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NFL Star Earl Thomas' Wife Nina Thomas Breaks Silence After 'Wrongfully Arrested' Over Assault

Nina was previously arrested after she allegedly held the Baltimore Ravens safety at gunpoint when she confronted him about his infidelity at an Airbnb rental in Austin, Texas back in April.




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R. Kelly Promises to Stay Away From Alleged Victims If Granted Early Jail Release

The 'I Believe I Can Fly' singer vows to be on his best behavior if he is released on bond and placed on house arrest while awaiting trial for sex charges.




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R. Kelly Promises to Stay Away From Alleged Victims If Granted Early Jail Release

The 'I Believe I Can Fly' singer vows to be on his best behavior if he is released on bond and placed on house arrest while awaiting trial for sex charges.




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The Blues Kitchen Podcast: with Justin Townes Earle

Gaz & Liam have exclusive session with Justin Townes Earle this week, who sat in with The Blues Kitchen and played an acoustic rendition of ‘Flint City Shake It’ from his new LP – ‘The Saint Of Lost Causes’.

There’s also blues from Otis Spann & Junior Wells, new music from Leon Bridges & Lukas Nelson & cult classics from The Litter and, err,.. Cher?

 Here’s the link to watch David Crosby live on Jimmy Fallon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYbaUdtMlYQ

To see the Justin Townes Earle performances in full, head over to The Blues Kitchen YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/BluesKitchenLondon 

When you've caught up with the podcast, head over to The Blues Kitchen YouTube channel:
www.youtube.com/BluesKitchenTV

Email the show: radio@theblueskitchen.com

Listen on Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Mixcloud, Acast & many more…




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131: Darlene Ortiz

Darlene Ortiz is best-known for her iconic pose on the cover of Ice-T’s 1988 album Power, a shot that no one who has seen it has ever forgotten. But there’s far more to her than bathing suits and guns.

She was right by Ice-T’s side during his rise to the top of the rap game. The two met when Darlene was a 17 year old hip-hop obsessive, and she and Ice quickly became rap’s first power couple. She appeared on his album covers and in his videos, and was right by his side for tours, TV appearances, movie roles, and the infamous “Cop Killer” controversy.

Darlene has a brand-new memoir called DEFINITION OF DOWN:My Life with Ice T and the Birth of Hip Hop, published by Over the Edge Books.

See http://theciphershow.com/episode/131/ for full show notes and comments.




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#476 - Carlos Mencia

Joey Diaz and Lee Syatt welcome comedian Carlos Mecia live in studio. Carlos called Joey out of the blue to ask for forgiveness, and Joey invited him to be a guest. 

This podcast is brought to you by: 

Seeso: Seeso is the new ad free streaming service. Bingeable comedy. Anytime. Anywhere. Use code JOEY to get 1 month for free.
Naturebox.com - Go to Naturebox.com/joey for 50% off of your first box. 
Onnit.com. Use Promo code CHURCH for a 10% discount at checkout.
 
Recorded live on 04/26/2017.

 




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#623 - Bonnie McFarlane

Bonnie McFarlane, a stand up comedian seen on "Last Comic Standing" and heard as the co-host of the "My Wife Hates me" podcast, joins Joey Diaz and Lee Syatt LIVE in studio.

This podcast is brought to you by:
   
MyBookie.com -  Use code promo Church to get up to a 100% match on your first deposit up to $1,000. Deposit after 7pm EST and they will give you another $25 in free play.
 
Onnit.com - Use promo code CHURCH for a 10% discount at checkout.




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#695 - Earl Skakel

Earl Skakel, a stand up comedian, actor heard on "The Jellies", and host of the "Inappropriate Earl" podcast, joins Joey Diaz and Lee Syatt LIVE in studio! 

This podcast is brought to you by:
 
Vincero Watches - Get yours at Vincerowatches.com and our listeners get 15% off when they use promo code CHURCH.
 
Upstart.com - The revolutionary lending platform that knows you're more than just a credit score. Check them out at www.upstart.com/church
 
CBD Lion - For all of your CBD needs, from shatter to gummies go to CBDLion.com and use code CHURCH for 20% off. 
 




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#750 - Carlos Alazraqui

Carlos Alazraqui, is a stand up comedian and actor seen in (among countless other projects) "Reno 911," "Rocko's Modern Life," and as the voice of the Taco Bell Dog, joins Joey Diaz and Lee Syatt LIVE in studio.

This podcast is brought to you by:

Stamps.com -  Use code JOEY for a 4 week trial which includes postage and a digital scale. Go to Stamps.com, click on the Radio Microphone at the top of the homepage and type in church.
 
ZipRecruiter - post your job to 200+ job sites with a single click for free at www.ziprecruiter.com/church
 
CBD Lion - For all of your CBD needs, from shatter to gummies, go to www.CBDLion.com and use code CHURCH for 20% off. 
 
 





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Birmingham conference hears evidence regarding early days of music

Artificial intelligence may be used to reveal secrets behind traditional folk music dating back thousands of years.



  • Education
  • Music
  • Science & technology
  • Birmingham City University
  • Dr Islah Ali-MacLachlan
  • Folk Music Analysis UK


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Zomato, Swiggy see rise in food orders after early slump: Report

The survey, conducted by YouGov, an Internet-based market research and data analytics firm, showed that between March 15-April 16 this year, Zomato witnessed a weakening customer base from 46.3 to 41.7 whereas for Swiggy, the scores were from 48.8 to 42.4.




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Charles Ares, former University of Arizona College of law dean, dies at 93

Charles E. Ares, dean of the University of Arizona College of law from 1966-1973, passed away April 29, 2020. He was 93 years old.

       




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WPSU's Story Corps Lock Haven: Laurie Cannady & Deja Summers-Searles

WPSU is traveling to towns across central and northern Pennsylvania to collect oral history recordings. In Lock Haven we paired with a college journalism class and had students find someone interesting to interview. Lock Haven University student Deja Summers-Searles talked with professor Laurie Cannady about her recent health issues.




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What Can You Do In Early Spring To Optimize Your Garden's Yield?

Northern Public Radio held "Context: Planting the Food Garden" on Thursday, March 19, 2015, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Local food-gardening experts discussed what you need to know in early spring to optimize your garden's yield. Context events are free and open to the public. They are held in Studio A at Northern Public Radio, 801 N. First Street in DeKalb. Although reservations are not required, they are encouraged due to the limited space available. If you have questions or would like to guarantee yourself a seat for a future "Context" event, please call Maria Boynton at (815) 753-9000 or email mboynton@niu.edu . For more information, visit northernpublicradio.org .




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HC upholds earlier order to sell gym gear of Talwalkars

Saraf and law firm Manilal Kher Ambalal for the NBFC said their client was the owner of the equipment and, for the default on the rent amount for their lease, the Tata company was entitled to repossess and sell them since otherwise they would get rusted.




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Edinburgh coach Richard Cockerill benefits from doing his business early

WHETHER through shrewd planning, good fortune or a bit of both, Edinburgh managed to complete the bulk of their business for next season before rugby came grinding to a halt. When precisely play resumes is, of course, unknown and out of their control, but they are at least confident that they will be in good shape to hit the ground running.




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Rockford Responds To Blagojevich's Early Release From Prison

Illinois elected officials have strong feelings about former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's early release from prison. He served eight years of his 14 year sentence because President Donald Trump commuted his sentence earlier this week. Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara doesn't agree with the president's move. "I really think it was a horrible decision and sends a really bad signal, not just to politicians, but to all citizens across the state." McNamara elaborated. "Look back at what he did. He literally tried to do one of the worst things you can do in politics, which is to enrich himself while selling a public seat." Rockford's Democratic mayor said Blagojevich bypassed the trust of the citizens. McNamara emphasized that this is not a partisan issue. "Republican, Democrat, Green Party, Independent -- what he did is despicable and I think he should serve his full sentence." John Beck identifies as a moderate Republican and is the alderman for Rockford's 12th ward. He said the




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Times Past: When Charlton Heston brought Glasgow street to a standstill...

Shops are closing. Newspaper sales are falling. But we’ve chosen to keep our coverage of the Coronavirus crisis free because it’s so important that the people of Glasgow stay informed during this difficult time.




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Northern Michigan photographer dupes fudgies in early 1900s

Edward Beebe was a popular photographer in northern Michigan in the early 1900s. He created postcards with his photos but often deceived people regarding the location of the shots. “I think a lot of these cards were intended to take advantage of tourists and visitors,” says local author Jack Hobey.




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Of Note: A Smile to Charlie Chaplin's Dichotomous Compositions

A new recording from Philippe Quint and Marta Aznavoorian proves Charlie Chaplin is as relevant today as he was in his heyday. His legacy in visionary musical genius continues to be celebrated with "Chaplin's Smile," a collection of Chaplin's songs arranged for violin and piano. "He has a very amazing spin on a melody," says Aznavoorian, who was inspired by Chaplin's emotional and character-driven compositional style. "There's an incredible dichotomy of happiness and sadness in his melodies, and that is mirrored by what's happening in his films." Listen to the full interview between Quint, Aznavoorian and Of Note's Katy Henriksen with the streaming link above.




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Sample Size: Frank Ocean, Carly Rae Jepsen & Chromatics

This is Sample Size, our weekly new music feature with KOSU's Ryan LaCroix and LOOKatOKC music critic Matt Carney. Today, Matt plays new music from Frank Ocean , Carly Rae Jepsen , and Chromatics . Follow Matt & Ryan on Twitter at @mdotcarney and @KOSUryan .




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Tekashi 6ix9ine releases first new song following early prison release

Tekashi 6ix9ine just released his first new song following his early release from prison amid the coronavirus pandemic.



  • 47681acd-8933-560e-8710-e41b1d5929fa
  • fox-news/entertainment/genres/hip-hop-rap
  • fox-news/entertainment/music
  • fox-news/entertainment/celebrity-news
  • fox-news/entertainment
  • fox-news/health/infectious-disease/coronavirus
  • fnc
  • fnc/entertainment
  • article
  • Fox News
  • Melissa Roberto

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Get USB Loopback, Better Preamps, and Audio Enhancement in Focusrite’s 3rd-Generation Scarlett Audio Interfaces

Focusrite makes my favorite USB audio interfaces. The new 3rd-generation Scarlett models bring improved audio quality with new preamps and more gain, audio enhancement, USB loopback, USB-C connectivity, and more! Thanks to John DiNicola for joining me in this video! Watch all my video interviews from Podcast Movement 2019, and click here to see the...




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Boris Johnson vs. Parliament on Brexit

After more than two years of debates and one deadline extension, the United Kingdom is set to leave the European Union on October 31st. Last week, with no Brexit deal in sight, Prime Minister Boris Johnson moved to suspend Parliament for five weeks leading up to that deadline. The move outraged members of Parliament and spurred a revolt in Johnson’s own party, resulting in legislation that may prohibit him from executing a no-deal Brexit. Johnson has called for a general election, though he no longer has the legislative majority he needs to force a vote. Sam Knight joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the week in Parliament and what it might mean for the future of British democracy.




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MeFi: "Deep in rococo imagery of fairies, princesses, diamonds and pearls"

Terri Windling (03/2020), "Once upon a time in Paris...": "As the vogue for fairy stories evolved in the 1670s and '80s, Madame d'Aulnoy emerged as one of the most popular raconteurs in Paris ... she soon formed a glittering group around her of nonconformist women and men, as well as establishing a highly successful and profitable literary career ... So how, we might ask, did Perrault become known as the only French fairy tale author of note?" Elizabeth Winter (12/2016), "Feminist Fairies and Hidden Agendas": "the term contes de fées ... was coined by ... d'Aulnoy in 1697, when she published her first collection of tales." Volker Schröder (2018-2019): this collection "is often described as 'lost' or 'untraceable'" and its "sequel has become just as scarce"; but d'Aulnoy's tales are available online, and mixed reviews such as those of the Brothers Grimm may call to mind her childhood marginalia: "if you have my book and ... don't appreciate what's inside, I wish you ringworm, scabies ... and a broken neck."

A couple of articles that are free to read online break down specifics of d'Aulnoy's stories. In "A Transformed Woman," part of her occasional column On Fairy Tales at Tor.com, Mari Ness discusses Madame d'Aulnoy's "The White Cat," a story that has also been recommended previously on Metafilter. And in "Early Modern French Feminine Narratives: Subverting Gender Roles and Sexual Identity in Mme d'Aulnoy's Beauty or the Fortunate Knight (1698)," [PDF] Harold Neeman discusses the story also known as "Belle-Belle" (likewise recommended previously on Metafilter).

More general thematic analyses of work by d'Aulnoy and her peers include Bronwyn Reddan's "Scripting Love in Fairy Tales by Seventeenth-century French Women Writers" [PDF] and "Thinking Through Things: Magical Objects, Power, and Agency in French Fairy Tales" [PDF] (the latter available temporarily from Project MUSE) and also Meghan Kort's "Imagining Girlhood in Seventeenth-Century Female-Authored Fairytales."

Works by several other authors writing in French from the 17th C. to the 19th C. illuminate d'Aulnoy's connections and her legacy (often via the collection Four and Twenty Fairy Tales, which is also at Gutenberg):


Previously and previouslier.




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By sevenyearlurk in "So how's that work from home working out for you at home?" on MeFi

My work has been doing mandatory, camera-on videoconference "socials" every Friday -- scheduled at 4pm just to twist the knife. I hate them so much and finally told my manager I'm not going to attend anymore. People seem to think that because we're working from home, they're free to push on the boundaries between work life and private life in a way that is super uncomfortable for me and it has definitely been adding to my COVID stress in isolation.




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10 Years Of Spectacular U.S. Job Growth Nearly Wiped Out In 4 Weeks

Updated at 8:43 a.m. ET The number of people filing for unemployment climbed by another 5.2 million last week as the toll of the nation's economic dive amid the pandemic continues to mount. That number is down from the revised 6.6 million in the week that ended April 4, the Labor Department said . But in the past four weeks, a total of 22 million have filed jobless claims — nearly wiping out all the job gains since the Great Recession. The dramatic reversal followed a decade of spectacular growth in jobs that brought the unemployment rate to near 50-year lows along with record low jobless rates for blacks and Hispanics. Now the job market is on its knees. Don't see the graphic above? Click here. The unemployment rate is expected to surge in coming months , with many full-time workers pushed into part-time jobs or not working at all. The economy lost about 700,000 jobs in March — ending 113 straight months of increases. And overall job losses are likely to be 10 to 20 times that big in




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945- Justin Townes Earle, Adia Victoria, Courtney Marie Andrews, The Trews

Episode #945 features Justin Townes Earle, Adia Victoria, Courtney Marie Andrews and The Trews, recorded live in Charleston, W.V. *Tank and the Bangas set is not included here at the request of the artist. Keep up with the band and purchase music at tankandthebangas.com. Support for this podcast is provided by Adventures on the Gorge. www.adventuresonthegorge.com




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947- Steve Earle & the Dukes, Damien Jurado, Alsarah & the Nubatones and more

Guest host Kathy Mattea welcomes Steve Earle & the Dukes, Damien Jurado, Alsarah & the Nubatones, Erika Wennerstrom, and Vanessa Peters. Support is provided by Adventures on the Gorge. www.adventuresonthegorge.com




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949- Charlie Hunter & Lucy Woodward, John Paul White, Molly Tuttle and more.

Charlie Hunter & Lucy Woodward, John Paul White, Molly Tuttle and Jeff Black perform live on Mountain Stage. Recorded in Marietta, OH with the Peoples Bank Theatre. Support provided by Adventures on the Gorge. https://adventuresonthegorge.com/




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957-Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Hayes Carll, Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams, Allison Moore

Guest host Kathy Mattea welcomes Robert Randolph & the Family Band, Hayes Carll, Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams, Allison Moorer, and Mick FlannerySupport provided by Adventures on the Gorge.https://adventuresonthegorge.com/




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Als Erich Maria Remarque der Lover von Marlene Dietrich war

September 1937: In Venedig werden Erich Maria Remarque und Marlene Dietrich ein Paar. Aber eigentlich trösten sich hier zwei Weltstars im Karriereknick. Drei Jahre lang bleibt er ihr Liebhaber, dann hat er genug.




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Charli Adams reaches for something familiar in new single "Superpowers"

A new environment has a way of bringing out something new in us, for American singer-songwriter, Charli Adams, it comes in the form of new single "Superpowers." The acoustic composition puts the indie artist in the familiar position of vulnerability and seclusion that first propelled her from secret shows in her native Alabama to the […]

The post Charli Adams reaches for something familiar in new single "Superpowers" appeared first on EARMILK.




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Laura Marling - Song for Our Daughter

Laura Marling is a singer and songwriter from London. She won the Brit Award for Best British Female Solo Artist—she’s been nominated five times for that, along with the Mercury Prize, and the Grammy for Best Folk Album. Since 2008, she’s released seven albums. The most recent album is called Song for Our Daughter. It’s also the name of the song that she takes apart in this episode.

songexploder.net/laura-marling




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Laura Marling // Todd Wolfson

In this Episode of “This Song,” host Elizabeth McQueen sits down with singer-songwriter Laura Marling and photographer Todd Wolfson to talk about songs that gave them a greater understanding of freedom and transcendence. You can hear Laura Marling’s Studio 1A performance here. You can download Laura Marling’s cover of Towne’s Van Zandt’s “For the Sake of the […]




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This Song: Eric Earley & Brian Koch of Blitzen Trapper

Blitzen Trapper’s Eric Early describes how his musical trajectory was permanently altered by R.E.M. and their breakout album “Out Of Time.” Then bandmate/drummer/actor Brian Koch tells a tale of his family who did very little to encourage his music and how he was inspired by hidden radios, friends with guitars and a young singer-songwriter with whom he now shares a stage.




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This Song: Charlie Faye

Austin based singer and songwriter Charlie Faye describes how her childhood love of "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes helped her find her musical way and how it inspired the band's new single "I Don't Need No Baby."




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Charles Whitaker (Ep. 51, 2019)

This week on In Black America, producer and host John L. Hanson, Jr. speaks with Charles Whitaker , journalist and newly appointed Dean of the Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University.




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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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Naama Gheber: Dearly Beloved


There's much to admire in this debut from New York-based Israeli vocalist Naama Gheber. With a highly developed sense of phrasing built on pitch-perfect delivery and some tasteful back-end vibrato, an eye and ear for fine golden-age material, sharp navigational skills, and a knack for picking the perfect sidemen, her first flight garners attention in all the right ways... [ read more ]




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Jerry Bergonzi: Nearly Blue


Even though Jerry Bergonzi has nothing left to prove, after almost half a century near the top of almost every list of the jazz world's leading tenor saxophonists, he is hardly ready to sit back and rest on those laurels. On his latest album, Nearly Blue (a sequel to the well-received Spotlight on Standards), Bergonzi is supported, as before, only by organist Renato Chicco and drummer Andrea Michelutti, meaning his supple tenor is in action much of the time, which is fine with him, as taking the lead and running with it is what Bergonzi does best... [ read more ]




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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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