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Voxengo updates Marvel GEQ free graphic equalizer to v1.7 incl. macOS Catalina support

Voxengo has announced an update to the Marvel GEQ free linear-phase 16-band graphic equalizer plugin with multi-channel operation support. Marvel GEQ allows audio engineers and musicians to apply quick EQ shape adjustments, both to audio tracks and full mixes. The linear-phase filtering offered by Marvel GEQ is suitable for equalization tasks where high quality and […]

The post Voxengo updates Marvel GEQ free graphic equalizer to v1.7 incl. macOS Catalina support appeared first on rekkerd.org.




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discoDSP updates Bliss performance sampler to v1.8

discoDSP has announced an update to its Bliss performance sampler with built­-in VST host and VSTi sampling. Changes in Bliss v1.8 Added Export Program to mapped WAV files. Added Linux JACK support for standalone. Added Windows ASIO support for standalone. Auto glide mode enabled by default. Delay default value SYNC SYNC 3 ticks. Delay FX […]

The post discoDSP updates Bliss performance sampler to v1.8 appeared first on rekkerd.org.




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Voxengo updates Tube Amp free tube distortion plugin to v2.8

Voxengo has announced an update to the Tube Amp free tube overdrive effect plugin for Windows and Mac. Tube Amp is a free audio effect plugin for professional music production applications that applies asymmetric tube triode overdrive usually found in single-tube microphone pre-amp boxes. The sound this plugin produces varies from a mild “warm” overdrive […]

The post Voxengo updates Tube Amp free tube distortion plugin to v2.8 appeared first on rekkerd.org.




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Blue Cat Audio releases free updates for multi-track audio analysis plugins

Blue Cat Audio has released a free update for its multiple tracks audio analyzers Blue Cat’s FreqAnalyst Multi, Oscilloscope Multi, and StereoScope Multi. These special audio analysis plugins can communicate between instances: It is thus possible to visualize the spectrum, stereo image and waveform of multiple audio tracks on a single graph simultaneously. These tools […]

The post Blue Cat Audio releases free updates for multi-track audio analysis plugins appeared first on rekkerd.org.




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Acustica Audio updates Purple EQ Suite, on sale at 65% OFF

Acustica Audio has announced a sale on its Purple 3 equalizer collection, offering a 65% discount for a limited time. The Purple suite was just updated to Core15, bringing the latest in VVK Technology. It now also includes a brand ‘new’ filter for a total of 6 processors. If you are tired of looking around […]

The post Acustica Audio updates Purple EQ Suite, on sale at 65% OFF appeared first on rekkerd.org.




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Kilohearts updates all its plugins to v1.8.4

Kilohearts is bringing various improvements and fixes in a new software update for all of its plugins. If you have used our plugins in your projects, we always recommend that you bounce your tracks before updating to a new version. You can also roll back to previous versions via the installer if you need to. […]

The post Kilohearts updates all its plugins to v1.8.4 appeared first on rekkerd.org.




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Reveal Sound updates Spire synthesizer to v1.1.17

Reveal Sound has announced an update to the Spire synthesizer instrument for Windows and Mac. Version 1.1.17 brings some improvements and fixes. Changes in Spire v1.1.17 Added drag and drop modulation signals assignment: Quickly configure your routing without surfing the interface menu. Fixes for ARP hanging notes. Fixes for Cubase 10.5 (GUI). Stability improvements. Spire […]

The post Reveal Sound updates Spire synthesizer to v1.1.17 appeared first on rekkerd.org.




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discoDSP updates Discovery Pro synthesizer to v7.0

discoDSP has announced version 7.0 of Discovery Pro, a virtual analog synthesizer and sampler instrument for Windows, Mac and Linux. Discovery Pro is a virtual analog synthesizer emulation for Audio Units and VST hosts featuring multi-layering, parameter morphing, high-quality sound, WAV and SF2 support, PAD re-synthesis and straightforward interface. Changes in Discovery Pro 7.0 Active […]

The post discoDSP updates Discovery Pro synthesizer to v7.0 appeared first on rekkerd.org.




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HoRNet Plugins updates TotalEQ equalizer plugin to v1.2.0

HoRNet Plugins has announced an update to the TotalEQ visual parametric equalizer effect plugin with a spectrum analyzer. The peculiar feature of TOTAL EQ is that every parameter of each equalizer band can be controlled from the control point on the frequency chart, this simply means that you will never have to look around to […]

The post HoRNet Plugins updates TotalEQ equalizer plugin to v1.2.0 appeared first on rekkerd.org.




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Arizona coronavirus update: 67 additional deaths counted, some from mid-April; 10,526 confirmed cases

Arizona cases of COVID-19 now exceed 10,500, with 517 known deaths, according to numbers from the Arizona Department of Health Services on Friday.

       




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Arizona coronavirus update: 10,960 confirmed cases; 15 additional deaths bring total to 532

Arizona cases of COVID-19 now exceed 10,900, with 532 known deaths, according to numbers from the Arizona Department of Health Services on Saturday.

       




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Arizona coronavirus updates: Latest case counts, closures, advisories

A look at how Arizona is handling the spread of COVID-19, a highly contagious virus impacting the world.

       




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Vikram Kothari, Rotomac promoter raided by CBI: Live Updates

After Rs 11,360 crore PNB scam , another ace businessman - Vikram Kothari from Kanpur -has been accused of defaulting on repayment of more than Rs 800 crore loans from five government banks




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Edinburgh coach Richard Cockerill keen to play to final whistle as he gives update on squad

RICHARD COCKERILL believes that a full programme of Guinness PRO14 play-offs would be a fairer way to end the current season if possible, even though his own Edinburgh team would be one of the beneficiaries if the league went straight to a final.




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The latest updates on COVID-19




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KVNF News: The Purple State Update with the Colorado Sun

KVNF News spoke with The Colorado Sun reporter John Frank in this edition of The Purple State Update, our weekly interview on the Friday KVNF Regional Newscast focusing on statewide and Western Slope political issues throughout the election season. In this episode we talk about the growing homeless population in tourist towns on the Western Slope, and about the growing number of out-of-state political groups pouring money into the Governor's Race.




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Coronavirus In Colorado-Wed., April 29 Updates: El Paso County Backs State's Safer At Home Approach

This page will continue to be updated throughout the day. Update-4:15 p.m. ---Updated Data From The Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment--- There are 14,758 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and is exhibiting symptoms.




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Coronavirus In Colorado-Thurs., April 30 Updates

This page will continue to be updated throughout the day. ---Updated Data From The Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment--- There are 15,284 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and is exhibiting symptoms.




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Coronavirus In Colorado-Fri., May 1 Updates

This page will continue to be updated throughout the day. Update: 4:00 p.m. ---Updated Data From The Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment--- There are 15,768 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and is exhibiting symptoms.




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Coronavirus In Colorado, May 2 Updates: El Paso County Park Facilities Begin Opening Next Week

This post will be updated throughout the day. Updated 4:30 p.m. More Than 16,000 Known Positive Cases of Coronavirus In Colorado There are more than 16,000 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment . This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and exhibit symptoms.




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Coronavirus In Colorado, May 3 Updates: Known Positive COVID-19 Cases Rise To 16,635

This post will be updated throughout the day. Updated 4:30 p.m. Known Positive COVID-19 Cases Rise To 16,635 In Colorado There are 16,635 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment . This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and exhibit symptoms. That's an increase of 410 cases since yesterday.




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Coronavirus In Colorado- Mon., May 4 Updates

This page will continue to be updated throughout the day. Updated 4:15 p.m. ---More Than 16,900 Known Confirmed Cases Of COVID-19 In Colorado, According To The Department Of Public Health And Environment--- There are more than 16,900 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Colorado, according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment. This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and is exhibiting symptoms of the virus.




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Coronavirus In Colorado- Tues., May 5 Updates

This page will continue to be updated throughout the day. Updated- 4:15 p.m. ---Updated Data From The Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment--- There are 17,364 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and is exhibiting symptoms.




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Coronavirus In Colorado- Wed., May 6 Updates: F-16s To Make Front Range Flyover

This page will continue to be updated throughout the day. Update: 4:15 p.m. ---Updated Data From The Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment--- There are 17,830 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and is exhibiting symptoms.




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Coronavirus In Colorado- Thurs., May 7 Updates

This page will continue to be updated throughout the day. Update-4:40 p.m. ---Updated Data From The Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment--- There are 18,371 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and is exhibiting symptoms.




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Coronavirus In Colorado-Fri., May 8 Updates

This page will continue to be updated throughout the day. Update: 4:20 p.m. ---Updated Data From The Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment--- There are 18,827 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and is exhibiting symptoms.




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Coronavirus In Colorado - Weekend Updates

This page will continue to be updated throughout the day. ---Latest Data From The Colorado Department Of Public Health And Environment--- There are 18,827 known confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. This includes both people who tested positive for the virus and people who have been in contact with someone who tested positive and is exhibiting symptoms. 3,600 people have been hospitalized and 960 people have died thus far due to the novel coronavirus in Colorado. More than 96,772 people have been tested, though the number may not include all negative results. There are 184 known outbreaks reported at residential and non-hospital healthcare facilities, prisons or other facilities. This data is complete through Thurs., May 7. See Friday's updates here




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Landlord-Tenant Updates Summer 2018

Landlord-Tenant laws, disputes, issues & updates: Summer 2018. Host Jeffrey Hayden welcomes Jessica Chylik and Sal Timpano. With offices in San Francisco, both represent Landlords and Tenants. Questions for Sal and Jessica? Please call toll-free 866-798-8255. Also, this is our once-a-month Call-A-Lawyer Night. So, while Your Legal Rights broadcasts on 91.7 FM (online kalw.org) 7 'til 8pm PDT, attorneys are available off-the-air as well -- 800-525-9917, for private no-fee consultation on a variety of legal questions. Lastly, Thursday, July 26th: 1] Janet Frankel, Certified Specialist, will take Family Law questions from 10:00-11:30 AM PDT, 415-362-9533; & Friday, July 27th: 2] Leon Bayer, Certified Specialist, will take calls on Bankruptcy Law, 9am-Noon PDT, 800-477-3111 -- Ms Frankel's & Mr Bayer's public service without obligation to KALW listeners.




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March 15 Democratic Debate: Live Updates And Analysis

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have the stage to themselves for Sunday night's Democratic primary debate. The debate, hosted by CNN and Univision in Washington, D.C., will not have a live audience amid coronavirus concerns. Follow NPR's live coverage of the debate. Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit Loading...




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Issues Of The Environment: Huron River Watershed Council Update On PFAS Legislation And Litigation

PFAS contamination continues to threaten Michigan's environment, as well as the health of its citizens. Over the past month, action at the state level has been taken to fight this problem. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," Rebecca Esselman, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council, discusses progress and challenges with WEMU's David Fair.




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Issues Of The Environment: Huron River Watershed Council Update On PFAS Legislation And Litigation

PFAS contamination continues to threaten Michigan's environment, as well as the health of its citizens. Over the past month, action at the state level has been taken to fight this problem. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," Rebecca Esselman, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council, discusses progress and challenges with WEMU's David Fair.




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NI Maschine 2.6 Software Update

Native Instruments releases Maschine 2.6 update packed with some impressive new functions and improvements loyal users will appreciate.

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The post NI Maschine 2.6 Software Update appeared first on Dubspot Blog.




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Magical Mefites Group Update

Long ago we started up a group for magical mefites, it has grown into something that includes mefites and nonmefites alike, and I'd like to welcome polytheists, witches, animists, unidentified flying spiritual practitioners (or nonflying) if interested! Zoom meetings are happening.

Currently we have been focusing a lot on how to create resources from the land in connection with spirits and deities in the area. Community preparedness for uncertain times, and just general sharing of our different spiritual practices and growth. There is a zoom meeting tonight (theme of spring and what we are growing) and we might be moving our meetings from monthly to weekly for the next few months.

Message me and I'll get you into the group! Currently using facebook as a base but I am trying to move to a website as much as my technically challenged abilities let me.




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Coronavirus Update: The U.S. Health Care Industry Is Challenged By The Pandemic

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Nurses and doctors have been at the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. And yet even as health care workers fight back against the virus, the health care industry is crumbling around them. Today we learned that of the more than 20 million jobs that vanished last month, nearly 1 1/2 million were in health care. AILSA CHANG, HOST: And despite this dismal news for American workers, we heard a more optimistic message from the president today, who spoke about his belief that the country may soon turn an economic corner. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So we're looking at the transition to greatness, and I think it's starting right now. CHANG: Meanwhile, the virus is inching closer and closer to the president, with another White House aide testing positive today for COVID-19. All right. To talk more about all of this, we're joined now by NPR chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley, science




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Money and Happiness (Update)

A few months ago, we rebroadcast an episode on Money and Happiness. The show focused on research into whether money brings happiness. The researchers’ conclusion was that money helps, but happiness is contingent on what we spend it on. If we buy experiences rather than things, chances were we would be happier people. Turns out...




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Episode 0x34: Medical Devices Update

Karen gives an update on the advocacy of software freedom for medical devices, while Bradley continually takes the show off-topic.

Show Notes:


Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).





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COVID-19 UPDATES

MeTa: Check-in thread

MeFi Wiki: ThereIsHelp Resources

MeFi: Modeling the outbreak, Real-time visualizations, Rumor control

AskMe: Managing anxiety, managing travel, getting good information, Meal Planning for the Pandemic

Mefi IRL: IRL now has an "Online" category for virtual meetups

FAQ: We've added a site FAQ for Coronavirus posting and commenting tips, as well as site help and resources

Chat / FanFare: We've opened a "Watch" room in Chat for those who'd like it for livewatch events

[This post is being updated as new posts / features are added]




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Update

This is just a note to let you know what we’re up to with the podcast. We have a three-part piece on the herbicide glyphosate coming out soon, and then we’ll be back on track for the bi-monthly shows. Until then, check out The Secret Ingredient Podcast page at Facebook, and listen back to our...




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WEBSITE: Project Livestream Jazz: An Updateand#151;Plus All About Jazz's Binge-Worthy Content

With club closures, shelter in place and an uncertain future, we've pivoted our platform to collect, promote and broadcast livestream concerts to support our jazz musician friends. We've also revamped the weekly Jazz Near You newsletter to highlight livestream events as well as All About Jazz content you may have missed...




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WEBSITE: Project Livestream Jazz: An Update—Plus All About Jazz's Binge-Worthy Content—Early April Edition

With club closures, shelter in place and an uncertain future, we've pivoted our platform to collect, promote and broadcast livestream concerts to support our jazz musician friends. We've also revamped the weekly Jazz Near You newsletter to highlight livestream events as well as All About Jazz content you may have missed...




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Mayor Stimpson Daily Update May 5, 2020

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Google Florida 2.0 Algorithm Update: Early Observations

It has been a while since Google has had a major algorithm update.

They recently announced one which began on the 12th of March.

What changed?

It appears multiple things did.

When Google rolled out the original version of Penguin on April 24, 2012 (primarily focused on link spam) they also rolled out an update to an on-page spam classifier for misdirection.

And, over time, it was quite common for Panda & Penguin updates to be sandwiched together.

If you were Google & had the ability to look under the hood to see why things changed, you would probably want to obfuscate any major update by changing multiple things at once to make reverse engineering the change much harder.

Anyone who operates a single website (& lacks the ability to look under the hood) will have almost no clue about what changed or how to adjust with the algorithms.

In the most recent algorithm update some sites which were penalized in prior "quality" updates have recovered.

Though many of those recoveries are only partial.

Many SEO blogs will publish articles about how they cracked the code on the latest update by publishing charts like the first one without publishing that second chart showing the broader context.

The first penalty any website receives might be the first of a series of penalties.

If Google smokes your site & it does not cause a PR incident & nobody really cares that you are gone, then there is a very good chance things will go from bad to worse to worser to worsterest, technically speaking.

“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.” - Abraham Lincoln

Absent effort & investment to evolve FASTER than the broader web, sites which are hit with one penalty will often further accumulate other penalties. It is like compound interest working in reverse - a pile of algorithmic debt which must be dug out of before the bleeding stops.

Further, many recoveries may be nothing more than a fleeting invitation to false hope. To pour more resources into a site that is struggling in an apparent death loop.

The above site which had its first positive algorithmic response in a couple years achieved that in part by heavily de-monetizing. After the algorithm updates already demonetized the website over 90%, what harm was there in removing 90% of what remained to see how it would react? So now it will get more traffic (at least for a while) but then what exactly is the traffic worth to a site that has no revenue engine tied to it?

That is ultimately the hard part. Obtaining a stable stream of traffic while monetizing at a decent yield, without the monetizing efforts leading to the traffic disappearing.

A buddy who owns the above site was working on link cleanup & content improvement on & off for about a half year with no results. Each month was a little worse than the prior month. It was only after I told him to remove the aggressive ads a few months back that he likely had any chance of seeing any sort of traffic recovery. Now he at least has a pulse of traffic & can look into lighter touch means of monetization.

If a site is consistently penalized then the problem might not be an algorithmic false positive, but rather the business model of the site.

The more something looks like eHow the more fickle Google's algorithmic with receive it.

Google does not like websites that sit at the end of the value chain & extract profits without having to bear far greater risk & expense earlier into the cycle.

Thin rewrites, largely speaking, don't add value to the ecosystem. Doorway pages don't either. And something that was propped up by a bunch of keyword-rich low-quality links is (in most cases) probably genuinely lacking in some other aspect.

Generally speaking, Google would like themselves to be the entity at the end of the value chain extracting excess profits from markets.

This is the purpose of the knowledge graph & featured snippets. To allow the results to answer the most basic queries without third party publishers getting anything. The knowledge graph serve as a floating vertical that eat an increasing share of the value chain & force publishers to move higher up the funnel & publish more differentiated content.

As Google adds features to the search results (flight price trends, a hotel booking service on the day AirBNB announced they acquired HotelTonight, ecommerce product purchase on Google, shoppable image ads just ahead of the Pinterest IPO, etc.) it forces other players in the value chain to consolidate (Expedia owns Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotwire & a bunch of other sites) or add greater value to remain a differentiated & sought after destination (travel review site TripAdvisor was crushed by the shift to mobile & the inability to monetize mobile traffic, so they eventually had to shift away from being exclusively a reviews site to offer event & hotel booking features to remain relevant).

It is never easy changing a successful & profitable business model, but it is even harder to intentionally reduce revenues further or spend aggressively to improve quality AFTER income has fallen 50% or more.

Some people do the opposite & make up for a revenue shortfall by publishing more lower end content at an ever faster rate and/or increasing ad load. Either of which typically makes their user engagement metrics worse while making their site less differentiated & more likely to receive additional bonus penalties to drive traffic even lower.

In some ways I think the ability for a site to survive & remain though a penalty is itself a quality signal for Google.

Some sites which are overly reliant on search & have no external sources of traffic are ultimately sites which tried to behave too similarly to the monopoly that ultimately displaced them. And over time the tech monopolies are growing more powerful as the ecosystem around them burns down:

If you had to choose a date for when the internet died, it would be in the year 2014. Before then, traffic to websites came from many sources, and the web was a lively ecosystem. But beginning in 2014, more than half of all traffic began coming from just two sources: Facebook and Google. Today, over 70 percent of traffic is dominated by those two platforms.

Businesses which have sustainable profit margins & slack (in terms of management time & resources to deploy) can better cope with algorithmic changes & change with the market.

Over the past half decade or so there have been multiple changes that drastically shifted the online publishing landscape:

  • the shift to mobile, which both offers publishers lower ad yields while making the central ad networks more ad heavy in a way that reduces traffic to third party sites
  • the rise of the knowledge graph & featured snippets which often mean publishers remain uncompensated for their work
  • higher ad loads which also lower organic reach (on both search & social channels)
  • the rise of programmatic advertising, which further gutted display ad CPMs
  • the rise of ad blockers
  • increasing algorithmic uncertainty & a higher barrier to entry

Each one of the above could take a double digit percent out of a site's revenues, particularly if a site was reliant on display ads. Add them together and a website which was not even algorithmically penalized could still see a 60%+ decline in revenues. Mix in a penalty and that decline can chop a zero or two off the total revenues.

Businesses with lower margins can try to offset declines with increased ad spending, but that only works if you are not in a market with 2 & 20 VC fueled competition:

Startups spend almost 40 cents of every VC dollar on Google, Facebook, and Amazon. We don’t necessarily know which channels they will choose or the particularities of how they will spend money on user acquisition, but we do know more or less what’s going to happen. Advertising spend in tech has become an arms race: fresh tactics go stale in months, and customer acquisition costs keep rising. In a world where only one company thinks this way, or where one business is executing at a level above everyone else - like Facebook in its time - this tactic is extremely effective. However, when everyone is acting this way, the industry collectively becomes an accelerating treadmill. Ad impressions and click-throughs get bid up to outrageous prices by startups flush with venture money, and prospective users demand more and more subsidized products to gain their initial attention. The dynamics we’ve entered is, in many ways, creating a dangerous, high stakes Ponzi scheme.

And sometimes the platform claws back a second or third bite of the apple. Amazon.com charges merchants for fulfillment, warehousing, transaction based fees, etc. And they've pushed hard into launching hundreds of private label brands which pollute the interface & force brands to buy ads even on their own branded keyword terms.

They've recently jumped the shark by adding a bonus feature where even when a brand paid Amazon to send traffic to their listing, Amazon would insert a spam popover offering a cheaper private label branded product:

Amazon.com tested a pop-up feature on its app that in some instances pitched its private-label goods on rivals’ product pages, an experiment that shows the e-commerce giant’s aggressiveness in hawking lower-priced products including its own house brands. The recent experiment, conducted in Amazon’s mobile app, went a step further than the display ads that commonly appear within search results and product pages. This test pushed pop-up windows that took over much of a product page, forcing customers to either click through to the lower-cost Amazon products or dismiss them before continuing to shop. ... When a customer using Amazon’s mobile app searched for “AAA batteries,” for example, the first link was a sponsored listing from Energizer Holdings Inc. After clicking on the listing, a pop-up window appeared, offering less expensive AmazonBasics AAA batteries."

Buying those Amazon ads was quite literally subsidizing a direct competitor pushing you into irrelevance.

And while Amazon is destroying brand equity, AWS is doing investor relations matchmaking for startups. Anything to keep the current bubble going ahead of the Uber IPO that will likely mark the top in the stock market.

As the market caps of big tech companies climb they need to be more predatious to grow into the valuations & retain employees with stock options at an ever-increasing strike price.

They've created bubbles in their own backyards where each raise requires another. Teachers either drive hours to work or live in houses subsidized by loans from the tech monopolies that get a piece of the upside (provided they can keep their own bubbles inflated).

"It is an uncommon arrangement — employer as landlord — that is starting to catch on elsewhere as school employees say they cannot afford to live comfortably in regions awash in tech dollars. ... Holly Gonzalez, 34, a kindergarten teacher in East San Jose, and her husband, Daniel, a school district I.T. specialist, were able to buy a three-bedroom apartment for $610,000 this summer with help from their parents and from Landed. When they sell the home, they will owe Landed 25 percent of any gain in its value. The company is financed partly by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Mark Zuckerberg’s charitable arm."

The above sort of dynamics have some claiming peak California:

The cycle further benefits from the Alchian-Allen effect: agglomerating industries have higher productivity, which raises the cost of living and prices out other industries, raising concentration over time. ... Since startups raise the variance within whatever industry they’re started in, the natural constituency for them is someone who doesn’t have capital deployed in the industry. If you’re an asset owner, you want low volatility. ... Historically, startups have created a constant supply of volatility for tech companies; the next generation is always cannibalizing the previous one. So chip companies in the 1970s created the PC companies of the 80s, but PC companies sourced cheaper and cheaper chips, commoditizing the product until Intel managed to fight back. Meanwhile, the OS turned PCs into a commodity, then search engines and social media turned the OS into a commodity, and presumably this process will continue indefinitely. ... As long as higher rents raise the cost of starting a pre-revenue company, fewer people will join them, so more people will join established companies, where they’ll earn market salaries and continue to push up rents. And one of the things they’ll do there is optimize ad loads, which places another tax on startups. More dangerously, this is an incremental tax on growth rather than a fixed tax on headcount, so it puts pressure on out-year valuations, not just upfront cash flow.

If you live hundreds of miles away the tech companies may have no impact on your rental or purchase price, but you can't really control the algorithms or the ecosystem.

All you can really control is your mindset & ensuring you have optionality baked into your business model.

  • If you are debt-levered you have little to no optionality. Savings give you optionality. Savings allow you to run at a loss for a period of time while also investing in improving your site and perhaps having a few other sites in other markets.
  • If you operate a single website that is heavily reliant on a third party for distribution then you have little to no optionality. If you have multiple projects that enables you to shift your attention toward working on whatever is going up and to the right while letting anything that is failing pass time without becoming overly reliant on something you can't change. This is why it often makes sense for a brand merchant to operate their own ecommerce website even if 90% of their sales come from Amazon. It gives you optionality should the tech monopoly become abusive or otherwise harm you (even if the intent was benign rather than outright misanthropic).

As the update ensues Google will collect more data with how users interact with the result set & determine how to weight different signals, along with re-scoring sites that recovered based on the new engagement data.

Recently a Bing engineer named Frédéric Dubut described how they score relevancy signals used in updates

As early as 2005, we used neural networks to power our search engine and you can still find rare pictures of Satya Nadella, VP of Search and Advertising at the time, showcasing our web ranking advances. ... The “training” process of a machine learning model is generally iterative (and all automated). At each step, the model is tweaking the weight of each feature in the direction where it expects to decrease the error the most. After each step, the algorithm remeasures the rating of all the SERPs (based on the known URL/query pair ratings) to evaluate how it’s doing. Rinse and repeat.

That same process is ongoing with Google now & in the coming weeks there'll be the next phase of the current update.

So far it looks like some quality-based re-scoring was done & some sites which were overly reliant on anchor text got clipped. On the back end of the update there'll be another quality-based re-scoring, but the sites that were hit for excessive manipulation of anchor text via link building efforts will likely remain penalized for a good chunk of time.

Update: It appears a major reverberation of this update occurred on April 7th. From early analysis, Google is mixing in showing results for related midtail concepts on a core industry search term & they are also in some cases pushing more aggressively on doing internal site-level searches to rank a more relevant internal page for a query where they homepage might have ranked in the past.




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Coronavirus daily news updates, May 9: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the nation


While this year’s Mother’s Day weekend promises warm weather, Seattle officials are restricting hours in city parks out of fears that large crowds hoping to enjoy the sun could further spread the novel coronavirus. A recent report shows the COVID-19 transmission rate in Western Washington may be steadily increasing, suggesting that the number of virus cases […]




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UPDATING: Seattle-area events that have been canceled, postponed or rescheduled due to novel coronavirus concerns


The list of events that have been canceled in the Seattle area continues to grow as we head into the third week of the novel coronavirus outbreak. We'll keep this list updated throughout the week.




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MLB teams expected to update ticket policies this week for games lost to coronavirus


Fans holding tickets for MLB games in 2020 could be notified as soon as Wednesday about options for exchanges or in some cases refunds, with specific ticket policies to be decided by individual teams.




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Coronavirus daily news updates, May 8: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the nation


Throughout Friday, on this page, we’ll be posting updates from Seattle Times journalists and others on the pandemic and its effects on the Seattle area, the Pacific Northwest and the world.




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Coronavirus daily news updates, May 9: What to know today about COVID-19 in the Seattle area, Washington state and the nation


While this year’s Mother’s Day weekend promises warm weather, Seattle officials are restricting hours in city parks out of fears that large crowds hoping to enjoy the sun could further spread the novel coronavirus. A recent report shows the COVID-19 transmission rate in Western Washington may be steadily increasing, suggesting that the number of virus cases […]




pda

USA vs. England: Live updates, how to watch/stream Women’s World Cup semifinal


The defending champions are going back to the Women's World Cup title game. Two early goals from Christen Press and birthday girl Alex Morgan lifted the U.S. past England and into the championship match, where the Americans will face either the Netherlands or Sweden.




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USA vs. Netherlands: Live updates, how to watch/stream Women’s World Cup final


The U.S. and Netherlands entered halftime scoreless, but it wouldn't stay that way for long. Megan Rapinoe struck first on a penalty kick to open the first lead of the game and 24-year-old Rose Lavelle added a second goal to clinch the Americans' second straight World Cup title.