed Debt; IMF Report on Greece Held Up in Dispute with EU

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 01:55 AM PDT

Some things are so blatantly stupid they sound like a headline from the news spoof site The Onion.

Here is a case in point, and had this been April 1, everyone would have thought I was making this up.

Courtesy of Google Translate and Deutschland Financial Times please consider a "Radical Proposal".

In a confidential preliminary plan to reform the law on credit rating agencies, EU Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier seeks to prohibit rating agencies from publishing judgments about ailing EU countries.

Barnier proposes that the new Securities and Exchange ESMA is granted the right "to temporarily prohibit" the disclosure of assessments of the ability to pay.

Barnier has advised the rule take effect in November and wants to hold rating agencies civilly liable for damage caused by "poor" ratings.

Never Underestimate the Stupidity of Bureaucrats

EU Commissioner Michel Barnier obviously believes the rating is the problem, not the debt, or the likelihood the debt is paid back.

What about ratings that are too high?

Never, ever, underestimate the blatant stupidity of government bureaucrats, especially desperate bureaucrats. Instead, one can look at such asinine proposals and make a simple judgment: the s*** is about to hit the fan.

IMF Report on Greece Held Up in Dispute with EU

The Greek website Ekathimerini reports Brussels at odds with IMF about sustainability of Greek public debt

The differing views between the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund on the sustainability of Greece's debt have led to a delay in the issuing of a report by Brussels on the country.

The IMF is maintaining a tougher stance vis-a-vis the Greek debt and how viable it could be and is seeking the drafting of a new streamlining program, as it considers the Commission's estimates too optimistic.

Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter said that "Austria's position is that the new package requires a somewhat greater participation of the private sector," but always on a voluntary basis. However, the time frame is particularly tight for an agreement as the eurozone summit of this Sunday is fast approaching and the aim of bring Greek debt below 100 percent of GDP by 2020 seems difficult.

2020 Target for Greece

Please note the open discussion of a 2020 target date for Greece. Bear in mind that is for a debt-to-GDP ratio of 100% not the 60% as required by EU treaty.

Also note the preposterous idea that haircut participation is "voluntary". And what's with this
"somewhat greater participation" participation nonsense?

A quick check this morning shows that the yield on 1-year Greek bonds hit a high of 189%.

As long as we are checking yields, the yield on 10-year Italian debt is a whopping 5.9% vs. Germany at 2.04% and Spain at 5.47%

I would be remiss if I failed to point out the 10-year yield on Portuguese debt is and even bigger 12.14%. Portugal is without a doubt the next country in Europe to blow.

Finally, and in case you missed it, please consider the Blatant Arrogance of France in dealing with this mess.

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

Blatant Arrogance of France

Posted: 20 Oct 2011 12:41 AM PDT

The "Merkozy" coalition is one again in open dispute with itself. German chancellor Angela Merkel has one position and French President Nicolas Sarkozy another.

Historically, Sarkozy's disputes with Merkel have always been resolved with Merkel buckling like corn flakes run over by a cement truck.

However, I expect a different result this time because Sakrozy is fighting not only Merkel, but the ECB, the German constitution, and the Maastricht Treaty.

This has spawned an emergency flight by Sarkozy to Germany where the feud will continue.

Plans to tackle the euro zone debt crisis have stalled with Paris and Berlin at odds over how to increase the firepower of the region's bailout fund, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday.

Sarkozy told French lawmakers the dispute was holding up negotiations and flew to Frankfurt to talk with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in an attempt to break the deadlock ahead of a make-or-break European leaders' summit on Sunday.

The two leaders left that meeting without speaking to waiting reporters.

Asked if a deal had been reached, Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers who attended the evening meeting, replied: "We're still in meetings Saturday, Sunday."

Divided Over Leverage

France has argued the most effective way of leveraging the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) is to turn it into a bank which could then access funding from the ECB, but both the central bank and the German government have opposed this.

"In Germany, the coalition is divided on this issue. It is not just Angela Merkel whom we need to convince," Sarkozy told the parliamentarians at a lunch meeting, according to Charles de Courson, one of the legislators present.

Adding to uncertainty, the Financial Times reported that plans to strengthen the banking system, another key plank of the discussions, would fall short of market expectations.

The latest official estimates have put the banks capital shortfall at less than 100 billion euros, the FT said, compared with a recent IMF report putting the funding hole and 200 billion and analysts' estimates of 275 billion or more.

Cirtcuit Breaker

One senior EU official, who is involved in coming up with solutions to the crisis, said the only "circuit-breaker" now was for the ECB to make an explicit commitment to go on buying distressed euro zone debt for "as long as it takes," something Trichet has said should not happen.

However, Barroso appeared to back such intervention, saying in Frankfurt: "The decisive intervention of the ECB in secondary bond markets was and still is a critical element in securing financial stability in the euro area."

"You know the French position and we are sticking to it. We think that clearly the best solution is that the fund has a banking license with the central bank, but everyone knows about the reticence of the central bank," French Finance Minister Francois Baroin told reporters in Frankfurt.

"Everyone also knows about the Germans' reticence. But for us that remains ... the most effective solution."

A senior German government source said Berlin remained resolutely opposed to the ECB backstopping the rescue fund.

Bank or Insurer?

Euro zone officials have told Reuters that an alternative model, whereby the EFSF could underwrite a portion of newly issued euro zone debt, is also on the table.

By guaranteeing the first 20-30 percent of any losses, the EFSF could stretch three to five times further. With about 300 billion euros of its 440-billion-euro capacity still available, the fund could be expanded to more than 1 trillion euros, and give markets pause for thought.

However, analysts are unconvinced that a leverage plan involving a guarantee on first losses would succeed, warning that it could create a two-tier structure in some bond markets and would be meaningless without an explicit commitment from the ECB to go on buying at-risk debt.

While Europe's leaders rush to stop a larger writedown of Greek debt infecting others in the euro zone, ordinary Greeks are angry at the prospects of several more years of pain as the price of help from international lenders.

"Who are they trying to fool? They won't save us. With these measures the poor become poorer and the rich richer. Well I say: 'No, thank you. I don't want your rescue'," said 50-year public sector worker Akis Papadopoulos.

The "French Position"

Notice the blatant arrogance of France a depicted in the statement "You know the French position and we are sticking to it."

Yes, the whole world knows the "French Position".

A month ago the Central bank of France insisted there were no toxic debts in French banks.

This prompted me to write on September 25 Desperate Times Lead to Desperate Lies; Europe Weighs the Weightless; Even Citigroup Sees the Lies

Are central bankers and politicians really as stupid as they sound or are they pathological liars who simply cannot help it?

Check out these preposterous lies by Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer as quoted by Bloomberg in Noyer Sees 'Absolutely No Reason' to Use Bank Backstop
Noyer Lies

"I'm extremely confident" in French banks because "we know them very well. We know their balance sheets, their risk assessments. We know they have no toxic assets."
There is "absolutely no reason" to activate a support system for the nation's banks that was set up during the financial crisis in 2008.
Markets "are over-reacting," he said. "They need to come back to a sense of reality."

All of those are blatantly preposterous. However, lie number 1 has to be one of the top lies of the year. "French banks have no toxic assets"?!

For starters, what about Greek bonds about to take a 50% haircut or more in default? That lie is so ridiculous no one on the planet can possibly believe it.

The French central bank blatantly lied about the capitalization of French banks right before the implosion of Dexia Bank. Dexia was the allegedly the safest bank in stress tests.

Furthermore the "French Position" is in violation of the German constitution, the ECB's wishes, and the Maastricht treaty as well.

Bureaucrats never concern themselves with such details and worse yet, they are arrogant about it.

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

vineri, 21 octombrie 2011

Whiteboard Takeover - Branded SEO for Page 1 Domination

Whiteboard Takeover - Branded SEO for Page 1 Domination

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Bringing our troops home from Iraq

Home for the Holidays

Seth's Blog : Cities don't die (but corporations do)

Cities don't die (but corporations do)

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joi, 20 octombrie 2011

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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vineri, 21 octombrie 2011

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