A future with autonomous vehicles is fast approaching 

and with it, the idea that blockchain could connect automobiles and other Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices is getting its fair share of attention. Even though smart houses (where doors, thermostats and appliances are connected to the internet for added functionality) may have seemed more trendy a year ago, blockchain startups are becoming drawn to the potential of connected cars. "Timing is everything," said John Gerryts, co-founder and CEO at Oaken. "Now is the perfect time to begin building this stuff out."

He went on to explain:

"Everyone is in turn with it and on the same page with autonomous vehicles being within reach, depending on who you talk to, in the next 5–10 years."

The "stuff" Gerryts is talking about includes developing a mechanism that would allow autonomous vehicles to be truly autonomous. This means that a car could refuel, recharge and park on its own — and pay for those services as well.

Opportunity at the edge

Most entrepreneurs in the self-driving car space, said Gerryts, are focused on mobility. However, Oaken is focused on the layers and support systems that could underlie this operation. To the startup, these edges of the industry could use smart contracts running on a blockchain to connect everything. Plus, cars equipped with a repository of cryptocurrency could purchase services — say, a tune-up or an oil change – using an instantaneous and inexpensive payment rail.

Oaken sees itself taking care of the attestation of vehicles, inputting data on the blockchain to give vehicles a kind of digital identity. Once this identity is in place, Oaken can use GPS to follow the car, time-stamping its location on the blockchain. The data gleaned from the connection of the vehicle to the internet such as seasonality and traffic patterns, can also be used by consumers, application developers, and manufacturer "If everyone had everyone else’s data it would be a faster path to autonomous cars," according to James Johnson, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Oaken.

He said:

"If these [original equipment manufacturers] and others want to accelerate the path to level-five autonomous driving, the best way to do that is through the blockchain to share all that data."

But before autonomous cars, Oaken is looking to equip today's cars, those that could be manned by a human with the ability to purchase services using cryptocurrency. The company recently built out a proof-of-concept (PoC) for a United Arab Emirates-sponsored hackathon, which won first place. The project allowed Tesla cars to pay road tolls over the ethereum network. While nothing commercial has come out of the PoC yet, Gerryts said, the company has been head’s down on the project for the Toyota Research Institute, which announced this week that it will form a consortia with multiple blockchain startup partners to focus on potential uses of Blockchain.

Oaken has also been developing a system for short-term vehicle leasing. Whether it's individuals, manufacturers or other companies with fleets, the firm wants to find a way to allow them to rent out or lease vehicles in exchange for payment. And all that data and monetary transfer will happen over a blockchain. The startup has come up with a decentralized application (dapp) on the ethereum testnet that allows people to register their vehicles for short-term lease, and one at the other end that allows people to go in and sign up to lease those vehicles. With the announcement, Oaken and the other blockchain startups in the Toyota consortium — including Gem, BigchainDB and Commuterz – aim to capture the interest of large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). That effort, they hope, will help get the blockchain-connected hardware into vehicles' components before market.

Unlocking the middleman's money

Uber’s valuation is more than $60bn, and all the company does is act as a matchmaker.

Johnson asked:

“What if there was a direct relationship between the vehicle owner and the consumer?”

By cutting out Uber or Lyft as the middleman, drivers would make more money without the up-to-20% fee they charge, and consumers would get cheaper rides. All manufacturers and OEMs are looking at how to get a piece of this pie. And while manufacturers might be selling less cars, Johnson continued, they’ll get more revenue per car – or rather than selling cars, offer pay-per-use models. Further, as Oaken is thinking about the future of smart cities, it makes sense to utilize the roadways for ride-sharing, because, in most US cities, there are about 100 times more roads than there are mass transit lines, Johnson said. “The opportunity is so big that I think all these different players in the [blockchain] space are now trying to get that solution built,” Johnson told CoinDesk.

Reinventing insurance

One area that will absolutely change as short-term leasing of individual cars becomes more popular is car insurance. “Insurance has always been built with 12 months in mind,” said Johnson. “Now, we’re building insurance products for five minutes or 20 minutes.” Many experts have predicted a move towards usage-based insurance (UBI) or 'pay as you drive' (PAYD), not only because of short-term leasing, but because of the proliferation of telematic devices and smartphones that can be used to monitor the driving behaviors of individuals in an effort to give them discounts or better premiums for good driving.

“Usage-based insurance will be dynamic enough to charge you less on Tuesdays than Wednesdays if you're a better driver on the former day,” said Gerryts. The problem with these models is that insurance is supposed to be a pooling mechanism for distributing costs across multiple people and, in turn, keeping them down. Plus, telematic monitoring can sometimes put certain demographics at a disadvantage. For instance, most insurers will dock points for driving late at night into the early morning because statistically speaking that’s when most accidents happen. However, this puts people that work late-night and overnight shifts at a disadvantage. However, Toyota’s insurance entity is also part of the research initiative, so these challenges are being worked through, according to Gerryts.

Johnson said:

“The discrimination of usage-based insurance – autonomous cars could solve this.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

The digital currency has blown through $100 milestones nearly every day

  

That’s how long it took the cryptocurrency bitcoin,

back in April 2013, to rise from $100 for a single bitcoin to $200.

Six hours—that’s how long it took for it to rise by its latest $100.

While the latter is an easier accomplishment—bitcoin only needed to rise 3.7% to add another $100 to its price, compared with 100% when it doubled to $200—it is also indicative of just how astonishingly fast the digital currency has been rising lately. It is up nearly 500% over the past 12 months, a sixfold rise, according to pricing site CoinDesk. Thus far in 2017, it is up 187%. Over just the past 10 days, it is up more than 60%. Here’s what gains like that translate to, If an investor were to have put $1,000 into bitcoin in 2010, that stake would be worth tens of millions of dollars today. Earlier this week, Charlie Bilello, a research director at investment adviser Pension Partners, created a table to show just how quickly Bitcoin has been bursting through $100 milestones. It hasn’t needed a double-digit number of days since April when it took nearly two months to move from $1,200 to $1,300.

Bitcoin BTCUSD, -0.57%   jumped another 12% on Thursday, an increase of $300. The speed and scale of the rally have raised questions about whether prices could possibly be sustained around current levels, something analysts seemed mixed on.“We’ve watched the volatility in Bitcoin ever since we first bought it, and we’re not blind to the fact that prices are driven by speculation to a certain degree. However, we think its utility is very underappreciated, and that there isn’t as much speculation as people think, necessarily,” said Cathie Wood, chief executive officer of ARK Investment Management.

ARK has two actively managed exchange-traded funds that offer indirect exposure to bitcoin, counting the Bitcoin Investment Trust GBTC, -7.23%  among their holdings. The BIT trades on the over-the-counter market and operates as a private, open-ended trust that invests solely in Bitcoin, with the value of its shares entirely derived from price moves in bitcoin.  The BIT typically trades at a high premium to bitcoin itself, but it has nonetheless followed the cryptocurrency higher in 2017—much higher. It is up more than 300% thus far this year, and it has more than doubled this week alone.

What is the future of bitcoin?he gains in bitcoin have been so large that the trust has become one of the top holdings of both the ARK Web x.0 ETF ARKW, +0.85%  and the A Innovation ETF ARKK, +0.18% the two actively managed funds that own What is the future of bitcoin?he gains in bitcoin have been so large that the trust has become one of the top holdings of both the ARK Web x.0 ETF ARKW, +0.85%  and the A Innovation ETF ARKK, +0.18% the two actively managed funds that own the trust (the ETFs only hold the trust, not bitcoin itself).the trust.

The trust is the largest holding of the Web ETF, comprising 8.24% of the portfolio. At 7.8%, the trust is the second-largest holding of the Innovation Fund. According to Wood, the ETFs both first bought the trust in July 2015, when it comprised 1% of the portfolios. Both ETFs have gained more than 40% in 2017, in large part due to the gain in the trust. And because they are among the few vehicles available for investors to get some kind of Bitcoin exposure—without buying it directly, something that can be complicated and risky—both have seen heavy increases in investor interest. The Web fund has seen inflows of $10.8 million in 2017, with $6.5 million of that coming over the past month, according to FactSet data. The Innovation ETF has had inflows of $16.6 million years to date, with $12 million of that coming over the past month.

Both funds have less than $30 million in assets, meaning the inflows this year have increased their size by about 50%. Wood said ARK may sell some of its BIT holdings soon, as the rules of the funds stipulate that it can’t have more than 10% of its holdings in an illiquid security—something the trust qualifies as. Despite the recent rally, she said she wasn’t necessarily worried that prices had gotten ahead of themselves. “Bitcoin is less than 50% of the crypto space; it used to be 80%,” she said. “That happened while its price was escalating; it’s just that the price of other crypto assets has escalated more, which suggests more speculation in those. But you can see that bitcoin transactions relative to the trading volume have been moving up, while developers are developing more. Both of those are good fundamental signs.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

7 Steps To Getting Started With Trade Coin Club

*These instructions were written at the very beginning of the pre-launch of TCC with limited information available about the program and while some of the website was still in Portuguese and Spanish. So please be lenient on the accuracy of my instruction steps. Also, keep in mind that website updates and program changes may occur which could also change the process. As needed, I will make updates to this document and make it available here.  [7 Steps Version 1.4, Updated on 3-11-17]

This is a written reference to accompany the Youtube video playlist found here:

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyc3WvQz66K-spYcsdlNBLg

Covered in this manual:

TCC Step 1: How To Sign Up Correctly In Trade Coin Club

TCC Step 2: How To Obtain Bitcoin To Purchase A Trade Coin Club Plan

TCC Step 3. How To Select And Buy A Plan In Trade Coin Club

TCC Step 4: How To Complete Your Trade Coin Club Account Profile

TCC Step 5: Trade Coin Club Back Office Dashboard Overview

TCC Step 6: How To Transfer Your Earnings & Commissions In Trade Coin Club

TCC Step 7: How To Introduce Other People To Trade Coin Club

TCC Step 1: How To Sign Up Correctly In Trade Coin Club

Step 1 Video: 

How To Sign Up Correctly In Trade Coin Club

• Use the referral link from the person who invited you. It should look something like mine: https://office.tradecoinclub.com/register/chuck212 or if they’ve shortened the invite link to a forwarding link, then the final landing page URL should still look like the URL above. (The last word or letters after the last slash is your sponsor’s personal invite code. “chuck212” in my case.)

• Fill out all of the information on the form

• Use your main email address! (You can only sign up for one spot in TCC, so make sure you take your time and do it right the first time. It is virtually impossible for the TCC tech support staff to make corrections and changes in the position of people in the network. You are only allowed one account.)

• In the “Type Your Log In” field, you can set it to whatever invite code you want. (It will automatically set it to your first initial and last name if not customized.)

• In the ID space, type your driver’s license number or your passport number

• IMPORTANT: At the bottom where it says “Click here to accept the terms stated in the contract” you need to click on it, then review the terms and conditions and scroll all the way to the bottom of it and type in your name in the signature field and click I Accept.

• After you’ve filled out all of the form, click submit (Save).

• You will then be sent an email from TCC. Check your email inbox and open the email. Copy your login credentials at the bottom, along with the login URL (back office) and past them to a notepad or word document. Keep them safe and secure. Then click the confirmation link inside the email and this will confirm your account.

• You can now log into the back office with the credentials you created.

Learn more about the process of how to join Trade Coin Club here: http://TheCryptoCoinExchange.com/how-to-join-trade-coin-club/

TCC Step 2: How To Obtain Bitcoin To Purchase A Trade Coin Club Plan

Step 2 Video:

Obtaining Bitcoin:

In order to purchase a trading plan in Trade Coin Club, you need to be able to pay for it with Bitcoin. There are several different websites and services that offer an online Bitcoin wallet. I use Coinbase. It is one of the most popular Bitcoin wallets.

To open a Coinbase account, sign up here: http://bit.ly/CoinbaseAcct

However, Coinbase only allows a maximum of a $250 deposit per weeks for new accounts. Click Here and I will fund your account.

You will need to verify your account and add a payment method such as an online bank account and/or a credit card number. When I started mine a couple of years ago, I used a bank account since I didn’t have a credit card at the time. Back then at least, it took a few days for the Bitcoin to show up in my wallet after making the transfer from my checking account.

However, if a credit card (not a debit card) was used, then the Bitcoin wallet would be funded right away. So if you want a quick transfer of funds, then I suggest using a credit card to make your initial deposit.

Another service I’ve used is CEX.io. You can open an account with CEX.io here: http://bit.ly/joinCEXIO

One of the advantages with CEX is that you can use a debit card and still fund the account right away. (Although they charge a higher fee than Coinbase.)

Blockchain.info is another popular Bitcoin wallet. You can sign up for an account there by visiting: https://blockchain.info

Another route to take is using a Bitcoin ATM. I understand that you don’t even need an online wallet for this type of transaction. For example, you could simply create a hash in Trade Coin Club to fund the account to buy a plan, (Step 3) and create a hash for it, then go to a Bitcoin ATM and deposit your local currency in cash and send it to the Bitcoin hash you created in TCC. (Of course, you would still need to eventually open an external online wallet in order to verify your TCC account and be able to withdraw funds.

You can find local Bitcoin ATMs and learn how to use each brand of them on the Coin ATM Radar website: https://coinatmradar.com/

TCC Step 3. How To Select And Buy A Plan In Trade Coin Club

Step 3 Video:

To Purchase A Plan In TCC:

• Log into your TCC back office
• Click on Plans -> Buy on the top of the page
• Enter the value of Bitcoin you will be depositing (Or click on one of the three plans to select one.)
• *Make sure you take into account a 0.05 Bitcoin registration fee (for any package) and add that amount to the amount being deposited. (TCC will automatically deduct 0.05 BTC as a registration fee when you purchase your first plan.)
• Confirm the amount
• Generate Hash
• Copy that hash number onto a notepad
• If I’m funding your account and paying your hash, then send that hash to me in a message.
• If funding the hash yourself: Sign into your external Bitcoin wallet (Coinbase, etc.)
• Choose to Send Funds
• Enter the total amount of Bitcoin you will be sending to TCC (including the 0.05 registration fee)
• Send that amount to the Hash you just created
• Then go back to TCC and click “Confirm Payment”
• *Your account should be upgraded. If your plan isn’t actually purchased yet and the Bitcoin were just sent to your main “Funds” wallet, then you’ll need to go to Plans -> Buy, then select a plan and when it asks from which wallet you want to take the Bitcoin from in order to pay for it, you can select the Funds wallet, and type in the amount you want to use underneath it in the field, and pay with it.

There are actually a couple of different ways to complete the task of buying a plan. You can also go to the “Deposit Funds” link under Plans and generate a hash there. Then you would need to send Bitcoin to that hash from an external source: Coinbase, Blockchain.info, Bitcoin ATM, etc. and send the funds to the hash you created. The Bitcoin would then be deposited to your Funds wallet, where you can use them to purchase a plan or upgrade your current plan.

The idea is to get familiar with how to move funds around within TCC. You need to understand what the Counter Sign code is, (next step) and what Tokens are, (next step). You will need to use these as security measures when transacting in TCC.

Moving funds may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but once you get familiar with how the system works, and what to do when moving funds, it’s fairly easy to use.

*After buying the plan: Another important thing you need to do in order to begin trading is to select your trading risk level. This needs to be done sometime between Sunday at 4PM PST / 7PM EST and Monday  at 4PM PST / 7PM EST.

On the dashboard section, on the right side of the page, is the risk level section. Make sure to choose your level, (I always recommend High risk) and set the trading to automatic. You simply want to make sure that your account is turned on and actively trading. (The yellow gear icons in that section will be turning if everything is turned on and the trading is going.)

TCC Step 4: How To Complete Your Trade Coin Club Account Profile

Step 4 Video:

*NOTE: This step is not necessary at first. You can still do the daily trading and also refer people to earn commissions without completing it. The only time this step needs to be finished is when you go to extract profits out of the system and send them to an external bitcoin wallet.

There are 4 main steps to completing your TCC account profile.

1. Buy a package

This process was covered in the last step

2. Enter an address

Click on the “My Profile” link at the top of the page, then scroll down to the bottom of the page, under the Address section and enter your physical address and your phone number.

3. Send a Document

This is a picture you need to take and send in. It has instructions on the page, but I will cover it here as well. You need to take a clear, high-resolution photo of yourself holding up a government issued ID next to your face that has your picture and address on it. You can use your driver’s license or passport, or state-issued ID card.

I used my driver’s license and held it up next to my face and took a selfie with my phone. Since my driver’s license address matches the address I have on file in TCC, and the picture was clear and able to be zoomed in on, they accepted it right away. This way is fine, but don’t take a picture in the mirror. (The image of your ID would be backwards.)

However, if you have a separate address from your driver’s license or if you go by your middle name for example, then you’ll need to send in supporting documentation to prove your ID and address. If this is the case, then just contact TCC support and email them a couple good photos of yourself holding up each supporting document so they can easily tell everything is legitimate. And make sure to explain the situation and each document in the email, so that everything is crystal clear to them.

4. Add your BTC wallet

This is simply your deposit hash for your external Bitcoin wallet. (Every Bitcoin wallet, (Coinbase, Blockchain.info, etc.) has a unique hash number assigned to your account. (Similar to an online checking account number). You can easily find this in the back office of your chosen external Bitcoin wallet. Just copy that Hash number and paste it into TCC in the BTC wallet section

And that’s it. After completing these simply steps, your account will be verified and you’ll be able to withdraw funds when you want.

TCC Step 5: Trade Coin Club Back Office Dashboard Overview

Step 5 Video:

Take a tour of the TCC back office dashboard and get familiar with all of its sections and functions.

Here you’ll learn about the platform’s back office dashboard and what all of its sections do. Watching the video for this step is the easiest way to take the tour. But here are written summaries of each section that you can use as a reference:

Dashboard

The Dashboard section gives you a quick snapshot of the balances of your 5 wallets. It also shows you where your profile is at in the stages of profile verification. It also shows you where you’re at within the cycle of your agreement (how many trading days have been completed) and lets you set your risk level and manage the trading settings.

My Network

The My Network section consists of 4 areas: My Network: this shows your overall network downline on your left and right legs. Matrix Network: Shows your 3X12 network of the people on your teams. Unilevel Network: Allows you to search specific members and view the points earned there. Qualification Plan: Shows you where you’re at in the number of cycles completed and what benefits and bonuses you’ve earned.

Financial

The Financial section shows records of your transactions and allows you to move funds. The Financial Extract section shows where you’ve moved money within TCC. The Pay Hash section allows you to search for a pre-generated hash and pay it with one of your wallets. And the Request Withdraw section allows you to extract funds from TCC and send them somewhere.

Plans

The Plans section allows you to Buy Plans and Deposit Funds. The Buy Plans process was covered in Step 3. (It’s where you choose a plan to purchase or upgrade your existing plan). And the Deposit Funds page lets you generate a hash to deposit Bitcoin into TCC from an external wallet.

Tools

The Tools section contains 4 pages: News, Videos, Downloads and Tutorials. Each page’s content is self-explanatory with the title and will be fleshed out with more content as time goes on. (Some of those pages are completely empty at the time this manual was created.)

My Profile

The My Profile section allows you to manage your Profile and Password. The instructions on how to complete your profile and verify it were covered in Step 4. Make sure this information is accurate and up to date.

Language

The Language section allows you to select your language. As time goes on, more languages will be available.

Support

This is where you contact support. Currently, it is simply an email address to use.

Sign Friend

This link opens in a new window and brings you to your sign up page with your personal invite code already embedded in the sponsor field of the form. This is the link you give others to sign up with.

Account

In the top right of the site, you can access the main aspects of your profile and log out.

TCC Step 6:
How To Transfer Your Earnings & Commissions In Trade Coin Club

How to make your first transfer, How to make other transfers after your first. One of the most powerful concepts of this opportunity is the concept of earning compound interest. So the idea is to transfer your daily trade earnings (and referral commissions if any) into your Exchange Wallet so you are trading with a higher and higher amount of funds every day throughout your 8 or 12-month agreement.

Here are the steps to transfer earnings within TCC wallets:

Step 1: Update your Countersign password if needed and make sure you have it handy. (This only needs to be done once. You do not need to do it every time you transfer your earnings.)

Step 2: Go to your Dashboard and look at your wallets and write down the amount of BTC you want to move. If you are moving BTC from more than one wallet, (example: your trading account plus your commission account to send into the exchange), then you need to add the totals and write down the sum.)

Step 3: Go to the Plans section, and then select the Buy link.

Step 4: Generate Hash. Type in the total amount of Bitcoin you want to move. (Remember if it is less than one Bitcoin, then you need to put a zero and then a decimal point, and then the amount.) Make sure the amount is correct and then click Generate Hash. And copy it to a clipboard. (Make sure you only copy the exact hash and not any spaces or other characters.)

Step 5: Go to the Financials Section and select Pay Hash. Paste in the hash code into the field and click the search button. (This will make TCC search its system and locate that hash transaction.)

Step 6: Enter the amounts under each Wallet that you want to move. (They should total the amount that you summed earlier.) Once you’re satisfied that all the numbers and amounts are correct, then click Pay.

Step 7: Then you’ll need to enter your “X-Pass”. This is your Counter Sign code that you set earlier. You may also need to confirm at Token. (A token for the transaction may need to be sent to your email.) So you may need to confirm the transaction with a Token also. (Check your email for a token number and paste in I the token field in TCC.) After you’ve confirmed the transaction, the funds will be moved and you will see that the totals in your Wallets are updated.

TCC Step 7:
How To Introduce Other People To Trade Coin Club

This step is of course optional. You are never required to introduce other people to TCC. You can simply deposit your Bitcoin in order to passively gain trading earnings. However, since the trading alone is so powerful and profitable, many people eventually tell others about their own success and offer an invite to their friends. This section of the 7 Steps will definitely be updated and improved as time goes on, but in this early stage, I thought it was important to at least have some rudimentary structure or outline for a basic process of how to introduce other people to TCC.

Step 1: Show them this short Introduction Video:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_hAYr3pjt4

Step 2: Show them a recording of an official TCC webinar Video: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTVUq-3om9s

Step 3: Give them your invite link and have them sign up and create a free TCC account.

Step 4: Give them the 7 Steps To Getting Started With Trade Coin Club page:
http://thecryptocoinexchange.com/trade-coin-club-tutorials/7-steps-getting-started-trade-coin-club/

Step 5: Show them how to buy a plan and start trading. (Make sure they actually buy a plan and get started trading.) If you need to help them obtain Bitcoin and follow the 7 Steps, then coach them along the way. Touch base regularly and help them with each step until they have funded their account and are actively trading.

Step 6: Follow up with them regularly, helping them along the way. Once their account is active and trading, stay in touch. Make sure they have studied the 7 steps and know how to use their TCC account. Make sure they know how to move funds within TCC. Make sure they know the importance of transferring their daily trading earnings into their exchange account each day in order to maximize their profits. The important thing here is to keep the communication line open, so they keep moving forward and never get stuck.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

While blockchain is most notably used in the financial sector,

I have been studying the application of blockchain technology in various industries.   According to an article on the Oracle website titled The Benefits of Blockchain Across Industries. (n.d.). there are benefits to be derived in the public sector by the use of this technology.

The blockchain is an encrypted, distributed database shared across multiple computers or nodes that are part of a community or system. Transactions and data that use blockchain technology do not allow changes to data once it is written unless all or a majority of participating computers agree to the change. Blockchain has the ability to make the secure transfer of data simpler and easier between entities. This article notes the potential uses of blockchain technology in the defense, legal and energy industries.

It also discusses that the ability of blockchain to link data between government departments that typically work is silos. This can benefit citizens because the exchange of information between departments is in real time, after the agency and the citizen agree to share data. Information would no longer be delayed, resulting in greater efficiency and better service to citizens. It could also increase transparency and reduce fraud and abuse.  It is clear that blockchain holds much promise in the ability to provide secure and transparent transactions. We will continue to study the evolution of this technology.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

The World’s Top Energy Companies Look to Blockchain to
‘Fuse the Physical With the Virtual’

  

A new coalition links up energy companies with leading blockchain experts.

Earlier this month Shell, Statoil, Tepco, Centrica and a half-dozen other energy companies the Energy Web Foundation, an alliance devoted to bringing blockchain to the grid. The companies donated $2.5 million to the organization. The foundation was set up in February this year as a collaboration between Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and Austrian blockchain developer Grid Singularity to “accelerate the commercial deployment of blockchain technology in the energy sector.”

The companies and organizations involved think blockchain will be a game-changer for energy, and e working together to provide the frameworks and standards to help ensure that outcome. Jesse Morris, principal for electricity and transportation practices at RMI and co-founder of the Energy Web Foundation (EWF), said the foundation's immediate aim is to garner more affiliates and funding, while developing an open-source blockchain application for use in the energy sector. Initially, partner organizations will evaluate the software, and potentially release it to the public in 2019 or 2020, if all goes well. Blockchain is best known as the platform for Bitcoin. It is an encrypted, distributed database that allows all users to track every transaction — thus eliminating the need for an intermediary.

Blockchain enthusiasts believe the technology can also be used to seamlessly transact electrons between consumers on the grid, while keeping an accurate, incorruptible tally of where they came from and where they went. It could encourage greater peer-to-peer sales on the grid and lay the foundation for microgrids and distributed renewables. “We have a strong hypothesis that blockchain will solve a lot of long-running problems in the energy sector,” said Morris. “Overcoming these challenges could make small, incremental changes to energy infrastructure and markets in the ar term, while others would be more far-reaching and disruptive."

Certificates (also known as guarantees) of origin would assure the user that a particular megawatt-hour of electricity was produced from renewables. According to Morris, the U.S. alone has 10 different tracking systems, Asia-Pacific has several more, and each European country has its own system of certification. Blockchain could be used to transparently guarantee the origin of the electrons. Longer-term, and more radically, RMI sees the future of electricity networks being driven by the billions of energy storage and HVAC units, EVs, solar roof panels and other devices and appliances at the grid edge.

Blockchains can allow any of them to set their own level of participation on the grid, without the need for an intermediary. And crucially, they can be configured so that if a grid operator needs guaranteeing capacity, the grid-edge unit can communicate back to the grid whether or not it’s up to the task. This is an example of what Morris described as blockchain’s ability to “fuse the physical with the virtual” via machine-to-machine communication. However, these are still early days. Foundation members have a lot of work to do in order to ensure its credibility, prove the technology works for energy applications and lay down the foundation for widespread adoption.

“Think of it like the App Store,” remarked David Peters, director of strategy and innovation at grid owner-operator Stedin B.V. “We at the EWF are building a shared infrastructure where we can build on top the developed code.” Stedin joined EWF because it believes in blockchain’s potential. “It gives us access to the best blockchain people in the world,” Peters said.   He hopes the widespread adoption of the technology will “lower the barriers of participation” for the grid. Engie, the French multinational electric utility, had already conducted its own blockchain research projects before joining EWF. Among them was a program to track smart meters in Burgundy, keeping detailed tabs on solar panel electricity production, and facilitating transactions of a small peer-to-peer community energy trading project in Belgium.

Engie's Director of Research and Technologies Raphael Schoentgen explained that blockchain is a promising technology to track smart meter data. “It contributes to better management of electrons over the grid,” he remarked. The technology’s ability to automate transactions for peer-to-peer trading is of key interest to Dr. Hans-Heinrich Kleuker, the CEO of Technische Werke Ludwigshafen, whose company is now also part of EWF. “We’ll see many more consumers with either an energy deficit or a surplus in the near future, and the desire to trade that energy,” he said. “Machine-to-machine communication, such as that offered via blockchain, will be essential to manage the vast number of transactions needed.”

Such trades would certainly be beyond the capabilities of a small, local utility such as TWL, said Kleuker.  “We are looking at the convergence of different electricity markets, which are very different right now, but longer-term will be facing similar challenges,” Kleuker concluded, convinced that the application of blockchain can meet those challenges. EWF will meet at the end of May to decide which use-case scenarios from around the world it will employ to take the project forward. In the coming years, the foundation will decide on norms and standards that may allow blockchain to be used in a truly universal way and “move beyond the hype.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Blockchain and the airline industry:
ready for take-off?

Let’s first look at where the airline industry is now

For every traveller’s ticket, airlines conduct various business-to-business (B2B) transactions that touch other business and government entities. From booking to arrival, players include online travel platforms, government agencies, airlines, card providers, airports, car rental agencies, immigration hotels and more.

The industry is powered by data sharing among multiple actors and touchpoints. Information both on the traveller and overall operations is continually collected, stored and “disseminated” by each of the actors involved at some point. They will need to go through complex data reconciliation processes between a multitude of systems to ensure operations and security and facilitate the successful departure of the traveller.

Airlines alone house data in numerous siloed systems from passenger service to crew management Each airline system is characterized by a mix of data that it stores to facilitate a travel. It may vary from crew departments to passenger services. With multiple systems in play and massive data stored in multiple single systems makes the exchange at times difficult. For airlines, not only operational integrity and revenue generation may be endangered when something goes wrong, but also safety and security.

Accenture: Why blockchain for the airline industry

According to Accenture in its report “Beyond the Buzz: The potential of Blockchain Technology for Airlines”, there is a very strong similarity between the airline industry operations and what blockchain technology has to offer. Therefore “it is fair to say that blockchain and other distributed ledger technology has the ability to improve transactional flows, improve trust and provide immutable record retention”.

With the complexity of information and the delicate state of affairs in the airline Industry, blockchain technology incorporation for comprehensive data sharing and reconciliation may prove to be very beneficial. One of the advantages is cutting down complexities associated with cross-enterprise business processes. Use of blockchain techniques can help enhance reconciliation and data sharing.  “Using blockchain technology for enhanced reconciliation and data sharing is a compelling value proposition for this industry. The most creative and disruptive possibilities go beyond pure financial transactions,” Accenture 

Blockchain technology can also create new efficiencies and services models for airlines.

 “On a basic level, interoperability between programs and partners that use the same dataset to record and transfer value will result in enhanced efficiencies in transaction processing and invoice reconciliation” “For travellers, this will result in quicker availability and better usability of their points and miles”, Robert Moerland, EVP — Global Business Development, Loyyal Another attraction of blockchain technology for the airline industry is that it allows “privacy by design” so that passenger data can be secure, encrypted, tamper-proof and unusable for any other purpose. Once information has been entered, it cannot be changed. At the same time, it eliminates the need for a single authority to own, process or to store the data.

Capco –IATA Research

Capco, the global business and technology consultancy for the financial services industry, has conducted a report on behalf of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), to determine how blockchain will impact the airline industry and how this technology can be used to benefit them. Key findings include blockchain’s potential to make the industry faster and more cost efficient and enhance customer experience, as well as a number of uses of blockchain and its value. One area IATA is currently exploring refers to how this technology can help optimize the money flows between partners in the travel industry value chain. 

“Blockchain is a disruptive technology and represents a great opportunity for digital innovation. Every single industry, from the financial sector to aviation, is trying to understand where this technology will best fit and where to start the innovation journey. Distributed ledger technology — including blockchain — is already proven to reduce transaction fees when transferring money across borders and currencies,” “That represents a great promise, particularly for global businesses and industries.” Assad Mahmood, senior consultant, Capco. “The value of having a single ’source of truth’ that all business partners trust can dramatically simplify reconciliation, invoicing and settlement in our industry,” Juan Iván Martín, IATA head of Innovation, Financial and Distribution Services. 

Lufthansa introduces Blockchain for Airlines Initiative (BC4A)

German airline company Lufthansa has introduced the BC4A or Blockchain for Airlines initiative. The Main goal is to bring together all areas in the industry and collectively investigate the potential of the blockchain. Potential participants are software developers, aircraft builders, MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul) service providers, logistics, leasing companies or regulators. Our Aim is to collect use cases of blockchain in the airline industry and come to common standards for its use.

Where can blockchain be used in the airline industry?
There are a  large number of promising cases where blockchain technology could be used in the airline industry. “The most creative and disruptive possibilities go beyond pure financial transactions.” “They may include use cases in ticketing, loyalty schemes, security, and identity, as well as maintenance”, Accenture

Identity Management

Blockchain technology could solve the problems related to identity management. It could even revolutionize identity management in combination with biometrics technology. Once validated on the blockchain, it would make it harder to “impersonate” or commit fraud. Companies such as uPort4 are designing systems to allow users to create digital verification of individuals on the blockchain. This would drastically reduce the current friction and burden of processing paper passports and relying on human checks to validate passenger identification.

Security

The security and privacy of information in all Industries are vital, in particular for the airline industry. Data privacy is a critical issue for passenger records, flight manifests, and crew information. There are also security implications if this data is not properly protected. Security and privacy can be significantly enhanced by using blockchain technology. Blockchain technology with a security wrapper (that requires security authorization to access and even disseminate information) creates a very different and safer way to manage and share this information through authorized access requirements.

Ticketing.

The blockchain can tokenize the present e-ticket and further dematerializing these tickets. Through the use of smart contracts associated with the tokenized tickets, airlines can add business logic and their terms and conditions for how the ticket will be sold and used by different partners across the value chain, and in real time, from any location in the world in a secure and efficient manner. This opens the possibility of one purchasing airline tickets from a host of partners from any part of the world.

Loyalty

By tokenizing loyalty points on a blockchain, travellers get immediate value as they can redeem and use the points instantly on the spot. They can also use them more broadly through a user community of partners (marketplace or exchange model). With points accepted as sort of “currency” among more providers, travellers have a faster-to-use, easier and more extended spending program that is better suited to their personal preferences.

 “One example is the possibility of multi-branded points that have a special value or benefit associated with them, potentially for a limited period of time. This means for travellers that more relevant targeted offers with an increased value will become available in a higher frequency,” Robert Moerland.

Luggage custody-change tracking

Luggage change custody through their journey between airlines, airport, and ground handlers. When something goes wrong with a passenger’s luggage it is important to have a log of custody changes to be able to determine who is responsible. A (semi-private) blockchain can cater for this as a neutral ground for reporting custody changes throughout the value chain. A blockchain-based solution for tracking luggage would smooth the hand-off points where different teams take over responsibility for passenger items. All airlines could track luggage handling on a single blockchain which is readable by the passenger. The traveller could even be able to see if their luggage is on the plane.

Maintenance

Another case study would be aircraft parts as they change custody between manufactures, traders, maintenance service providers, and airlines. Blockchain technology can move maintenance logs out of existing “bulky” cumbersome databases and paper binders. This may enable airlines to safeguard the validity of procured parts. It can ensure that parts procured are legitimate and can provide a “virtual copy” immutable record of the provenance of each part on the plane, every time it has been handled and by whom, from the beginning of the aircraft existence. This would mean that the provenance of every part of the aircraft is instantly available and would speed up due diligence around future lifecycle events. Maintenance events could be set in advance and non-conformity would appear within the aircraft maintenance record. This visibility can firmly improve maintenance, safety, and security.

Air cargo

The air cargo industry could benefit from Blockchain both as a tool for saving money and offering monetary protection and could transform, how cargo is nowadays managed. Blockchain technology could increase efficiency, cut down on costs, and reduce fraud.

In addition to reducing costs and time, blockchain would allow for complete consolidation of air cargo records, with verification. Blockchain would remove the need for costly and inefficient paper work and for the various and multitude time-consuming verification steps. In order to verify the origins and legitimacy of the products taking on board, blockchain could be used to track every step of the process: from origin through shipping, all the way to the arrival at the airport. Blockchain also could protect against any alterations, additions, or subtractions to the products in the meantime, cutting down on smuggling and theft. This transparency and validation will allow for faster processing and a reduction in paperwork. It might be possible to speed customs clearing with any import duty paid via the blockchain.

Other use cases

Apart from these applications blockchain technology can also be used for other cases. These may include Airport Collaborative Decision Making (ACDM),  In-flight entertainment, traveler compensation, flight planning etc.

SITA Project

Travel technology provider SITA is exploring the potential of blockchain technology as part of its single token efforts. This technology provides the opportunity to allow secure biometric authentication of passengers throughout the journey across borders, which could help eliminate the need for multiple travel documents without passengers having to share their personal data. “Now blockchain technology offers us the potential to provide a new way of using biometrics. It could enable biometrics to be used across borders, and at all airports, without the passenger’s details being stored by the various authorities.” Jim Peters, SITA’s Chief Technology Officer

SITA Lab, along with blockchain start-up ShoCard, is now researching how using virtual or digital passports in the form of a single secure token on mobile and wearable devices could reduce complexity, cost, and liability around document checks during the passenger journey. What the SITA Lab team is looking at is how the air travel industry — airlines, airports and government agencies — can take advantage of blockchain technology where the underlying blockchain provide trust so that individuals or authorities don’t have to. “If this new approach to identity management and passenger processing gains the support of the wider air transport industry and government agencies, it would make sense for the technology to be trialed as a next step” SITA

 Blockchain may revolutionize airline industry

Blockchain technology may become a disruptive force that may revolutionize the airline industry. Blockchain has the potential to play a leading role in disrupting many facets of the way they nowadays do business. Airlines — a data intensive industry with complex procedures and requirements — will certainly benefit from paying attention to the new potentials available and therefore have to reckon with this new technology. “Blockchain technology will continue to take flight in airlines over the next decade. Use cases not even conceived of today will become every day, reducing complexity and costs while improving the travel journey with real-time travel experiences,” Accenture Accenture sees an opportunity for major expansion. But it will still take a number of years before a real take off will be seen in the airline industry!

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about – TCC-Bitcoin.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Why Investing in SEO Makes Good Business Sense

As Google continues to unhinge marketing models everywhere, companies are increasing spending on digital marketing services. If you are considering investing in search engine optimization (SEO), it may be hard to decide where to spend money, especially when marketing budgets are always tight. Still, SEO firms can potentially bring a lot of value to your business, and many marketers are taking the plunge. According to media analysts at Borrell, SEO spending will reach $80 billion annually by 2020.

Why Investing in SEO Makes Good Business Sense

If you are considering hiring an SEO agency for your company, it’s important to understand what you’re buying. In general, SEO work falls into three main buckets:

Keyword research and optimization

This is what most people think of when they think of SEO. “Keyword research and optimization is about defining the audiences you want to reach online, then communicating to Google where you want to meet those people,” explains Andy Kerns, Content Strategist with Digital Third Coast, a Chicago-based digital marketing agency. Kerns continues, “The where in this equation is represented by specific keyword phrases, like “’running shoes’ or ‘payroll software. People search a specific term, and your company shows up in the search results. Then the searchers click on your link — and you meet a new prospect!”

Technical work on websites

This is work you might not associate with SEO, but it is often essential. “The algorithm Google uses to assess and rate all websites is very sophisticated and very picky,” Kerns says. “It has to work extremely fast, in nanoseconds. If you want to meet folks searching for keywords relevant to your offerings, your website needs to be a well-oiled machine that communicates quickly and clearly with Google, at all times. This is not as simple as it sounds. There are literally hundreds of technical considerations when optimizing a website for SEO purposes.”

Link building campaigns

This is an aspect of SEO that might surprise you if you are new to the game — and it’s a game changer. “Consider the hundreds of technical tweaks that need to be made when optimizing a website.There’s a single consideration for Google’s algorithm that rises above all others — we call it links.” Kerns says. “Links from other websites to your website, are what Google counts, and cares about more than anything else. If your website is associated with other important and popular websites, Google will automatically like you more — and display your company much higher (closer to the top of Page 1) in search results.”

The hard part is getting those links in a legitimate way using keywords you care about — and that is where an SEO firm can be invaluable. “If you develop first-class content that is educational, entertaining or both, and you make a concerted effort to share that content with the world, the world will link back to you. We promise. We do this every single day for our clients.,” Kerns notes. While often at least some of the work can be done yourself or with in-house staff, the truth is that letting experts do it for you more than pays for itself, and here are several reasons why: 

True SEO work is systemic.
“If you don’t address everything—technical issues, keyword optimization, link building—it’s highly unlikely you’ll get the results you want,” Kerns warns. “This work is systemic, it’s on-going, and it requires a broad range of skills that would be very tough and costly to add to your existing team.” Hiring an expert or, better yet, a firm of experts, can streamline the process and maximize the ROI —Return on Investment. 

• Fresh perspective is your friend.
  “A common challenge we have is helping clients understand when their keyword strategy needs to shift to meet prospects where they are. We also need to clarify the kinds of link building content that will attract attention from journalists without seeming promotional.” Kerns says. “It’s extremely difficult for most people to see beyond the boundaries of their business, to understand where they need to fit in to the larger picture, We can do that for them.”

• There are no guarantees.
  You can spend a great deal of time getting educated about SEO and setting yourself up to give it a go on your own, using internal resources. And you may well be successful. But it’s a long shot. SEO is relatively new and it’s a delicate, esoteric trade. Finding a dedicated team with a proven track record and good recommendations is the smarter play here.

• Get access to the coolest toolbox.
  “Think of someone trying to build a house with an old school toolbox versus the tools professional contractors bring to the job. A great SEO team comes with a remarkable array of software tools,” Kerns notes. “These are the essential tools of the SEO trade. Even if you knew just what to source, they’d cost you tens of thousands of dollars to purchase, much less use.”

So, if you have a product or service that’s ready to go to the next level — especially one that has national appeal — strongly consider hiring an SEO firm as part of your growth plan. It’s a smart move for those who are ready for the big leap!

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about — Inbound Marketing.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Stop overloading your Local SEO content!

Developing content for your local business website is clearly important for search engine optimization, but that doesn't mean that more content is always better. Columnist Greg Gifford explains and suggests an alternative strategy.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the road,

speaking at conferences and talking to marketers and business owners, and I’ve been having the “content” talk far too often lately. You know, the one that’s almost as awkward as sitting down with your kids to talk about the birds and the bees, but where you’re talking to a business owner and telling them that their last SEO agency duped them. For some reason, more than ever before, it seems like most business owners (and many marketers) are equating content with SEO. It’s like suddenly, the only thing that matters is content, content, CONTENT. If multiple pages aren’t added to the site every month, then obviously, no SEO has been performed.

Hopefully, everyone reading this knows that the “content, content, CONTENT” play is way off-base. The problem is that most business owners don’t know, and many of us aren’t doing a sufficient job of educating business owners to show them why. If there’s a huge disconnect between what marketers know and business owners believe, we’re all going to have problems keeping clients. So this month’s edition of Greg’s Soapbox is calling out the “content, content, CONTENT” play and showing why overloading on content is a bad strategy.

Lazy local content pages are usually doorway pages

In most cases, the local content play involves the monthly addition of “location” targeted pages to a website. Yes, this is a legitimate strategy when done correctly, but, in practice, most of the time the pages created are simply doorway pages. They’re thin pages without any useful content with the sole purpose of ranking in local searches. Google calls those doorway pages and actually penalizes sites for using them. Yep, this is old news — the penalty rolled out in 2015 — but I’m seeing a resurgence of doorway pages in local SEO over the past few months. If your site or your potential client’s site has a ton of pages that aren’t included in any menu, and they’re all basically the same page with different cities listed on each iteration, you’ve got doorway pages.

Let’s look at the official Google support docs that talk about doorway pages:

Doorways are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple similar pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination. They can also lead users to intermediate pages that are not as useful as the final destination.

Here are some examples of doorways:

• Having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page
• Pages generated to funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site(s)
• Substantially similar pages that are closer to search results than a clearly defined, browsable hierarchy

Google’s early 2015 announcement about the Doorway Page Penalty is even more specific:

• Is the purpose to optimize for search engines and funnel visitors into the actual usable or relevant portion of your site, or are they an integral part of your site’s user experience?
• Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic?
• Do these pages exist as an “island?” Are they difficult or impossible to navigate to from other parts of your site? Are links to such pages from other pages within the site or network of sites created just for search engines?

Since most of the low-quality local content pages clearly fail these questions, alerting business owners to these pages — and the possible penalty for having them — can go a long way toward helping them understand why continuing to push content pages out every month can be harmful.

It’s simple: are the pages there for humans?

If you’re a car dealer, and you’ve got 25 pages on your site about the 2017 Ford F-150, with each one targeting a different city, then you’re probably in bad shape. It’s likely that none of the pages are on your main menu, or even within one click of the main menu page. The pages probably all have the same photo of a truck and only a few sentences about how you sell that truck in that particular city. Do these pages provide any value at all for an actual human? Absolutely not.

Even if you rewrite the content 25 times, they’re still useless. Sure, they’re not “duplicate” pages, but they’re repetitive pages. They all say exactly the same thing, only with a different city mentioned. There’s zero value there. When you’re writing content for your site, or when your SEO agency is writing the content, you have to ask yourself if the content is being added to make your site better for users — or just to show up in search engines. If the thought process is “This will help me show up in searches in that city,” then your thought process is wrong. You’re not going to gain more visibility in searches in other cities simply by adding a few lazy pages to your site. Period.

How many pages do you really need?

Many business owners I talk to ask the question, “How many pages do I need?” and the answer is simple. You need however many you need to answer your customers’ questions. Simply adding 10 pages (or 15 pages, or 20 pages) of content a month won’t make your site any better than adding only a few poorly designed location or product pages.

In fact, your site will be infinitely better if you only add one or two quality pages every month. Once you’ve got your site where you need it, you don’t even need to keep adding pages! If you’ve decided to add 15 pages a month to your site, ask yourself where that number came from. Why 15? Why 20? What’s the strategy there, and what questions will you be answering? Local SEO is not only content. Many of the factors that affect your local SEO success don’t even live on your website. If you want to target other cities, it takes much more than creating a few repetitive location pages. For a detailed plan of a better way (involving content pages, blog posts, social media, and link building), check out my post from the summer of 2015 about Local Content Silos. Let’s all work together to educate business owners (and wayward agencies) and stop the local content vomiting once and for all!

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about — Inbound Marketing.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Stop oversimplifying everything!

The old days of gaming Google's ranking algorithm are over, but columnist Eric Enge notes that many SEO professionals haven't moved on yet.

Once upon a time, our world was simple.

There was a thesis — “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” by Sergey Brin and Larry Page — that told us how Google worked. And while Google evolved rapidly from the concepts in that document, it still told us what we needed to know to rank highly in search. As a community, we abused it — and many made large sums of money simply by buying links to their site. How could you expect any other result? Offer people a way to spend $2 and make $10, and guess what? Lots of people are going to sign up for that program.

But our friends at Google knew that providing the best search results would increase their market share and revenue, so they made changes continually to improve search quality and protect against attacks by spammers. A big part of what made this effort successful was obscuring the details of their ranking algorithm. When reading the PageRank thesis was all you needed to do to learn how to formulate your SEO strategy, the world was simple. But Google has since been issued hundreds of patents, most of which have probably not been implemented and never will be. There may even be trade secret concepts for ranking factors for which patent applications have never been filed.

Yet, as search marketers, we still want to make things very simple. Let’s optimize our site for this one characteristic and we’ll get rich! In today’s world, this is no longer realistic. There is so much money to be had in a search that any single factor has been thoroughly tested by many people. If there were one single factor that could be exploited for guaranteed SEO success, you would already have seen someone go public with it.

‘Lots of different signals’ contribute to rankings

Despite the fact that there is no silver bullet for obtaining high rankings, SEO professionals often look for quick fixes and easy solutions when a site’s rankings take a hit. In a recent Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangout, a participant asked Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller about improving his site content to reverse a drop in traffic that he believed to be the results of the Panda update from May of 2014. The webmaster told Mueller that he and his team are going through the site category by category to improve the content; he wanted to know if rankings will improve category by category as well, or if there is a blanket score applied to the whole site.

Here is what Mueller said in response (emphases mine):

“For the most part, we’ve moved more and more towards understanding sections of the site better and understanding what the quality of those sections is. So if you’re … going through your site step by step, then I would expect to see … a gradual change in the way that we view your site. But, I also assume that if … you’ve had a low quality site since 2014, that’s a long time to … maintain a low quality site, and that’s something where I suspect there are lots of different signals that are … telling us that this is probably not such a great site.

(Hat tip to Glenn Gabe for surfacing this.)

I want to draw your attention to the bolded part of the above comment. Doesn’t it make you wonder, what are the “lots of different signals?” While it’s important not to over-analyze every statement by Googlers, this certainly does sound like the related signals would involve some form of cumulative user engagement metrics. However, if it were as simple as improving user engagement, it likely would not take a long time for someone impacted by a Panda penalty to recover — as soon as users started reacting to the site better, the issue would presumably fix itself quickly.

What about CTR?

Larry Kim is passionate about the possibility that Google directly uses CTR as an SEO ranking factor. By the way, do read that article. It’s a great read, as it gives you tons of tips on how to improve your CTR — which is very clearly a good thing regardless of SEO ranking impact. That said, I don’t think Google’s algorithm is as simple as measuring CTR on a search result and moving higher CTR items higher in the SERPs. For one thing, it would be far too easy a signal to the game, and many industries that are well-known for aggressive SEO testing would have pegged this as a ranking factor and already made millions of dollars on this by now. Second, of all, high CTR does not speak to the quality of the page that you’ll land on. It speaks to your approach to title and meta description writing and branding.

We also have the statements by Paul Haahr, a ranking engineer at Google, on how Google works. He gave the linked presentation at SMX West in March 2015. In it, he discusses how Google does use a variety of user engagement metrics in ranking. The upshot of it is that he said they are NOT used as a direct ranking factor, but instead, they are used in periodic quality control checks of other ranking factors that they use.

Here is a summary of what his statements imply:

1. CTR, and signals like it, are NOT a direct ranking factor.
2. Signals like content quality and links, and algorithms like Panda, Penguin, and probably hundreds of others are what they use instead (the “Core Signal Set”).
3. Google runs a number of quality control tests on search quality. These include CTR and other direct measurements of user engagement.
4. Based on the results of these tests, Google will adjust the Core Signal Set to improve test results.

The reason for this process is that it allows Google to run their quality control tests in a controlled environment where they are not easily subject to gaming of the algorithm, and it makes it far harder for black-hat SEOs to manipulate. So is Larry Kim right? Or Paul Haahr? I don’t know.

Back to John Mueller’s comments for a moment

Looking back on the John Mueller statement I shared above, it strongly implies that there is some cumulative impact over time of generating “lots of different signals that are telling us that this is probably not such a great site.” In other words, I’m guessing that if your site generates a lot of negative signals for a long time, it’s harder to recover, as you need to generate new positive signals for a sustained period of time to make up for the history that you’ve accumulated. Mueller also makes it seem like a graduated scale of some sort, where turning a site around will be “a long-term project where you’ll probably see gradual changes over time.” However, let’s consider for a moment that the signal we are talking about might be linked. Shortly after the aforementioned Office Hours Hangout, on May 11, John Mueller also tweeted out that you can get an unnatural link from a good site and a natural link from a spammy site. Of course, when you think about it, this makes complete sense.

How does this relate to the Office Hours Hangout discussion? I don’t know that it does (well, directly, that is). However, it’s entirely possible that the signals John Mueller speaks about in Office Hours are links on the web. In which case, going through and disavowing your unnatural links would likely dramatically speed up the process of recovery. But is that the case? Then why wouldn’t he have just said that? I don’t know. But we have this seeming genuine comment from Mueller on what to expect in terms of recovery with no easily determined explanation of what signals could be driving it.

We all try to oversimplify how the Google algorithm works

As an industry, we grew up in a world where we could go read one paper, the original PageRank thesis by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and kind of get the Google algorithm. While the initial launch of Google had already deviated significantly from this paper, we knew that links were a big thing. This made it easy for us to be successful ionGoogle, so much so that you could take a really crappy site and get it to rank high with little effort. Just get tons of links (in the early days, you could simply buy them), and you were all set. But in today’s world, while links still matter a great deal, there are many other factors in play. Google has a vested interest in keeping the algorithms they use vague and unclear, as this is a primary way to fight against spam.

As an industry, we need to change how we think about Google. Yet we seem to remain desperate to make the algorithms simple. “Oh, it’s this one factor that really drives things,” we want to say, but that world is gone forever. This is not a PageRank situation, where we’ll be given a single patent or paper that lays it all out, know that it’s the fundamental basis of Google’s algorithm, and then know quite simply what to do.

The second-largest market cap company on planet Earth has spent nearly two decades improving its ranking algorithm to ensure high-quality search results — and maintaining the algorithm’s integrity requires, in part, that it be too complex for spammers to easily game. That means that there aren’t going to be one or two dominating ranking factors anymore. This is why I keep encouraging marketers to understand Google’s objectives — and to learn to thrive in an environment where the search giant keeps getting closer and closer to meeting those objectives.

We’re also approaching a highly volatile market situation, with the rise of voice search, new devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Homecoming to market, and the impending rise of the personal assistants. This is a disruptive market event, and Google’s position as the number one player in search as we know it may be secure, but search as we know it may no longer be that important an activity. People are going to shift to using voice commands and a centralized personal assistant, and a traditional search will be a minor feature in that world.

What this means is that Google needs its results to be as high-quality as they possibly can make them. Yet they need to keep fighting off spammers at the same time. The result? A dynamic and changing algorithm that continues to improve overall search quality as much as they can. To maintain a stranglehold on that market share, and establish a lead, if at all possible, in the world of voice search and personal assistants.

What does it mean for us?

The simple days of gaming the algorithm are gone. Instead, we have to work on a few core agenda items:

1. Make our content and site experience as outstanding as we possibly can.
2. Get ready for the world of voice search and personal assistants.
3. Plug into new technologies and channel opportunities as they become available.
4. Promote our products and services in a highly effective manner.

In short, make sure that your products and services are in high demand. The best defense in a rapidly changing marketplace is to make sure that consumers want to buy from you. That way, if some future platform does not provide access to you, your prospective customers will let them know. Notice, though, how this recipe has nothing to do with the algorithms of Google (or any other platform provider). Our world is just no longer that simple anymore.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about — Inbound Marketing.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member

Artificial Intelligence Is Changing SEO: Get Ahead Or Fall Behind

    

The AI revolution is upon us, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

It seemed like yesterday when things like automated social media posts, blog content, and chatbots were something laughable, not fully able to compete with human intelligence. However, these algorithms have accelerated almost to the point of reaching human logic, making marketers both excited and scared.

On one end, the idea of having our content and customer data be delivered to us in a way that’s way more efficient than ever before is incredibly enticing to content distributors. On the flip side, this is making content providers/writers nervous about whether their jobs are going to become obsolete. In spite of the ongoing debate, certain innovations are going to be here to stay, with SEO being one of the focus on the forefront. As quick as AI has been shifting the world of marketing in general, SEO has been following suit in a big way. Not only are things like keywords, metrics, and targeted ads going to become increasingly automated, but the possibilities of real-time data aggregation solutions are going to change the game for good. And luckily for you, below we’ve listed a few key points on how this will happen.

With AI, Marketing is Already Shifting Directions

Marketers have been salivating over the potential AI could have for years. As we’ve noted before, the opportunities are endless, ranging from programmatic systems for PPC and SEO to streamlining our sales pipeline more efficiently. Yes, AI and marketing are going to be inseparable in the near future, with many CMOs already taking notice. However, even with all these innovations, there’s plenty more on the way regarding how AI will impact SEO.

Automated Content Means Improved Keywords

It’s been predicted that AI will one day take over the content industry. In fact, a lot of this development is already underway, with the Associated Press reportedly deploying algorithms to write over 3,000 articles every quarter. These algorithms have now expanded into the realms of social media as well, with content marketing heavily in the targets.To some businesses, this is a pipedream, as suddenly they’re going to be able to hire a content generator that can spit out articles and posts much quicker than human capabilities. Moreover, algorithmic developments will be able to handle numerous types of articles spanning a variety of industries. When you factor in the potential breadth of these systems, including the obsolete cost of hiring actual writers, and the increased accuracy of keyword inclusion and optimization, the new industry of SEO and AI will be immensely powerful.

While some folks are still going to want a human voice powering or refining their content, these algorithms are going to be able to point out the best keywords to use in real time. Even though this technological development sacrifices human perspective and insight, the return is going to provide content providers with articles that could potentially lead to the top of search results almost every time. The jury is still out on the actual details as to how this type of content will be handled from the first draft all the way through publication, but it is expected that the impact of improved keyword strategy will make a significant difference.

Real Time Data is Going to Be Huge

One of the biggest impacts that AI will have on SEO is the speed that it offers to universal marketing efforts. As we mentioned above, not only will AI be able to aggregate and organize keywords and search terms, but it will additionally be able to pinpoint how to use these terms as well. Imagine being able to run tests on what terms will work best based on location, service, or even timing. Additionally, marketers will also be able to use these algorithms to use predictive models on how the response will turn out. This means that updating automated responses and search terms will occur instantaneously — cycling through which ones will achieve the highest ROI in a matter of seconds. The results of this fast-paced development will likely alter search term strategy and analysis for years to come.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
Please click either Link to Learn more about — Inbound Marketing.

Alan Zibluk Markethive Founding Member