#the past 2 episodes have just been the it’s so over we’re so back graph but I really think it’s so over for real this time
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Not to be dramatic but I really think I’m going to live the rest of my life pretending that last twilight ended on ep 9 like will I watch the finale? Obviously but I’m going to think of it as basically fanfiction. These plot twists they keep throwing in during the last couple minutes of each episode are really pissing me off and they’re only doing them to facilitate character development but I just don’t like the choices they’ve made!! They brought in the eye donation plot to develop day’s mom and that’s literally all it took?? Day has surgery and before we even know if it works suddenly she’s ok with mhok and supportive of her blind son like that seemed too easy. There was no real internal struggle for her it just sort of happened instantly and that’s not realistic not to fucking mention how absolutely cruel it is to give day the hope of being able to see again and taking that from him AGAIN (this is also what happened with August but I’m done talking about him- that is, the instantaneous unprompted character development). And if that didn’t piss me off bad enough, now we have a mhokday BREAKUP and separation for an unknown amount of time that is likely to be YEARS given day is going to graduate and I’m pretty sure he wasn’t that close to doing so before he went blind like whyyyyyyyyy are we doing this!!!! Like I get the trope of separation for individual growth but don’t any of u think you can grow individually while being in a relationship and doing so while ALSO growing as a couple is so much more appealing??? Even if they wanted to go the separation route they didn’t have to fucking break up 😭😭😭 I GET why day felt pitied (and I also get why mhok lied) and I GET that that is the most offensive thing ever to him but to me breaking up seemed like kind of a rash decision and I know that’s not THAT out of character for him but I kinda thought he had grown out of that SOMEWHAT and would be more willing at this point to like. have a conversation and work it out. They really had 1 (one) breakdown of communication and that was all it took for day to give up????? Like I know he was a self-proclaimed asshole from the beginning but I kinda thought he had matured a little bit over the last at least 9 months idk maybe that’s just me….. I really thought day was better than this (insert we were all rooting for u gif) also everyone (pretty much all of us) who wanted some sweet sweet mhok development by way of reciprocal support from day, well. Tough shit I guess. Doesn’t look like that’s happening, unless they speedrun their separation period and they’re back together by ep 12 2/4. anyway. there was literally absolutely nothing they could do to ever top ep 9 4/4, I just didn’t think they’d lose the plot quite like this 😔😔
#tbh I really don’t think there’s any ending that could turn this breakup around for me and that’s so fucking disappointing#but my most favorite tv show ever completely fell the fuck off in its highly anticipated long awaited second season#and then got fucking. CANCELLED. after they made the second season with the belief that the next 3 seasons had been greenlit so there was#absolutely no closure. and I’m not taking shit for granted but I do believe at least we will get SOME closure with ep 12 so what can u do!!!#the past 2 episodes have just been the it’s so over we’re so back graph but I really think it’s so over for real this time#and I’m like. at peace with it bc the first 9 episodes were breathtaking showstopping etc. and that’s good enough#last twilight#if they pull the ultimate uno reverse tho I’ll delete my whole fucking blog and be really happy about it
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ProtoDungeon: Episode II
(Quasi)Daily Updates Thus Far
Hey all!
ProtoDungeon Episode II (TWC prequel) is coming along nicely, and I’m building out a lot of vital systems for it, future episodes, and The Waking Cloak. I also began a sort-of-daily update on the Discord server that I’ve been meaning to post here but keep forgetting to because I am a scattered, scattered person.
Anyway, uh, yeah, there are a lot of these, lol. I’ll try to post these more regularly in the future, but I hope this is fun and informative for those of you who like reading weirdly specific details about gamedev.
Daily Update - May 24, 2019
Summing up what I've already done before today:
-Ring mechanics are done
-Day, night, and light sensors are done (though don't have any art)
-Created an object that will switch day/night
Today:
- Reworking my "interaction" code so that you stop walking after interacting with something during the walk state.
Daily Update - May 25, 2019
-Finally resolved the "interact" code by adding a new player state. Now the player actually stops when interacting with objects instead of just walking into them the whole time.
-Fixed a small bug where dialogue boxes would show up with the first message already "fast-forwarded" to the end with no sound.
-Started working on polishing up the day/night switcher object (this is what the interact code was for). Should be important in this dungeon since the player won't have the cloak!
Daily Update - May 26, 2019
-I tend to take Sundays easy. I worked on a bed sprite for like ten minutes though!
Daily Update - May 27, 2019
-Added the ring and its upgrades to the test room! We're now technically ready for super early patron alpha testing, which I'll put up sometime in the secret patron channel in the next few days!
Daily Update - May 28, 2019
-Set up the Itch build for pre-alpha patron testing
-Worked on figuring out how to clarify the day/night and ring mechanics, visually
-Began sketching out dungeon layout, now that I have mechanics set (as opposed to Episode I where I had to retrofit my design a few times after it was mostly done).
Daily Update - May 30, 2019
-Finished the rough draft of the dungeon layout!!!
Daily Update - May 31, 2019
-Finished the second draft of the dungeon map, including several more detailed rooms with puzzle designs
Daily Update - June 1, 2019
- Finished the THIRD draft of the dungeon map, think I've finally got the layout and puzzle locations pretty much settled (it's been a toughie with day/night/dayshift/nightshift)
Daily Update - June 3, 2019
-Updated level 2 of the Ring of Starlight to generate two blocks instead of one block with a dayshift/nightshift effect. This is like what was originally level 3, except the blocks will move in sync with each other
-Changed the ring upgrade descriptions. I'm going to try for a more lore-based, somewhat poetic approach for these over a mechanical explanation. (Level 3 is obviously a temporary description)
-Pushed the build up to Itch as v0.3.0
For those of you who have access to the pre-alpha and are using the Itch client, updating should be very easy! However, since something got renamed somewhere along the line, you will most likely have to remove the previous version of the game if you don't want it to ask you to select your version when launching the game. I don't think this will happen again... probably. :)
I'm still working on the level 3 mechanic, also.
Daily Update - June 5, 2019
-Decided on new lvl3 of the ring
-Fixed blocks so they now fall into pits. Long live the king.
-Updated Itch app to v0.3.1
Daily Update - June 7, 2019
-Added level 3 of the ring.
-Fixed a bug where pushable blocks couldn't be pushed. You had one job, pushable blocks.
-Fixed a bug where the player wouldn't fall into a pit after swapping with something that's over the pit.
-Fixed a bug where the synced level 2 ring block would not collide with objects when starting from "rest".
Daily Update - June 8, 2019
-Fixed bug where the dialogue box would crash sometimes. I fixed this bug before. I don't know why it came back. The code I used to fix it was gone. Will keep an eye on this code to see if it disappears again.
-Updated HUD to display ring and ring level instead of scroll and swap spell level.
-Fixed the controls. Space was mapped to both item "A" and item "B", and apparently it doesn't work that way when the item isn't mapped to both slots :P
-Fixed a bug where the game would be very, very tiny if it was not in focus when starting in fullscreen mode. I commented out a line of code when updating the application surface resizing and forgot to uncomment it.
-Updated v0.3.9 to Itch
-Started work on the next draft of the dungeon sketch now that the ring mechanic has been finalized wooooo
Daily Update - June 12, 2019
-Competed new draft of the dungeon, pretty happy with this one. I'll just need to work in the puzzles and make sure the dungeon graph (a la GMTK Boss Keys) works out so players can't get stuck.
-Fixed an issue where you could push blocks past the edge of the screen (and a related one where when you tried to do that, you would keep moving through the block while the block stayed still).
-Fixed an issue where you could create blocks on top of each other.
Daily Update - June 14, 2019
-Started working on Tiled draft of dungeon
-Began experimenting with larger default room sizes. One aspect I liked from Blossom Tales. Still keeping rooms, of course, since that's what counterintuitively makes an overworld feel big, but bumping up their width/height by about 50% each makes them feel that much larger and explorationy.
-Updated test room to new room size.
-Uploaded v0.3.12 to Itch, which includes the new room size, as well as the fixed bugs from the June 12 daily update
Daily Update - June 16, 2019
-Continued working on Tiled draft of dungeon. Slow work at this stage, but I believe the overall layout is complete.
-Started laying out my sticky note version of the dungeon and puzzles. Lots has changed since last time I built puzzles for this dungeon, so reworking it has been fun.
Trying to decide whether the blocks should stay put when you move out the room, or disappear like the Cane of Somaria. Persistent blocks would make for some interesting puzzles.
Also trying to decide how the overworld will map down to the dungeon, since some of the dungeon rooms are a bit small and constrained. I'd like them to line up. Might still make them the same size as the overworld rooms, just with long connecting bits.
Daily Update - June 18, 2019
-Puzzle design is done!
-Tiled map draft is coming along much faster now that I know what to fill the rooms with. Already making tweaks to the puzzles (and I'll certainly make more tweaks when building in GameMaker, just how it goes)
Daily Update - June 19, 2019
-Tiled map draft is almost done! Getting verrrry close now.
Daily Update - June 21, 2019
-Tiled map draft is COMPLETE!!!
Daily Update - June 23, 2019
-The actual dungeon in GameMaker is underway and making quick progress. Already improving on the Tiled map, I think! Could be done with the graybox and have it playable for patrons by the end of the week--stay tuned.
Lemony Snicket voice "Graybox" here means "with crappy programmer art and white/black tiles"
Daily Update - June 24, 2019
-Made major headway on the dungeon in GameMaker. Very close to wrapping up the graybox tiles, and I've made a bunch of refinements to the existing layout and puzzles!
Daily Update - June 26, 2019
-Layout and graybox tiles are done
-Colliders are done
-Cliffs are done
-Stairs are done
-Pits are done
-Item upgrades are placed
-Some keys are placed
-Buttons are placed (not hooked up yet)
Quasidaily Update - June 27, 2019
-Worked on hooking up buttons and bridges and simplified the lvl1 ring room (for me, should be about the same for the player)
Quasidaily Update - June 28, 2019
-Finished doors and hooked up buttons
-Fixed various puzzles and rooms that weren't working correctly
Quasidaily Update - June 39, 2019
-Finished the ladder!
-Finished bridge collision
-Completed... the trap room
-Hooked up the doors/buttons I missed (pretty easy to find since I use a red color blend on the offending buttons ingame)
I... uh... am just gonna leave that as the 39th
Very very close to alpha now, unless those two bugs end up just crushing me
Quasidaily Update - July 1, 2019
-Added day/night blocks
-Added a missing teleporter (int/ext door)
-Fixed one of the two softlocking bugs (in about 5 minutes)!
Remaining before patron alpha release:
-Secret thing
-Second bug
-Verification that the dungeon is playable from start to finish
Quasidaily Update - July 2, 2019
-The second bug is technically fixed, but it's pretty janky and unpolished. I'll keep working on this tomorrow.
-Cleaned up and optimized the block pushing check logic, which had all kinds of duplicate collision checks and wack timers being set all over the place
Quasidaily Update - July 3, 2019
-Finally fixed the second bug. This was a block syncing/pushing issue that would've prevented everyone from completing the dungeon
-Began testing the dungeon's playability from beginning to end. Ran into a few more things I fixed:
-Added a level 3 ring upgrade description since it actually does something now
-Some bridges were missing pits under them, so you could walk across even if the bridge wasn't activated.
-Discovered the level 1 and 2 ring blocks don't fall in pits anymore. Oops. Gotta fix this still.
Quasidaily Update - July 3, 2019 PART 2
-The dungeon is playable from start to end (except you can't get in the final room yet, but that's a quick fix)
-Hooked up MORE buttons/doors that I had missed
-Replaced/moved the keys around--I think this will be much more satisfying now
-Added the method to get to t h e s e c r e t
Pretty pleased with it this time around--I think it's even more cryptic and fun to discover ehehehe
"ehehehe" is to be read with a witch's voice
Quasidaily Update - July 4, 2019
-Tweaked t h e s e c r e t entrance ほほほ
-Worked on t h e s e c r e t puzzles.... they're pretty devious お~~ほほほ
Quasidaily Update - July 5, 2019
-Fixed broken challenge puzzle.
-Fixed bug with lv1 and lv2 ring mechanics--they weren't falling down pits anymore. That just makes this game way too easy.
-Fixed a bug with lv3 ring blocks that was also breaking the challenge puzzle
-Added some tiles to cover up my greybox "answers"
-This wraps up all the changes for alpha. We'll go live with the alpha for patrons early tomorrow!
Quasidaily Update - July 6, 2019
-Released the patron alpha! Woohoo! Rali has been enjoying it at least/
-Released v0.4.2 update:
-Fixed two unmarked pits. Kinda sucks to fall into the solid ground.
-Game Over now resets only the player, not the entire game.
Quasidaily Update - July 7, 2019
-Released v0.4.4 update:
-Added collision around water bridges so you can't walk on or get trapped on the water...
-Removed a call to GMLive that may be causing a crash on the PlayerEquipmentRingState script.
Quasidaily Update - July 7, 2019 PART DOS
Released v0.4.10 update:
-Removed "You got a key!" text because... well, it should be obvious.
-Do not freeze player on headstone moving.
-Fix stutter when a level 0 equipped item is "used."
-Made it so you can't push jars and blocks up stairs. They are TOO HEAVY.
-Added an escape route to the challenge room so you don't have to throw yourself in a pit to get back to the start if you get stuck. It doubles as a "skip" for one of the puzzles once it has been opened.
-Fixed challenge room exit so you don't get trapped. :)
Quasidaily Update - July 9, 2019
-Fixed colors on the east/west player "use ring" sprite so that the night palette shader doesn't miss it (meaning it would render her skin in the day palette)
-Updated teleporters to use channel strings so I don't have to manually set the target coordinates for ALL THE TELEPORTERS AAAAAAAH.
-Oh, and yeah, most importantly: released v0.5.0 update! Completed dungeon remodel!! It uses the build-a-final-key method like in Episode I. This allowed me to make the dungeon a bit less linear. It also meant I knocked down a wall or two, added another puzzle or two, and all around made something I'm much more satisfied with.
Quasidaily Update - July 10, 2019
Released v0.5.5 update!
-Fixed a crash when attempting to push arrows (read: moving toward an arrow while it's trying to kill you).
-Toned down the arrow knockback effect
-Fixed awkward/slow interaction with arrows knocking you into pits
-Shortened room respawn freeze time
-Fixed a bug where the player could walk directly into the arrow and avoid taking damage. Pretty sure that's not how arrows work (this was related to the pushing bug above!).
Quasidaily Update - July 11, 2019
-Starting to place actual tiles over the greybox tiles and gosh it's nice to have real art.
Quasidaily Update - July 12, 2019
-Majority of the final tiles have been placed and it looks great. I still need to make a few interior wall sets and a handful of floor tiles.
It really brings the dungeon to life
Quasidaily Update - July 14, 2019
-Released v0.6.0!!! I'm very excited about this one because it's the first of the graphics updates. The majority of the basic final tiles have been placed. There are more graphics updates to come (which you'll note if you play this version), but is the biggest of 'em. Looks great in day and night!
Quasidaily Update - July 15, 2019
-Added new one-way-jump wall tiles
-Completed secret room tiles and decorations
-Added lighter tall grass
Quasidaily Update - July 16, 2019
-Today was a writing day, mainly. I'd like to have the little snippets of dialogue and bookshelves and so on done in a day or two. It's exciting stuff, showing off the tips of all these icebergs.
-Last night I pushed v0.6.4, an update that had lots of good graphics updates. Except I forgot to replace the player back at the start of the level after testing, so neipo had some fun times starting at the END of the level. Fixed and uploaded in v0.6.5!
More!
-Uploaded v0.6.6 in which I fixed an arrow issue that I already fixed previously. Except, I had only fixed it for ProtoDungeon I. Which is why @neipo13 ran into it to my great confusion.
More!!!
Uploaded v0.6.8:
-Fixed one of the lvl3 ring puzzles so it didn't have a ridiculously easy solution (thanks for finding that, neipo).
-Fixed description of round key.
Quasidaily Update - July 17, 2019
I intended to do some writing today, but I got more excited about something else.... sooooo, cue the upload of v0.6.13 - The Optimization Patch! - in which the average framerate on my dev laptop is now 260fps up from 120fps.
-Moved the half-speed/GIF mode to only be available in debug mode (this was "G" on the keyboard, so people could just press it and not be sure why the game was running so badly).
-Scott's [regular & mod on the server] lappy had major framerate issues running the game, so I did some optimization and found out the pits were accounting for 50% of the time of every single frame. The best part: they only needed to run the offending code ONCE. So I moved that code from the step event to a one-time event and voila, framerate is way more stable.
-Turned off GMLive entirely and added an easy toggle for me. This is very useful during development, but it likes to make lots of calls when turned on.
-Updated the "listener" step event, which was setting a blend mode every single step. In debugger mode, this is so that stuff like buttons and doors turn red if they're not hooked up. Otherwise it "unsets" the blend mode by setting it to -1 every single step (regardless of debug mode). Apparently this has some unexpected overhead, even if the blend mode is ALREADY -1. A quick and easy fix.
-Swapped out the existing (non-moving) tombstone objects for different objects. Almost all of the tombstones were instances of the same object as the ones that move, but that came with a lot of additional overhead (my "listener" object still accounts for a lot of time because it's doing some checking with ds_lists every frame for every listener object; the moving tombstones have listeners, the normal tombstones do not). They're behaving themselves now.
Quasidaily Update - July 18, 2019
Uploaded v0.6.14!
-Fixed up collision in the secret room
-Finished secret room lore dialogue
There's still more writing to do for the headstones, bookshelves, and a certain NPC who isn't in the game yet, but yeah! Getting there!
Quasidaily Update - July 20, 2019
Over the last day or two, I've slowed down a lot--think I'm getting close to burning out, plus not certain I'm satisfied with the story implementation thus far in Episode II (am I too obscure? Revealing too much? Will people care? etc). That said, I've gotten some stuff done, and uploaded v0.6.19
-Fixed some borked collision near the hut (thanks for finding that, Rali)
-Fixed tombstones so they could display text
-Added text to various tombstones >:) (and bookshelves)
-Fixed the interaction check so that you don't interact with objects to the north of you when facing to the east or west.
Today I switched gears and created a batch file that could compile an executable without even opening GameMaker!! This is actually pretty exciting. I could almost, at this point, switch completely to GMEdit, which is significantly faster and more intuitive tham GM workspaces.
Oh, and the batch file also uploads the compiled exe to Itch
Quasidaily Update - July 20, 2019
I decided to switch gears again and work on the save game feature. Not done yet, but it IS saving the player/inventory objects, and I'm setting it up to be pretty easily able to take in any set of objects, auto-read all their variables, and set 'em.
Quasidaily Update - July 22, 2019
Been working on the ol' save system still. It's going well. I had to fight a bit with my camera system (like always lol), and now I'm making sure the ring blocks properly reset--currently they crash the game which isn't quite right...
The system as planned for PDII will essentially be an autosave that triggers on entrance of each room. When loading the game, all solved puzzles should remain solved, and ring blocks should remain in place, and you'll appear at the entrance of whatever room you exited the game from.
At some point in a later episode I'll include slots and specific save points not unlike bonfires from Dark Souls
Quasidaily Update - July 23, 2019
Saving and Loading Continued
Cleaned up the loading--it would snap you back to the load point and the camera had trouble keeping up. Now it's a nice, clean fade transition with no camera moving around.
What's left:
-Properly saving blocks and other puzzle elements. Currently it, uh, duplicates them? So that's nice.
-For some reason, the ring itself disappears when you reload the game
-Need to set up the fadeout transition so it finishes before puzzle elements get reset and the time of day changes
-Set up an autosave on room enter
-You can actually get stuck in the first ring room by crossing a bridge and having that bridge disappear behind you, then quitting and loading your save. I'm trying to think of a good way to solve it now and in the future without making it easy to miss setting up something manually.
Quasidaily Update - July 25, 2019
Moar Savingz
Ring blocks are finally managing their own order, and it's wayyyyy more stable and uses a ton less code than before. Previously, during the player's "use ring" state, it would call the inventory manager to update the order of the blocks, which it stored in two variables. It worked, but occasionally the order would get really weird and so on, plus it was going to be a nightmare for reloading. The problem is that the inventory manager was holding the ring block IDs in those two variables, and IDs are not guaranteed to be the same on re-run.
Solution: ring blocks get an integer variable that stores their order, called order. When a ring block is created, it tells the other block to update its order. If that order is already 2, destroy it. Simple, and easy to save since it's an int.
In a pre-quasidaily update today
Daniel learns why his ring blocks aren't loading
They are
And then they're instantly destroying themselves
Because of the code he wrote
To tell them to destroy themselves
Thank you
Quasidaily Update - July 26, 2019
Uploaded v0.6.22, possibly the final 0.6 version since saving is coming sooooooooooon. BUT. Here's what you guys get:
-Fixed some more collisions near the hut (seriously, did I move that entire room over one tile somehow)
-Allow jumping off ANY ledge (WOOO)
-Fixed occasional crash when creating ring blocks
The save/load system is working also, but not available outside of debug mode yet! As far as I can tell everything is saving and loading properly as expected. There are a couple places you can save scum past, and I have a few ideas for handling those, but that probably won't be something I deal with for a bit. However, the player is not currently able to save or load (unless they're in debug mode, as mentioned), which leads me to the next major update I will be working on: M E N U S and O P T I O N S
Quasidaily Update - July 27, 2019
I'm 25 minutes through a 70 minute series by FriendlyCosmonaut on a menu system. This is a lot lol.
In the process, I did a little bit of reworking/cleaning on my controls system. I now have some global variables that hold all the currently configured controls, instead of hardcoding the controls into the input manager. This was in preparation to allow control remapping!
Quasidaily Update - July 30, 2019
Been quiet for a few days--hard at work on the new menu system. This one is a doozy, you guys. I haven't done this much straight code on the TWC "engine" since Episode I.... maybe even longer.
Finished the FriendlyCosmonaut series, which was a great foundation. Now I'm building off it (and trying to get tons of parts of it to actually work still). I'd ideally like to have it look a lot like the old mockup from my blog post on difficulty settings (many of those difficulty settings will not be used in ProtoDungeon or TWC).
Here's what I got so far. Still a lot of the FriendlyCosmonaut design in this, which is good, but doesn't quite fit with this game.
brightness/contrast do nothing, window actually works pretty well--unless you change the smoothing size, in which case it starts acting up...
vsync.... I think works?
I haven't even tried toggling screenshake
I want to use the "bouncing arrows" style from the mockup instead of color, fix the on/off to use arrows instead, fix the sliders so they use pixel arrows instead of drawn circles....
so much left to dooooo
I just have to remember it was loading a black screen this morning
Quasidaily Update - August 7, 2019
Been alternating between taking breaks and working furiously on menu stuff, as you can see with screenshots.
Spending a lot of time on remapping. There's a lot to polish here, stuff you might not think about on first glance (What happens if a key is already mapped to another? Do you handle the menu not closing while you're remapping the menu key? Do you handle the menu so it doesn't navigate when mapping the back key? Do you include primary and secondary control sets, and if so, how do you display that clearly? Etc.)
Not all these questions have difficult answers, but they add up. So that's basically all I've been working on for the past week or so :)
Today I got the gamepad up and running and the secondary control set as well. I forgot how good it feels to play the game with a controller vs a keyboard. My wife happily exclaimed "You're playing with a controller!" :D
The secondary control set was a back and forth decision. The deciding factor was mainly wanting to ease the initial "time to start" for different players--so you can move with WASD and the arrow keys, or with the dpad and the stick. I have a pretty good idea how the UI will work for this too, so now that the gamepad is working, I'm gonna start on the secondary controls.
Quasidaily Update - August 11, 2019
-Primary and secondary gamepad button remapping are working
-Got some cool new gamepad icons, improved thanks to Corvos
-Fixed the menu so you couldn't close it on the menu page when starting the game
-Added a second, ingame menu with resume/settings/save & quit as options
-The new menu will pause all "actors" (objects with states)
-Fixed a bug where the secondary gamepad right input was not mapped
Quasidaily Update - August 13, 2019
-"Defaults" option now works for keyboard and gamepad
-Fixed an issue where you couldn't remap some of the secondary keyboard inputs (broke it with the gamepad remapping).
-Fixed an issue with the menu arrow being in the wrong place (broke it with the gamepad remapping).
-Removed light blue coloring on selected menu items. Judging by other menus, arrow seems to be enough by itself.
-When remapping, the current selected control will now blink instead of remaining static.
-Made sliders more usable--it wasn't really possible to move them 1% at a time, which was unwieldy and annoying. Now they have a "ramping" speed and are much easier to control.
Quasidaily Update - August 13, 2019, Part II
-Toned down the strength of the brightness slider just a bit.
-Updated the shaders to affect the GUI as well as the game. This should include the menu as well as the HUD, the dialogue box, and, in TWC, the inventory screen. I kinda like this. We'll see if it bothers people. :D
Quasidaily Update - August 17, 2019
-Fixed an issue with menu sliders not being drawn when the shader is applying to GUI elements. Turns out the built-in line drawing doesn't pass texture information to the shader. At this point I'm not sure how to configure the shader correctly, so I just made the lines into sprites instead lol.
-Added title to the top-level menu! Yay!
-Fixed game loading so it would load the correct room (both GameMaker room and in-game "area").
-Autosave the game on room entrance.
-Autosave the game on getting an item (this way you can't cheese certain rooms). At this point, playing the game, quitting, and coming. back to continue is working REALLY WELL.
-No longer save "region" (rooms in the game) objects, since these get created and setup perfectly fine on room creation.
-Added SOME SECRETS YAY!
-Autosave the game on "teleporting"--going through doors, up/down stairs, etc.
-Fixed the "circle out" transition, which was apparently not working or used anywhere.
-Changed all "teleportation" to use circle-in/circle-out transitions--a little less visually jarring and much nicer looking than a fade-to-wipe-from-center.
Quasidaily Update - August 19, 2019
-Added tiny pause in the middle of the teleportation transition so that it's a bit less jarring
-Simultaneously, allowed toggle to camera easing so that I don't have to add fragile pauses to loading and certain transitions and so on (to wait for the camera to finish moving to catch up with the player loaded position). This fixed a small camera jerk when loading the game. This will eventually be an option on the menu for those that don't like the easing (and also because turning off subpixels makes camera easing REALLY BAD).
-Fixed issue with audio groups not loading (by loading them, wow). This is probably temporary since next big task is to add the Wandersong audio engine, but the fix let me actually see my debug messages instead of spamming "Audio Group 2 is not loaded" whenever a sound is played lol.
-Fixed bug with loading the game on a teleporter (doors, stairs, etc.) where it would immediately take you to the target location. This had multiple parts, but namely 1) just making sure to set the global "isLoading" flag and to not teleport during that, and 2) setting the "isLoading" flag earlier, since the teleporters were faster than my load manager lol.
-Fixed "New Game" issue where it would fade to black, start the game, and then fade to black again. Turns out if you call "fade out" twice, it will fade out twice.
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Homestuck Epilogues - Meat - Page 19 (Epilogue 4 Page 2)
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(DJ) Spoon’s Review of 2018
This year I haven’t listened to much music at all, at least not in comparison to previous years and I certainly haven’t been to many gigs. I’m sure this won’t last but this year I’ve been busier at work so less likely to plug in, I’ve stuck to the radio in the car just to keep up with how messy Brexit really is (ooer a bit of politics) and my runs have been 100% fueled by podcasts so music has just taken a backseat. However, I couldn’t let the year go past without some kind of list...so here is a pot pourri of my favourite discoveries of 2018.
1. Podcasts
Seeing as these have been so important this year I’ll start here...and cheat slightly by bigging up some oldies, but good enough to bang on about again.
Old favourites : Running Commentary (Comedians Paul Tonkinson and Rob Deering take you on their runs and chat sometimes about running, but always about life, kids, comedy and anything that pops into their heads), Adam Buxton (always entertaining ramble chat from Dr Buckles whoever is on, I’ve learnt stuff and I’ve laughed a lot), My Dad Wrote a Porno (Sheer filth as ever but genuinely caused me to LOL during my runs, wondering if people can hear that I’m listening to chat about vaginal lids).
New entries : Off Menu (Ed Gamble and James Acaster opened their genie run fantasy restaurant a month ago and it has quickly become one of my favourite podcasts ever. Eclectic guests pick their fantasy 3 course meals, simple premise and it works. The Scroobius Pip episode was a perfect clash of two excellent pods), Blank (another late entry into 2018 from Jim Daly and Giles Paley-Phillips ostensibly about blank moments in life but just rammed with infotaining chat from ‘non standard’ guests including a jaw dropping episode with Michael Rosen and fun with Gary Lineker and Susie Dent), Poddin’ on the Ritz (sadly now finished with maybe its only series) this pod recorded backstage at Young Frankenstein by Hadley Fraser and the sublime Ross Noble made me laugh more than any other in 2018, it might be about musicals but their search for Kenneth Branagh’s snowglobes and Lesley Joseph adoration was a joy.
2. Board games
They say a family that plays together, stays together. Well we are together more than you can imagine. We’ve played over 220 games this year! Here are our favourite new games into our collection:
The game of the year is Azul, a seemingly simple tile grab and place game, building up a mosaic prettier than anyone else, is full of strategy and a little (but not too much) shafting of others. If you really want to shaft your fellow players though then pick up Unstable Unicorns, a card game where you aim to grow your stable of unicorns, whilst stopping others filling theirs. SO many different cards, tactics and ways to mess it up, you will swear at some point. Discovered in the excellent new board game cafe The Dice Box in Leamington, we bought Meeple Circus before we left, it’s that much fun. Rehearse and perform the best tiny wooden meeple circus performance, accompanied by a bespoke playlist. Stack the acrobats, balance the lions and raise the bar. Another board game cafe, Chance & Counters in Bristol introduced us to the frantic game of Klask, a cross between air hockey, pool and table football. Slide the magnets around to flick a ball into your opponents hole, avoid the magnetic biscuits and don’t KLASK! When is a game not a game? another game of the year has been played a lot in our house, and it’s The Mind. 100 cards numbered 1-100, no words between players and a tense task to lay cards in ascending order. Simple? yes? possible? nope! but it’s sure to cause fun and arguments. The final two of MY favourite sadly aren’t quite as loved by my family, but I’ll get them there. Sagrada is a similar game to Azul with you attempting to build a beautiful stained glass window with coloured dice. More variations and thinking needed than Azul which adds to the challenge. And finally and lovely chess like 2 player game which transports you to the sun dappled Greek island of Santorini. Take the powers of a god and build the traditional blue domed white houses of the island whilst trying to stop your opponent climbing onto a roof. A lot of ‘aha, you’ve stopped me’ moments.
3. TV
It’s been a long old year at work, and in the world of parenting so we’ve found ourselves flopped on the settee many evenings just soaking up great drama, comedy and chilling ;o)
We are very late to the party with Suits but that means we have 8 series to wade through! Really neat writing, bants and relationships between characters, a ‘don’t worry they will always win’ calmness about it and you get to see the Queen in her knickers...ish. Another Netflix treat this year was Magic for Humans with Justin Willman, a hugely likeable and funny magician pulling off tricks that constantly make me smirk with a huge dollop of WTF? amazing. A huge recommendation. A late entry to my TV highlights of 2018 is from the warped warped mind of Charlie Brooker...of course with Bandersnatch. An interactive choose your own adventure TV ‘event’ (I know) that had us hooked for the full 90 minutes (only if you want to see how much bloodshed you can invoke!). Completely on the other end of the spectrum was the sublime and minimalistic Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. I don’t like fishing and why would I find two old mates just teasing each other for half an hour entertaining? No idea but it was beautiful. Like Radio 4, comforting and perfect. Then a few suspenseful dramas that got us on the edge of the settee, Killing Eve (quirky AF), Bodyguard (did they really kill Keely Hawes that early?) and Informer (bleak bleak bleak) and sweaty bullocks in ‘should be in the next section really’ Bird Box (made Informer seem like a giggle fest).
4. Films
Really haven’t been to the cinema much in the last 12 months and only once to see a ‘grown up’ film I think but kid’s films are SO good at the moment that’s ok. A few stand out films for me were:
Ralph Breaks the Internet, much better than the first one, lots of #lolz internet jokes and more than a little heart. Wrap me up in a duvet and give me a hot cocoa and Paddington 2 any day, tears at the end. A little more sighing but just as much emotion in Christopher Robin, not sure why Eeyore had an American accent but the characters were spot on and nicely faithful to the original concepts. The one time I did venture out for an adult (it’s a 12 so almost ;o) and saw Ready Player One I was delighted, yeah it might not be a) as good as or b) anything like the book but a visual treat and an enjoyable romp.
5. Books
I read A LOT, until my Kindle donks me on the head in bed anyway...literally a tiny selection of books that have kept me awake.
The Secret Lives of Colour - Kassia St Clair. They say never judge a book by its cover. Well that didn’t work...I bought this purely because it is a beautiful package, the hardback a lot more pleasing imho. Simply 2 coloured pages about how each colour was discovered, invented and introduced throughout history. I never really gave it a thought that colours were...made. Weird and fascinating.
This Is Going to Hurt - Adam Kay. A hilarious ‘secret’ diary of a junior doctor that horrifies at the same time. I think we all knew it was a hard life but bloody hell, if you didn’t love the NHS before you will after this. A thoroughly enjoyable and insightful story of Adam’s journey through medicine. And that ending...wooof.
Moose Allain - I Wonder What I’m Thinking About. I love Moose, I love his colour-me-advent calendars, I love his tweet threads that show the best in Twitter, I love his cartoons and this book is all of those wrapped up in one. And a certain Mr Spoon is to thank for the publication, find me in the back of Unbound funders! An inspiring book for anyone who loves art, creativity and childish humour.
Factfulness : Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World - Hans Rosling. A brilliantly clever and educational book about why the world is NOT as shit as it might seem some times. It’s all backed up by real data and lovely lovely graphs!
Lee Child and Ian Rankin. A highlight of the year is the next Reacher and Rebus novels and these two didn’t disappoint. Rebus’ latest adventure Past Tense, is a self-contained story that could introduce anyone to the man machine that is Jack Reacher. Rebus however is back, retired but won’t lie down, in In A House of Lies, an old case comes back to haunt him and will this finally be his downfall? I doubt it!
6. Music
As mentioned, I haven’t ‘been into music’ as much in 2018 for various reasons but I’ve still enjoyed some great new discoveries:
Barns Courtney - The Attractions of Youth, discovered via the use of Glitter and Gold for the theme tune of Netflix’s Safe. An album of ‘cheesy, commercially viable blues and folk rock’ apparently. I just liked the visceral nature of some of the tracks and it always fired me up at work on slow days.
Isaac Gracie - Isaac Gracie, a rare listened to recommendation from my wife. Isaac is everything I claim to like, fragile thin sensitive boys with acoustic guitars....and I do very much with this. Painful screeched out tales of heartbreak. Sublime.
R.E.M. - Live at the BBC, 104 rare and live tracks from arguably one of the best bands ever. Some of the tracks I haven’t heard since my bootleg cassette buying days at Sheffield Uni, when the world was in black and white. Not all tracks are of the greatest audio quality but bliss for a fanboy like me.
Creep Show - Mr Dynamite, a spin off project for Mr John Grant and even from the eclectic crooner this is an odd one. Glitchy electronica with vocoders all over the place. Weird and very Marmite.
Public Service Broadcasting - Every Valley and everything else. The latest offering from the other PSB was a trip through the miner’s crisis and Thatcher years. Bleak? yup but fascinating snippets of well, public service broadcasting and guest stars including the obligatory Welsh rockers the Manics. This album is perfect by itself but it ‘forced’ me to go back and really discover all the PSB albums. The Live at Brixton release is a huge recommendation, I wish I was there.
Rex Orange County - Apricot Princess, maybe I just added this in to seem cool as Rex, aka Alexander O’Conner, was ‘one to watch in 2018′ from the BBC. A multi-instrumentalist that dabbles with hippity hop, R&B and piano pop. The first track alone contains about three musical styles if you wait.
7. Food & Drink
I run, because I really like food. And thankfully I’ve run a lot in 2018 so I got to enjoy a lot.
I was introduced to the weird fermented tea monstrosity that is kombucha by my sister-in-law. Vinegar tasting drink that may or may not help your gut that grows in your living room. WTAF? However, health benefits aside the LA Brewery Strawberry and Black Pepper drink is something, alongside my pilgrimage to Leon, worth going to London for. I’ve heard it’s also for sale in Solihull but I don’t often travel that far beyond my class ;o) I’d say, try it...but I suspect 9/10 people with hate the flavour.
I suspect 10/10 people that try the Aldi Black Forest Mince Pies would love them, but you won’t get a chance as I’ve bought them ALL. Aldi are a bugger for getting you hooked then never restocking. I only managed 10 boxes in 2018 and we’ve rationed well so have 12 left to get us through the bleak January weather. Cherries, Dark Chocolate, Chocolate pastry and a smidge of mincemeat. Perfect!
There are many ingredient delivery services available and I’ve only tried Gousto but I don’t know why you’d go anywhere else. 33 recipes tried and 32 of them I’d have again, with the one not so good one was still far better than anything I’d cook by myself. So easy, so tasty and if you want to try it I can give you a big discount that will help us buy another box, a tad expensive without a discount but worth a treat every so often.
Genuinely I traveled to London just to visit Max’s Sandwich Shop...kinda. It was certainly the deciding factor in a day out at the Summer Exhibition (see below). I downloaded the Kindle version of this book when it was promoted in an email, I bought some Scampi Fries and made a Fish Finger sandwich, I crumbled up some Ginger Nuts into a Mascarpone and Jam sandwich and I made a Fried Egg, Shoestring Fried and Gammon sandwich then I NEEDED to go and see how it’s really done. Amazing over the top sandwiches in a rough little hipster cafe in Stroud Green (no me neither and it’s a long walk from the tube!). So good I had to a) buy the hard copy of the book and b) carry half the sandwich home as even I couldn’t manage it all...not with deep fried macaroni balls filling me up ;o)
8. Places
A family that plays together, stays together as a great man once said. And we don’t just play inside, we love adventures so adventures we had.
I’d never been to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, as it’s in that there London which often seems hundreds of miles away...but I’m so glad that I visited this year. A trip with a good friend with neither of us knowing quite what to expect. We saw, and laughed, and marveled at, paintings, sculptures, videos, photos, models, and weirdness by Banksy next to Joe Lycett next to Grayson Perry next to Harry Hill, next to me mate Lorsen Camps from Coventry. The SA allows ANYONE to submit artwork for consideration and anyone can be accepted. I think this has to become a yearly visit, awesome.
My parents have been wanting to take our kids, and their big kid, to The Forbidden Corner in North Yorkshire for a few years now...and I’m so happy we finally got round to going. Started as a folly to entertain his children this huge labyrinthine site is crammed with strange sculptures, mazes, tricks and squirting fountains. Many hours were spent squeezing through holes, getting lost and getting wet. Beautifully eccentric.
A family holiday to Brittany meant we could visit the loopy city (it’s their phrase!) of Nantes and more importantly Les Machines d’Ile. Ostensibly the workshop of a group of engineers and artists that make huge animatronic machines and animals...that you can ride on! Needs to be seen to be believed, the Elephant brings out the big kid in everyone...and we can’t wait to go back in a few years when they’ve built a huge forest over the river with ride on caterpillars and dragonfly. Incredible. The city itself is dotted with crazy art and interactive pieces encouraging play, I know a city closer to home that should be the UK Loopy City of Culture!
Luckily Tilly is a Harry Potter obsessive AND it was her birthday last year so it gave us the excuse we didn’t need to visit the Warner Brothers Harry Potter Studio Tour. Wow, just wow. The incredible detail in everything made for the film, the engineering, the amount of artists involved and the presentation of the exhibition blew us away. I’ve enjoyed everything in this list but this maybe was the most magical in the best way.
Many many amazing experiences warrant a mention, but I just don’t have enough words, include Talking Birds - Walk with Me, Print Manufactory Darkroom Workshop, Ludic Rooms Random String Festival, Go Karting with Tilly, some dancing balloons in Broadgate, Godiva Festival with Tony Christie et al, Bristol Gromit trail, Disc Golfing with my girls, Edinburgh Fringe with Dick and Dom and with another wonderful dick from Coventry starring in Bon Jovi musical We’ve Got Each Other, Pandas! at Edinburgh Zoo, Matilda the Musical with Tilly at last, running the Coventry Mile with the girls’ school, Dippy the Dinosaur in Brum, Wicksteed Park (amazing family fun theme park like what they used to be), Cycling on Stratford Greenway in the sun, Autotesting at MotoFest, Bourton-on-the-Water (it’s just a shame 3 million other people know about this gorgeous village), Giant Pac Man in the city centre, Pork Pie making with a good friend, CET several times, Novelty Automation in London and being on The One Show, a couple of Hope & Social gigs and much much much more fun with my wonderful fam and friends. Roll on 2019!
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A Controversial Opinion: (Not) Taking A Knee, In Sports
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00 | PREFACE
Welcome to an episode where I try to break your echo chamber. This is your host, Eva. I hope you’re having a great day.
Have a seat and settle down because you, my lovely readers, are about listen to one of the silent voice you don’t know exist, or if you do you are usually very quick to attack/dismantle/dismiss.
The purpose of this is not to trigger or anger you. It’s to explain to you why some people acts and thinks differently from you.
Welcome to the real world.
Today, we will be tackling why some athletes won’t take a knee or why some leagues don’t mandate kneeling as part of their operation to eradicate racism. As well as the future implications of kneeling in sports.
Some context: I’ve only gotten into hockey recently as a form of escape from politics. I watched soccer and NASCAR with my dad, but we aren’t religious fan.
I’m from Vietnam, a regime where criticisms against authority or merely pointing out faults in the system is very much like asking for a death sentence. I’ve been political since I started middle school and had put myself into many risky situations for expressing my opinions.
I came to Canada for a better future and was determined to put my past behind me and not involved in more political talks. I followed the news, but I kept my mouth shut. Being agreeable is very easy -- all you have to do is nod and smile and parrot back whatever the other person is saying.
The death of George Floyd got me dialed in back to politics full-time. I initially did not chime into the discussion, simply because I don’t see the point of yelling something everybody agreed across the board. I agreed that Floyd’s death is unwarranted, the involving police officers should be tried and punished suitably, the police force should reflect and reform and take actions to prevent similar situation from happening again to anybody.
I continued to keep silence as protests sparked across the US, Canada and Europe. People have the right to exercise their free speech, free thoughts and demand the government to improve and be better and fairer.
There are many other things that happened in the past 3-5 months, but I will direct your attention to what happened between Colin Kappernick and Drew Brees, and the conversation about the meaning of kneeling during the anthem.
I was not invested in NFL or NBA or MLB, and only mildly involve in NHL and NASCAR. However, there were many talks about potentially allow players to kneel. I really didn’t get what was the anger all about, but whatever you know.
Fast forward to August 1, 2020.
MLB and NBA orchestrated a kneeling event where almost all players were kneeling (except for cases I’ll mentioned later). NHL’s Matt Dumba knelt during the American anthem after a speech, following by a few others on August 3.
I’ve seen both sides of the aisles, and I’d like to explain from the silent side’s opinion.
This is not mean to be a comprehensive list of reasons why people don’t/won’t kneel. If you support kneeling you don’t have to agree to all of these points. You may have already ran into these talking points, or you may not. You’re free to criticize the people, however, I’ll ask that you acknowledge that these opinions exist.
Alright.
Let’s dissect this down.
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01 | WHY WON’T THEY KNEEL?
» An examination on why some people don’t kneel or won’t kneel as a form of protest «
I’ve seen this question raised a lot across my dash and saw people criticizes why players wouldn’t kneel and instead chose to stand without considering what could go on through the players’ minds.
There are a several plausible explanation for why a player/an organization chooses not to kneel. The top 3 that I most often heard (and also deduce from my personal experience) are: 1) business tactics, 2) religious reasons, 3) political reasons.
What do I mean by that?
1. From a Business Perspective: “Where The Money Goes, I Go.”
Let’s not forget one thing: sports are a business, just like Tesla, Red Bull, Hollywood, the music industry or your local small stores.
It is an exchange of values. The players are getting paid to play games, to win and the owner/the audience are paying for entertainment.
Following the riots, just like many businesses and brands, sport teams and leagues began putting out pro-BLM and anti-racism messages. However, many also took (extreme) steps to show how woke and supportive they are.
Which, brings us to this unique perspective of how mixing politics and businesses can be very counterproductive and even harmful. The year 2020 is the year Get Woke, Go Broke manifests into existence, and we can physically and statistically see it happening.
Let’s go with some recent biggest examples:
The recent lawsuits against Patreon for banning users for some particular ideologies, specifically against conservative or right-leaning creators (Owen Benjamin vs. Patreon lawsuits breakdown, Viva Frei).
Patreon lost the case and they will now be forced to arbirate 100+ claims and pay up to $10,000 per arbitration just from the lawsuits with Owen Benjamin alone. Other creators and supporters who were previously shut down are now filing lawsuits against Patreon. The impending arbitration money are going to crushed Patreon in the matter of times.
A&E’s story of dropped viewership and revenue after cancelling “Live PD” (A&E Sees Viewership Drop 49% After Canceling Live PD, Rosa Escandon).
Live PD is responsible for 85% of the traffic and revenue for A&E and is the most popular shows out of all series they’re running. The cancellation is not definite, but it is probable that once this blew over A&E will bring Live PD back.
Or, since we’re talking about sports, just hot off the press, August 3: NBA Ratings Crash: Why are NBA and MLB ratings at an all time low after ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests, Gautham Balaji. August 5: ESPN loses the biggest number of subscribers in 4 years.
Here are some numbers:
via Ethan Strauss’s Twitter, August 2, 2020
via Rich Greenfield’s Twitter, August 5, 2020
Civiqs’ Poll
Let’s put ourselves into these millionaires’ (expensive) shoes for a second.
We all know how basic business model works. In order for a business to succeed, you have to understand your audience, understand who you’re trying to impress. You want to maximize your target market.
For sports, you want people to buy tickets or to tune in on the broadcast, buy merchandises, etc. Therefore, your target market would mostly be those who have disposable incomes, a stable job, middle-class. Splitting it down even more, the older group would most likely don’t want to be political while the younger group would most likely to be political; while people with higher education are most likely to be political while lower education are less likely to be political.
Examine the Civiqs’ graph:
Prior to April 2018, the opposition against BLM is greater than supporting for BLM. Noted that by the time George Floyd’s story hits the news and the peaceful protests began, support for BLM surged and opposition dipped.
However, immediately when the riots started, shifts began: noted the huge plummet in “Neither support nor oppose” corresponding with the big swing for “Oppose” and the slight change in “Unsure”. These people who previously didn’t care or chose not to be active politically “flipped”.
If you (the player/the league) outright supported BLM, you know you’re potentially losing 36% of your audience with current situation. At its peak you can lose up to 42%.
To put into perspective: that’s over 1/3 of a league’s revenue evaporating into thin air. Big leagues, like NBA or MLB or NFL, or big teams with more money, may be able to hold on. Smaller leagues, like NHL, which had to battle it out in places for people to take hockey seriously and was already strapped, will be hurt a lot. Especially if you take into consideration lower fan attendance over the years and other factors.
That’s not the worst case scenario.
See the “neither support or oppose” and “unsure” category? Remember, if they’re in those categories it doesn’t mean they don’t have an opinion. They may not care about BLM’s agenda -- perhaps they view BLM as an organization that did some bad and some good, or perhaps because they are not political at all.
So let’s assume they are not political at all. Neutral. Most likely, these fans don’t want anything to do with politics. They just want to work, come home, have the TV on and fall asleep. They may be passionate fans, they may be not.
Noted that leading up to the riots, the amount of people deciding to be neutral stays relatively the same.
But, a few things happened: the riots and big corporations/celebrities coming out endorsing violence, MSM constantly promoting anti-racism and pro-BLM materials day in and day out.
People go online, BLM. People go shopping, BLM. People go across a street, BLM. The news, BLM. BLM, BLM, BLM everywhere!
They just want a break. They put the sport channels on, and oh hey! BLM again!
They are sick and tired of it.
I spoke about this all days every day, browsed news about these, debated all of this for fun, and even I got sick of it too at some point. I physically could feel myself driven insane just from the divisiveness and anger I’ve chosen to surrounded myself in. I could feel my perspective skewed and warped far from I actually believe -- being polarized.
Guess how are these average, non-political people going to react to politics being shoved down their throats everywhere? They just want the country to do well economically, have a stable job, unplug from their work. They don’t want to keep stressing out about politics and turmoil. They are done hearing/talking about it at work.
They’re just going to turn off the TV, go on YouTube/Netflix and stream some dumb things. Or they’re going to change the channels.
The numbers don’t lie.
If you combined the current numbers of “oppose”, “neither support or oppose” and “unsure”, you’re staring at 50% potential loss squarely in the face. If you’re going for the extreme numbers, at their respective peak, “oppose” had 42%, “neither support or oppose” had 26% and “unsure” had 3%, for a combined 71%.
70% of your audience is going to tune out or abandoned you.
But, let’s assume the best case scenario. The 50% that supports BLM will also stand by you for doing the “right” thing (quotation mark, because I’ll let history be the judge).
But what if the 50% that you thought are going to applaud and support you aren’t doing that. They are criticizing you for your message, your delivery, your efforts. They’re going to call you phony, cheap, sell-out. You’re only claiming to support it, you don’t really support it, do you?
Are they going to quit watching you, too? Maybe. Potentially.
What if some of those 50% are like me -- self-proclaimed pundits trying to take a breather and reflect? Nobody can be on a job 24/7, for 365 days.
You get what I’m going here?
Look hard at the numbers for the NBA and MLB’s debut versus golfing.
Noticed the ratio? At best, 1.7M vs. 5.8M viewership. 1:3 ratio. 30% remained.
It’s already happening.
Kneeling and declaring allegiance to BLM are already crippling the sports.
The players can do whatever they want. Kneel, don’t kneel, support BLM, don’t support BLM -- whatever.
But the league should not affiliate itself with a political movement that started under problematic platforms and now unraveled into full unhinge-mode. It is extremely dangerous when leagues like NFL, NBA, MBL and NHL started endorsing BLM -- and I am very specifically talking about supporting BLM here. By pledging to BLM (ie. painting BLM on the courts, having giant letters at your stadium), the league as a whole is making itself political and aligning itself with an ideology, which is Marxism (Karl Marx).
When a league aligns itself to a particular ideology like that, players that have different opinions will either bottled up their real thoughts or they will receive backlash and be cancelled if they dare go against the grains (even if they intent to be political or not)
NFL Takes Hardline Stance Against Christian Players Attending Church
Marcellus Wiley (NFL) on BLM
NBA's James Harden Slammed for Wearing Apparent Pro-Police Mask amid Fight Against Racial Injustice
NHL: Bruins Photoshop Boston Police Logo Off Charlie Coyle’s Shirt In IG Post After Globe Reporter Matt Porter Criticizes Tuukka Rask For Wearing BPD Hat During Interview
ESPN Host’s Poll Mocks NBA Player Who Didn’t Kneel For Suffering Season-Ending Injury
Aligning themselves with BLM will also make the leagues primed to further metaphorically “bend the knee” for the BLM mob and make players do what they want for that “united” facade they want.
The BLM mob are demanding everybody to kneel because that’s the only appropriate way to protest, and so one-by-one down they go.
You can argue “but it’s for justice!”, but you and I both know that’s not how it works. BLM reared its ugly head and then people flocked to appease it. Say anything else other than “I Support BLM” and they will loot your store, threaten to desert you. They scream and scream and scream in your face. The media amplified that voices. Big companies like WalMart, etc. -- people immediately dismissed it because “they have insurance”. How about the small businesses that had to board up their fronts and spraypainted “Minority-Owned Business” because they’re terrified the mob are going to bash their windows and steal?
The recent scandal with Red Bull is a smart move. I’m not (necessarily) gleeful that people are getting fired, but it is a strategic move because Red Bull recognizes the “Get Woke, Go Broke” reality. This segment started with examples of businesses got broke and got caught in their own hypocrisy, and now here we are.
The reasons why some businesses or players will not “bend the knee”, physically and/or metaphorically, is because:
They recognize the political undercurrent and they do not want to be involved in it;
They realize supporting BLM doesn’t mean supporting black lives on the street in meaningful ways;
Bend the knee to the mob once, you’re going to bend the knee to the mob again;
Losing a bigger chunk of fans for supporting BLM;
“Get Woke, Go Broke” trend;
Or, simply: they don’t agree with this particular form of protesting.
2. From a Religious Perspective: “I kneel before no man but God.”
I know players are from various religious backgrounds and beliefs.
I am not a religious person by any means. I respect people who worships gods and follows religions, whichever it is. As long as they do not physically harm others in the names of their religious belief, then I’m all good.
Worshiping a religion means people will also following (some) of its beliefs, and by respecting their beliefs I must also accept that people will choose and act according to their faith.
The two prime players who stood up for their belief are: Sam Coonrod (SF Giants, MLB, July 23, 2020) and Jonathan Isaac (Orlando Magic, NBA, July 31, 2020).
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Jonathan Isaac Explains Why He Stood During National Anthem
From my knowledge, most religions featured common values (ie. be kind, be respectful, be considerate of your words and actions, understand karma and consequences, etc.). However, since the two examples I provided featured Christians, I’ll talk about the Christian perspective from here. That being said, God doesn’t necessarily just talking about Jesus Christ but could also be referring to Allah or other god-like figure they worship.
The following articles gave some good insights on how different Christians feel about this: 1) Kneeling for the Anthem: a Catholic Reflection on Protest, 2) The Power and the Threat of Kneeling, 3) Christian players frustrated by criticism for anthem protest.
I’ve had also chances to talk to some of the local Christians, gotten an array of answers.
Some Christians said they are willing to take a knee in the name of racial justice. Some Christians disagree with the method of protesting but don’t agree with stifling somebody trying to express their voice.
Some Christians refused to take a knee. Why?
They do not think any man is worthy of bowing down for, except for God
They do not believe BLM advocates for the values they follow or what God wants. Examples:
BLM is anti-Christ/anti-religion -- burnt down numerous churches, defaced and burnt the Virgin Mary, decapitated Jesus Christ, sexual harassment and physical assault to a priest in CHAZ;
BLM seeking to destroy nuclear family and permanent removal of father-figure in children’s life -- yes, this is stated on their official website;
BLM is pro-abortion -- Planned Parenthood has entered many discussion. The thing is: Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood is founded specifically to decimate minorities. Their message has been flipped due to the new “wokeness” (ie. going from “we will restrict your community from growth by killing off your babies” to “we will help elevate your voice by killing off your babies”).
BLM is Marxist -- one of the main idea in Marxism is the absolute removal of religion, and this is often interpreted as all religions. However, the attack on Christianity and Christians are the clearest example of this, at least in the US/Canada
Some articles on why Christians do not believe or support BLM: 1) Some Evangelicals Struggle With Black Lives Matter Movement, 2) The Stated Goals of Black Lives Matter Are Anti-Christian. This last one is very interesting because it breaks down similarities in Christianity and the method of protesting some BLM protesters choose, The Faith Of The Black Lives Matter Movement
As fellow non-religious folk, you and I may not have been able to comprehend why they are taking their relationship with God very seriously, or how much they use the Bible to guide them in life.
I’ve heard many others dismissing and even laughing at people because they’re religious, or criticizing people because they need an outdated book to help to through life. Both Sam Coonrod and Jonathan Isaac were slammed when they cited their faith as one of their main reasons for not kneeling.
If Christians chose not to protest against racial injustice by kneeling, and instead raising a fist, or standing and praying to God to purge racism out of human’s DNA -- why is it a problem?
All Christians that I have spoken to believe there are racial injustice and want to do their best to eradicate it and help those who are suffering. They want no harm and want the world to be a better place.
If we can accept that people can think differently, can act differently, can speak differently, why are we not accepting that people can protest or raise awareness differently?
Unless, it’s not about kneeling or raising awareness or protesting at all.
It’s about satisfying your own needs to feel vindicated, to know your favourite players are doing things you want them to do and are feeling the same way about things just like you.
3. From a Personal Perspective
Traditionally, and universally-accepted: kneeling can be in awe, in fear, in humiliation or in respect.
To me, personally, kneeling to someone/something is often being linked to “being terrified”/”being humiliated” rather than “being respectful”.
As someone who is small-frame, I don’t like kneeling. One knee or two knee bent, didn’t matter. Psychologically speaking, and, physically speaking, you’re making yourself smaller, lower to the ground and easier to hurt. You’re in a vulnerable position.
Kneeling reminds me too much of grovelling, powerless.
Obviously, this is my opinion and I don’t know if anybody else or any players who didn’t kneel share the same opinion. But. I don’t think kneeling is an empowering move.
You have to stand up for what you believe in even if it’s unpopular. Not: you have to bend your knee for what you believe in.
Standing had always been associating with rising, moving upward, becoming bigger and more powerful.
Some reasons people will cite for kneeling including: condemning police brutality, honouring the lives lost under police brutality, honouring black lives. Which are great causes. I still very, very much believe if you’re going to protest, stand up tall and firm. (Especially, since, you know, Floyd dies with a knee on his neck. Kneeling in remembrance of him is kinda funny ironic.)
So, an interesting case study: Recently, Matt Dumba (Minnesota Wild, NHL, August 3, 2020) made a speech and knelt. However, he only knelt for the American anthem but stood for the Canadian anthem.
I’m not ragging on Dumba. Kudos to him for speaking out.
He later said he’d have kneel for Canada anthem as well. I understand. There are pressures on him, and I think when hearing your nation’s anthem you’ll usually automatically stand up.
That being said, there are rightful, warranted probing questions. It raised doubts to the legitimacy of kneeling.
Kneeling for the US anthem but then standing for Canada anthem is a strange decision because it is implying that there are problems in the US, not in the Canada. Prior to George Floyd’s death as well as around the times when protests/riots broke out, a few Indigenious Canadians died during a wellness check (Recent deaths prompt questions about police wellness checks) and arguably perhaps police brutality.
Here in Canada, we’re told we’re equally racist, but the mentality Canadians have is that we’re better than the US.
Therefore, I’d say it is rightful that a lot of people interpreted Dumba’s action as hating on the US and/or not actually raising awareness about racism or police brutality.
This brings us to the biggest reason a lot of people cite for being against kneeling: kneeling on the flag is disrespecting the country.
I’ve looked into the military history of kneeling on the flag/during the anthem. I’ve to wade through pages of different vets rationalizing their opinions and asked some of the vets/active-duty that I knew of, and here are my findings:
Some views it as disrespect because it shows cowardice
“I didn’t serve so you can kneel.”
Some doesn’t like it but doesn’t mind it because you’re excising your freedom of speech and thoughts.
Most people I knew of, and myself, fell into this camp
Some thinks it could mean respect and should even be a mandate form of greeting the flags.
I thought this was a good point and should be something we can consider
However, it’s worth pointing out there are also vets that supports kneeling specifically because they hate America or the government, either because the system chewed them up and spat them back out. There are also people that supported spitting and/or burning the flags for all the history it carries
I don’t agree with spitting and/or burning the flags. I think it implies symbolically you’re wishing your country to go down in flames (the fact that half of America has been literally burning down for over 2 months, and many rioters/BLM supporters talking about literally burning things down make me more alarmed and disgusted)
But. It’s freedom of speech and freedom of expressions. So.
Drew Brees’ speech is a very good way to sum it up how most average people feel about this: I would stand on the anthem, but you’re free to kneel even if I disapprove of the particular method of kneeling.
The take-away here is that the same action can mean differently to different people.
Some will not kneel or disapprove of kneeling because of the symbolic weight.
So, I’ll reiterate the biggest point: There’s no “correct” way of protesting.
Someone does not have to kneel in order to express that they are against racism.
We can achieve the same goal by different means.
You and I are okay with people kneeling don’t mean others have to agree with us. We should not be pressuring others to kneel and think and process and expression opinions the same way we do. It is impossible, and it is a dangerous mentality.
We are not a monolith.
4. From a Political Perspective: “BLM is doing more harm than good.”
4.1. Wrong messenger/mixed messages
Look.
People are free to kneel, but I do believe there is a right time, place for it, and the right people for it.
The NBA kneeling for racial justice and equality for all and police brutality yet the whole organization is built off the back of child labour and sweatshop in China and the CCP’s inhumane treatment to the Chinese, as well as actively stifling Hong Kong’s freedom.
Some dramatic irony there.
They have pulled down the option to put in anything for the player’s name, but history got it down: 1) NBA store says 'Free Hong Kong' was 'inadvertently prohibited' from jerseys, 2) Police fire water cannon, tear gas at Hong Kong protesters, 3) China’s Global Threat to Human Rights.
It really does undermined your message, NBA! Make the “kneeling for justice” idea got completely thrown out of the window! Try better next time!
We can also go over Disney or Colin Kappernick (lmao that July 4th tweet, Colin. Really bad move!), the awfully cringy “I Take Responsibility” video but you understand the point.
BLM is this exclusive “branding” that businesses and sport leagues slap onto their forehead so they won’t be branded racist while not doing anything for the minorities. BLM is a hoax, a front for privilege people to pat themselves on the back for “acknowledging” their privileges and their power.
You can think this is an excuse for me to rag on these idiotic big companies or individuals (and, you’re right), but it also leads me to this early conclusion that BLM is a scam.
However, with recent events and evidences I’ve been digging up, it’s increasingly difficult to say BLM as simply “a scam”.
4.2. BLM: the sinister Marxist agenda and the crazy utopia
Kneeling to protest against anti-racism, by now, is synonymous with supporting BLM.
I’m willing to bet if you’re pushing for everybody to subscribe to the “KNEELING! TO! PROTEST! AND! SHOW! SOLIDARITY!” deal, you’re also a BLM supporter.
You can support BLM. That’s fine.
I’ll tell you upfront that I don’t support BLM.
You are going to click away, or maybe already angrily typing something up to build your case against me.
Wait until the end.
All I ask is that you try to see what I and many others find repulsive and alarming about BLM.
Alright? Alright.
I will not go into excessive details on BLM, because I’ll dedicate another post at some point to BLM. That post will probably be up at somewhere some point early/mid-2024. It will definitely be on time with the BLM’s peak activity, during another waves of riots.
Anyhow.
So why won’t I kneel for BLM? Why won’t I do this for BLM cause?
Because I don’t believe black people should have more rights? Because I don’t sympathize with the black community? Because I’m a racist?
Listen.
I support black lives. I know the system is rigged, I know there needs to be improvement -- nothing will ever be perfect, and improvements are always needed.
I don’t support Black Lives Matter (BLM) because Black Lives Matter (BLM) the organization and the movement had already derailed too far too fast.
Zuby summarizes a lot of my points, so if you like listening/visual more than reading, feel free to listen to his rationale before continuing.
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Zuby - The Problem with Black Lives Matter
I cannot get on board with their actions or their ideologies, nor can I see they’re making an impact on black community they’re claiming they’re representing. I spoke to people, I shifted back and forth and remained neutral for a while before throwing in my towel and quit it. There were murder of kids in NYC and there are zero, ZERO anger. No riots, no protests. Nothing! Zit! Nada!
Yet they’re willing to come out and break windows for a criminal. Both Michael Brown and George Floyd were criminals. Isn’t it strange? The biggest riots/protests spearheaded by BLM are for criminals? Michael Brown’s case was a justified shooting. And although George Floyd’s death is unnecessary recent leaked footage had provided ample of context. Both autopsies also came back showing that he was high on meth and fentanyl.
BLM have a particular political vision Marxism (1) BLM co-founder describes herself as ‘trained Marxist’, 2) Is Black Lives Matter Marxist? No and Yes), and please, excuse me for saying this is alarming because they’re clearly demonstrating and glorifying communist ideas and practices. I’ve been through the grinder, I can recognize the signs.
It is very clearly not the Sweden-socialist model they are going for (which is a myth, btw, because Sweden is pro-capitalist). It is very clear they are angling for Marx-Leninism.
People will be screaming “all revolutionaries are led by Marxist ideas”, ignoring the fact that those revolutions, if succeed, often crashed and burnt and led to weak economy and terrible nations.
But, but. You know what? Fine. I’ll refrain from screaming Communism Doesn’t Work!!!
We will give BLM the absolute benefits of the doubts: that BLM do everything in line with MLK’s vision or the BPP’s vision.
We will not rip BLM base on its ideologies anymore and will examine its actions.
Alright. So how had they been beneficial to the community they claim to serve, so far in 2020?
More black people are dead during this fight for justice for black. More black people lives are ruined during this fight for justice for black. There are thousands of businesses in ruined -- black businesses in ruined, black people working hard, busting their ass gathering money and finally got their came true only to have it burnt down by their own people and destroyed in one night.
Does the Black community want to abolish the police?
Inside the Portland riots - this is what the media calls peaceful?
3 stories of black-owned businesses damaged in the riots
Black-Owned Businesses That Were Damaged and Looted
Affordable apartment project destroyed during night of protests
The 17 people who have died in the protests and riots so far
Chicago children killed by gun violence
In Wake Of Continued Gun Violence, Prominent Members Of Black Community Call On NYPD To Bring Back Anti-Crime Unit. Small crimes went down, but murders and shooting went up by 200%.
To rub the salt onto the wound, Mayor de Blasio deployed 27 polices guarding the BLM mural on the street (which is bigger than any of NYPD unit) instead of protecting the citizens.
To pour bleach all over the wound, these BLM activists and AOC insisted, that No! Defund more police! and making excuses for these murderers
Black Americans Want Police to Retain Local Presence, Gallup Poll, August 5, 2020
Say what? Americans (especially minorities) want more cops in their area? Yes. Check out Chicago’s latest news: Chicago Police: Violence drops after 2 new units rolled out. Having police presence, improving police training and bringing police and community closer, would deterred crimes and protected the minorities and those who are vulnerable, who knows!
I will now direct your attention to the Love Fest that is CHAZ (est. June 2020, rip. July 2020). Where if your stuff got stolen it’s an “unintentional donations”.
Born and raised, and buried, with all BLM’s Marxist loving ideas, safe and inclusive and funsies:
CHAZUpdates, Twitter
Welcome to Chaz!
The Economics of CHAZ / CHOP: Anarchy at its Finest
Video shows black-only segregated areas within CHAZ
Inside CHAZ (the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone)
CHAZ: where protesters/rioters actively practicing racism while preaching against racism, practicing police brutality while preaching against police brutality, leeching off America’s resources while wanting to burn the country to the ground.
CHAZ is the epitome of what BLM is advocating for.
BLM wants segregation -- again, it is literally spelled out on their website. “boycott white businesses” and basically implying black goes to black businesses only. Recent stories of BLM activists “demanding” stores or else meet with force: 'We're not an enemy of the Black community' and Cuban community plans rally at NuLu restaurant in response to Black Lives Matter demands, and opinion analysis breakdown
BLM promotes violence as the automatic first response -- look. stop telling people to fight police
The 'Black Lives Matter Foundation' isn't the real BLM, explaining differences between the two organizations’ approach -- which, very nicely, also points out the problem with BLM. They’re not seeking for healing or cooperation, they’re all about breaking and burning stuffs down.
Robert Ray Barnes explains why he chooses the name “Black Lives Matter Foundation”
BLM creates more racial tension and encourages people to fake police-brutality/racism -- The biggest, most-hated face in BLM, Shaun King, is actively tearing up people’s lives. He accused many officers to be rapists, murderers, dramatizing claims, etc. He makes money off of getting people riled up. You can hate him, but if you’re telling me he doesn’t have any influence you’re very mistaken. His followers had sent death threats, showed up at people’s houses, doxxing people’s identity. People had been pushed to suicide, money loss, reputation ruined.
Liar Liar Pants On Fire Series breaks down all the viral videos claiming police brutality, and you will see that videos featuring a black person is more likely to be shared and be viral without waiting for the context
I’ll put forth the Jussie Smollett hoax, which, congrats Jussie! You just now make people waving away the attacks that actually happened due to racism! You’re so lacking in “being oppressed and being discriminated” in America, you’ve to import some from Nigeria!
I’ll also put forth the recent Bubba Wallace hoax. It is not a noose, Bubba Watson oops I mean Bubba Wallace (copyright belongs to Don Lemon). 15 FBI agents confirmed it. You can see it through video footages. Don’t be a drama queen, Bubba. (btw, i don’t know why BLM aren’t celebrating this? i mean, 15 FBI agents are immediately dispatched to deal with the claims. that’s how important this is. the feds will not hesitate to deal with discrimination)
Affiliated Organizations and BLM itself are cult-like, putting criminals on a pedestal, endorsing the party that is harmful to the black community
Assata’s Daughters, Breakdown on Assata Shakur and insights about the organization
BLM endorsed DNC and Joe Biden, gave money for the same party that created the KKK and ran on a platform of unity but are made up of elitists
99.64% BLM’s Defund The Police Donations Go To Joe Biden Campaign Via ActBlue
They are donating to DNC instead of pouring funds into black community at the times of crisises
Do Black Lives Matter Donations REALLY Go to Black Lives?
Based from America’s Top 20 Cities for Crime, and What Party Runs Them (spoiler alert, 18/20 are ran by Democrats), if you cross check it with the black population in each city, you will find that a lot of these cities have majority of black population and that Democrats had been in office for decades. If they’re helping the black community, they’re taking an awful long time.
BLM encourages a culture of blaming and perpetuating that black people are powerless, becoming a husk for over white supremacist and sexist.
the familiar “blaming it on the white men” game is played for practically every new political movement right now, and the “us minorities and ‘non-racist’ whites up against those straight rich white men’” and the concept of “white privilege” and being recycled over and over to make minorities feel more powerless
“White privilege” isn’t the biggest barrier, because if it is, please explain to me why and how did Madam C. J. Walker became the first black female millionaire in the early 1900s? Before Civil Rights Movement?
(White) people “check their privilege” and feel good about themselves for being “aware” of their privilege and therefore protect the minorities’ fragility. You’re admitting that just by being white you have more power than other race? That sounds very, very racist.
You have white people in protests actively suppressing other minorities’ voices, because apparently due to “white privilege” whites feel like they’re the only voice that would be valid
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What it's like to be a Black officer policing Portland protests | Raw Interview (you can view the notable quotes here: Black Portland cop slams White BLM protesters using 'same tactics that were used against my people')
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'The most horrific displays of hate I've ever seen' | Portland police describe protests | full video (you can view notable quotes here: Portland police describe front lines of protests) // Analysis Breakdown
You’ve white people writing guides on how minorities should behave to get rid of the “whiteness” in them -- I cannot even find words for this. Notice how all these “whiteness” qualities are what holds a functioning society together? Hello, Asia existed long before European came along. The Indigenious people existed long before European came long. The assumption that other cultures/countries couldn’t have function without the European coming over and spreading their “whiteness” is extremely offensive. The fact that there are actual people out there who will follow this racist guide is crazy to me.
Whitesplaining white privilege
Poster defining “Whiteness” put forth by the National Museum of African American History & Culture. The poster had since been removed.
Robin DiAngelo, makes her fortune off of flexing her internal racism: The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility
So please tell me: is BLM the organization and the movement really support black lives or are they acting out? They care so much for black lives they are going to kill their own people to express their discontent for the system they are stuck under?
But, “Oh, it’s the rioters! Peaceful protesters do no such thing!”
Yeah, and you know which banner are those rioters are rioting under? BLM. And BLM is doing nothing to stop this. Some protesters tried to stop, but the official BLM pages? Nope. Crickets. They want this. Black neighbourhood burning to ash will make black people’s spirit will be worn down and black will be suck into this cesspool of blaming others -- again and again and again.
Yes, Portland is still rioting (Day 71, as of this writing). They had started moving into residential neighbourhoods, vandalizing and terrorizing the streets and are attempting to kill people
Portland mayor condemns rioters for 'attempting to commit murder'
You can view livestreams from protests/riots across the US at WOKE.NET. Noted the differences between the peaceful protesters (morning till midnight) and the rioters (midnight till morning).
Andy Ngo covered Antifa/BLM riots
Thomas Sowell, an amazing American thinker that no one seems to talk about, writes the book Dismantling America (2010), and in it he predicts the downfall of America. And beat-by-beat, oh my god, 2020 is when we see all of his predictions come true in the BLM’s playbook and tactics.
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Thomas Sowell -- Dismantling America
BLM is a terrible, terrible organization -- and at this point, a terrible movement. I encourage you to also look into BLM’s history as well as what BLM is actually accomplishing and doing. They may be doing some goods, but I am seeing them killing black people, not elevating them to higher heights.
I’ll wrap this up quickly:
Not everybody out there support BLM;
Not everybody out there that doesn’t support BLM is a racist;
Not everybody out there that doesn’t support BLM doesn’t care about black lives;
Not everybody out there that support BLM also support the agenda they are pursuing;
Not everybody out there support BLM knows what are they supporting;
Not everybody out there support BLM really support black lives.
Some people are there genuinely because there is a problem, I’m not denying that. But you have to understand BLM isn’t what you believe it is. Take one very hard look at the movement you’re indirectly supporting. You’re under the BLM banner, but how much of it are you actually supporting? Are you just supporting because if you don’t support “Black Lives Matter” you don’t support black lives?
Alright. So why would I refuse to kneel because I don’t support BLM? How does that tie together?
As I stated in the beginning: kneeling on the anthem specifically to protest anti-racism and police brutality started with Colin Kappernick and the BLM movement. It is now associated with BLM. Just like the raised fist.
People like me who are opposing BLM views it as giving in, especially when we see things like this this all over the country -- people literally getting down on their knees in the middle of the streets for strangers, saying sorry for whatever the hell the mob demands because otherwise they will be call a racist, a bigot, or being beaten to death.
When I see not many people find this disturbing disturbed me. Some even gleefully says “Yes, that’s should be the future”.
Look: BLM cancels each own people for not falling in line. BLM local leaders had to stepped down because he feels like BLM isn’t a safe platform for him to fight for fair education for black children.
Blacks that spoken out against BLM, or black conservatives, are branded “coon”, Uncle Tom, such as the case of Terry Crew, Candance Owens, Brandon Tatum, Anthony Brian Logan, Candance Owens, etc. (If you’re interested, Uncle Tom is a great documentary that documents the journey and hardships black conservatives experience)
Look around you.
People are bashing others, cancelling others, for not supporting BLM, for not kneeling, for not following the trends. In sports, players that chose not to kneel is called “not doing enough”, “racist”, hoax, etc.
Do you see how this is problematic? Why do they have to kneel, specifically? You can show solidarity in many ways. Why do they have to kneel?
You’re free to support whatever you want, but don’t force other to follow the same thing.
BLM is a mob of mindless social justice warriors shoehorning a free society into their warped utopia where everybody speaks the same “right” thing and acts the same “right” way.
In 2020, it started out as “police brutality” and “George Floyd” but it is no longer that. I will not bend the knee for an organization that deploys unjust, racist approach while hiding behind a banner of “justice”. Antifa rioters are using BLM as a husk, and BLM encourages it, wanting it.
I will not kneel for an organization that is built on lies. I will not kneel for a hypocritical movement that has been murdering its own people, demanding outrageous deals and abolishing the system through force and violence.
Kneeling is pledging your support for BLM. And I cannot and will not support BLM the organization or the movement, especially when it’s becoming increasingly toxic and deranged.
I will die on my feet rather than live on my knees.
This doesn’t mean I’m not supporting the black community. But I will choose an alternative way to express my thoughts and sympathy -- because I’ll die sooner than following the way the mob and the terrible organization that is BLM dictates.
Kneeling is not the only way to express my opinion.
I know I’m not the only ones who see through this. For many people, athletes included, BLM is the reason why they are reluctant to kneel.
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02 | A (QUICK) ANALYSIS
» A look on the fans’ reaction «
From @mitchmarner, August 2, 2020
This message overall is a good representation of the situation and how people reacted to this. The criticism is respectful and on-point. The post contains both good messages that I agree with, and some subtle toxic undertone that I find problematic.
For context, this post is regarding NHL.
All the unhighlighted words are what I agreed with. Highlighted words are what I have some opinions on.
Let’s go through this.
1. “White players should be kneeling”
first of all, just a small thing, but I’m curious as to why only the “white” players are under pressure here. I find it’s strange that the post has to specified the race and what they should do. Hockey players are mostly white -- okay, sure. But I don’t get the emphasis on skin colour? I’m still puzzled why would you put pressure on white people. Because you’re white, you must do as we said and support us no matter what. In the hockey world, it’s easier to say whites have more power. But what about in the NBA, a black-dominated field? Jonathan Isaac, a black guy, refused to kneel and got grilled for it. Instead of specifying race, why not just use “players”? Anybody is welcomed to join in the movement.
You may think I’m being nitpicking over some words, but this is how media uses it to rile people. By putting races in it, they take out the actual humanity, making everything about racial identity and race politics. Ie. which headlines would make you be more angry? “Girl accuses classmates of cutting off her dreadlocks” or “Black girl accuses white classmates of cutting off her dreadlocks” (headline from CBS News, which had changed after the story came out as false).
A recent letter of a journalist from MSNBC reveals how cancerous are the current world is going, and how the media is exploiting it -- racial tension is just one of the facet they can exploit.
I also find the usage of “should” somewhat demanding, indicated obligation and duty. Again, people can say this kneeling is for human rights -- but as I pointed out in both part 1 and part 2, with the modern cancel culture and the herd thinking and BLM’s violence, there will be interpretation of kneeling as in bending the knee to BLM or the angry mob. Why not say “could”? Because, yes, there could be more players out there supporting this cause. They choose not to, and they should be able to choose. This is a free country. They do not have to support something if they don’t agree with it, and they also do not have to support it in a particular way if they agree with it.
2. Unhighlighted, but similar thing: “If you, like me, are white, we should focus on Ryan and [his] bravery”
Again, why are only white people being pressured into doing the right thing? I’m Asian, not white. So I don’t have to applaud Ryan Reaves’s bravery for standing up (or kneeling down) to his belief, right? We, as a community or fans, should all applaud when people choose to stand up for their belief.
You’ll also spy this subtle “white privilege” thinking hiding in this sentence -- “because we’re white, our voice is more valid and therefore we are the only people others will listen to”
3. “Many of his teammates [refused] to kneel with him”
I agree you can criticize their lack of support, but demanding people to kneel to show support, without considering why they refused to kneel is ignoring the diversity in thinking or someone’s personal rationale.
Other players could absolutely have supported Ryan, but they do not “have to kneel” to show it explicitly -- the same way family members don’t have to shower each other with grand gestures in public.
4. “Make it about white players who should’ve done this bare minimum action from the start comes off weird”
So. Guilt-trip them into submission? If every white player kneel from hereon, racism will definitely be solved in the league.
You know, this reminds me of the now infamous #BlackoutTuesday. Everybody races to post a black square to prove they are not racist (“bare minimum action”, right?), and then that ended up backfiring to the cause. This time, everybody kneel to prove they are not racist (again, “bare minimum action”). Perhaps those that are yelling at all athletes to kneel wouldn’t see this right away, but very soon at some point when (not if) kneeling will be the norm, everybody completes this “bare minimum action” that actually doesn’t solve anything or potentially backfires hard, racism still remains. The platform that provides these athletes power and spotlights may be shrinking, and sports become another divisive tool instead of bringing people together.
This is a very cult-like thinking to demand everybody to behave and act the same way you want/expect them to act. Yes, we should all take parts in minimizing racism. But, no, we do not have to kneel to solve racism -- especially if we can see that the action doesn’t necessarily solve racism, only a gesture; especially if we don’t agree with the gesture.
I’ll go out on a limb and predict that in 2024, there will be another wave of riots, another wave of “enough is enough” and a new trend to commemorate death due to police brutality -- instead of kneeling, everybody is now bowing down with their face to the ground.
Again, I agree with most of the message. However, I think it’s important to see how some other people are interpreting the same messages and pick apart the problems that is implied within the thinking.
▬▬▬
03 | SOME PREDICTIONS
This is a fun section where I’ll try to read where the situation with the “kneeling” is going to go. Feel free to skip to the end, but if you enjoy musing about the future then stay with me.
Kneeling has very high probability of becoming a tradition. The rating will continue to go down the tubes for the wokest leagues (at least from a current stand point). I don’t know if it will continue to stay low in the future.
Leagues that orchestrated mass-kneeling are probably banking on the fans deserting them will come back eventually (probably around 2021 or 2022) and ignore the kneeling, once the creeping normality settles in. Which, pretty much kind of defeat the purpose of kneeling and raising awareness, in my opinion. But, it’s not like kneeling is effective now so whatever, I guess.
Since NFL, NBA and MBL have way bigger budget and audience than NHL, those big leagues/teams could probably afford losing money for 1-2 years. Although if the owner deemed it’s killing the business they will quickly say Shove it.
I think NHL’s strapped budget is the one of the main reason why they are the only “opinion-open” league, ie. don’t force mass-kneeling but agree to facilitate and protect players that choose to kneel. If they had a bigger budget, things might have look different.
There is a very high probability that all leagues will adopt NFL’s way, “Stand for the anthem or Stay in the Locker Room”. This way, those that supports kneeling will be okay because the players are still technically still protesting/kneeling, and those that opposes kneeling or don’t want to be preached politics while they are looking for entertainment will not be ticked off.
A possibility that I think may be possible, albeit I don’t know if it will happen: all leagues stopped kneeling once this wave of wokeness swept over. There will be instances of players kneeling, but there won’t be mass-kneeling like what MBL and NBA are doing.
There is also a tiny chance that leagues/players will continue to orchestrated mass-kneeling and died with their ideologies rather than backtrack and change.
Prime example: LeBron James. LeBron James and his ego don’t take bruising well.
Colin Kappernick made more money being an activist than being a quarterback -- he was a terrible quarterback if you look at his number (How Good Was Colin Kaepernick When He Left the NFL in 2017?). But, that aside. Kappernick got offered some million dollar documentary and book deals (from Disney) for his spoiled “struggle” and “hardship”. From a legal and financial and medical viewpoint, I doubt Kappernick is going to go back into NFL and will wring this BLM activist thing for all that its worth. NFL careers are often short, while being an activist allows Kappernick to preach to the mass while monetizing his self-made misery.
Anyhow: cancel culture is very vicious, and the media amplified the most extreme voices. The kneeling culture will drag itself to the graves, believe me.
Ryan Reaves won’t get in trouble with his kneeling (from the business and the legal side. I don’t know about his knee). Full disclosure that I’m not well-versed with all the business and money and contract and only mildly familiar with US law. I applaud Ryan for kneeling down for a cause he believes and took risks with his knee (I’d assume he consulted his doctor first, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt). But, I don’t think Ryan financially risked anything.
According to CapFriendly, VGK just signed Reaves to a contract 2-year extention in June 18, 2020. This shows that they are interested in keeping him around.
Logically speaking, Ryan is a great player and contributes greatly to VGK organization. Benching/trading him is suicidal, especially while VGK has consistently been a strong team since its infancy in 2017 and Ryan seems to be a part of the cornerstone. Ryan will probably stay with VGK until 2022 when his contract ends.
▬▬▬
04 | CLOSING WORDS
Am I implying that you can’t criticize athletes? No.
Am I defending these athletes? Not necessarily.
These athletes can absolutely do more than just posting pictures on IG and spewing some cookie cutter words, they can absolutely be more supportive of their friends. They can do more. They deserve to be criticize for not doing more.
However, I do not agree with this “you have to kneel” pressure. This is a free country, where you have the freedom of speech, freedom of thoughts, freedom of religious. We have the freedom to criticize people, but they also have the freedom to not listen to it.
Unlike the government where there is a duty to her citizens to consider her citizens’ wishes, these athletes are strangers and owe no obligations. It is true that sports had always have political aspects to it, but that there are some people that definitely would like to remain apolitical during their career. Michael Jordan remains apolitical until his retirement. Or James Harden, who was described as not involving in politics whatsoever and got dragged through the mud for accidentally wearing a Blue Lives Matter mask while his colleagues and NBA condone BLM.
Some athletes view “being a player” or a star comes with the burden of constantly being on your job 24/7. Stats do show that people are now more scared to disclose their political thoughts, and the further left one’s views, the more one believes they’re protected.
For someone who is political, kneeling started as a political statement, a symbol of cowardice, and it remained as one, especially considering how many people are tripping over their feet to kneel to sooth the mob. For someone who isn’t political, kneeling may be contradicting to their personal beliefs.
I’ve been stewing on this particular issue for some times, and the kneeling don’t make headlines as much anymore, but I figured this should be addressed regardless. I am concerned about the rise of cancel culture, the radical conformism, and the intolerable thinking rampaging in the US and Canada. Forcing people to kneel to just a late symptoms of what potentially can be the future if this cult-like behaviour is not call out or stop.
You may or may not agree with all the points, and that is OK. Again, this is not a whole list that details all the thoughts out there. This is based on a lot from myself, what I observed, what I scoped out from news. The athletes may have other reasons I haven’t covered. That being said, my point still stand: they have a reason for not kneeling.
Please realize that there are more than one way to view things, especially in a climate where everybody is forced to be political. The most important takeaway here are:
1) kneeling is not the only way to raise awareness;
2) people do not have to kneel to show that they support black lives.
#i promised i'm not gonna be political on tumblr but oops#blm#we got to talk about it#let's get into this#talk to the other side#nfl#nhl#nba#mbl#black lies matter#kneeling#us#us politics#canada#hockey#basketball#football#american football#baseball
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Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° /82.0°
2018 – 89.9° /88.0°
2017 – 94.0° /93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/11354949
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° /82.0°
2018 – 89.9° /88.0°
2017 – 94.0° /93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
from The Moz Blog http://bit.ly/2JiV48z
via IFTTT
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° / 82.0°
2018 – 89.9° / 88.0°
2017 – 94.0° / 93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° / 82.0°
2018 – 89.9° / 88.0°
2017 – 94.0° / 93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° / 82.0°
2018 – 89.9° / 88.0°
2017 – 94.0° / 93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° / 82.0°
2018 – 89.9° / 88.0°
2017 – 94.0° / 93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° / 82.0°
2018 – 89.9° / 88.0°
2017 – 94.0° / 93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° / 82.0°
2018 – 89.9° / 88.0°
2017 – 94.0° / 93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° / 82.0°
2018 – 89.9° / 88.0°
2017 – 94.0° / 93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° / 82.0°
2018 – 89.9° / 88.0°
2017 – 94.0° / 93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
Text
How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?
Posted by Dr-Pete
In 2018, Google reported an incredible 3,234 improvements to search. That's more than 8 times the number of updates they reported in 2009 — less than a decade ago — and an average of almost 9 per day. How have algorithm updates evolved over the past decade, and how can we possibly keep tabs on all of them? Should we even try?
To kick this off, here's a list of every confirmed count we have (sources at end of post):
2018 – 3,234 "improvements"
2017 – 2,453 "changes"
2016 – 1,653 "improvements"
2013 – 890 "improvements"
2012 – 665 "launches"
2011 – 538 "launches"
2010 – 516 "changes"
2009 – 350–400 "changes"
Unfortunately, we don't have confirmed data for 2014-2015 (if you know differently, please let me know in the comments).
A brief history of update counts
Our first peek into this data came in spring of 2010, when Google's Matt Cutts revealed that "on average, [Google] tends to roll out 350–400 things per year." It wasn't an exact number, but given that SEOs at the time (and to this day) were tracking at most dozens of algorithm changes, the idea of roughly one change per day was eye-opening.
In fall of 2011, Eric Schmidt was called to testify before Congress, and revealed our first precise update count and an even more shocking scope of testing and changes:
"To give you a sense of the scale of the changes that Google considers, in 2010 we conducted 13,311 precision evaluations to see whether proposed algorithm changes improved the quality of its search results, 8,157 side-by-side experiments where it presented two sets of search results to a panel of human testers and had the evaluators rank which set of results was better, and 2,800 click evaluations to see how a small sample of real-life Google users responded to the change. Ultimately, the process resulted in 516 changes that were determined to be useful to users based on the data and, therefore, were made to Google's algorithm."
Later, Google would reveal similar data in an online feature called "How Search Works." Unfortunately, some of the earlier years are only available via the Internet Archive, but here's a screenshot from 2012:
Note that Google uses "launches" and "improvements" somewhat interchangeably. This diagram provided a fascinating peek into Google's process, and also revealed a startling jump from 13,311 precisions evaluations (changes that were shown to human evaluators) to 118,812 in just two years.
Is the Google algorithm heating up?
Since MozCast has kept the same keyword set since almost the beginning of data collection, we're able to make some long-term comparisons. The graph below represents five years of temperatures. Note that the system was originally tuned (in early 2012) to an average temperature of 70°F. The redder the bar, the hotter the temperature ...
Click to open a high-resolution version in a new tab
You'll notice that the temperature ranges aren't fixed — instead, I've split the label into eight roughly equal buckets (i.e. they represent the same number of days). This gives us a little more sensitivity in the more common ranges.
The trend is pretty clear. The latter half of this 5-year timeframe has clearly been hotter than the first half. While warming trend is evident, though, it's not a steady increase over time like Google's update counts might suggest. Instead, we see a stark shift in the fall of 2016 and a very hot summer of 2017. More recently, we've actually seen signs of cooling. Below are the means and medians for each year (note that 2014 and 2019 are partial years):
2019 – 83.7° / 82.0°
2018 – 89.9° / 88.0°
2017 – 94.0° / 93.7°
2016 – 75.1° / 73.7°
2015 – 62.9° / 60.3°
2014 – 65.8° / 65.9°
Note that search engine rankings are naturally noisy, and our error measurements tend to be large (making day-to-day changes hard to interpret). The difference from 2015 to 2017, however, is clearly significant.
Are there really 9 updates per day?
No, there are only 8.86 – feel better? Ok, that's probably not what you meant. Even back in 2009, Matt Cutts said something pretty interesting that seems to have been lost in the mists of time...
"We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."
In 2016, I did a study of algorithm flux that demonstrated a weekly pattern evident during clearer episodes of ranking changes. From a software engineering standpoint, this just makes sense — updates have to be approved and tend to be rolled out in batches. So, while measuring a daily average may help illustrate the rate of change, it probably has very little basis in the reality of how Google handles algorithm updates.
Do all of these algo updates matter?
Some changes are small. Many improvements are likely not even things we in the SEO industry would consider "algorithm updates" — they could be new features, for example, or UI changes.
As SERP verticals and features evolve, and new elements are added, there are also more moving parts subject to being fixed and improved. Local SEO, for example, has clearly seen an accelerated rate of change over the past 2-3 years. So, we'd naturally expect the overall rate of change to increase.
A lot of this is also in the eye of the beholder. Let's say Google makes an update to how they handle misspelled words in Korean. For most of us in the United States, that change isn't going to be actionable. If you're a Korean brand trying to rank for a commonly misspelled, high-volume term, this change could be huge. Some changes also are vertical-specific, representing radical change for one industry and little or no impact outside that niche.
On the other hand, you'll hear comments in the industry along the lines of "There are 3,000 changes per year; stop worrying about it!" To me that's like saying "The weather changes every day; stop worrying about it!" Yes, not every weather report is interesting, but I still want to know when it's going to snow or if there's a tornado coming my way. Recognizing that most updates won't affect you is fine, but it's a fallacy to stretch that into saying that no updates matter or that SEOs shouldn't care about algorithm changes.
Ultimately, I believe it helps to know when major changes happen, if only to understand whether rankings shifted due something we did or something Google did. It's also clear that the rate of change has accelerated, no matter how you measure it, and there's no evidence to suggest that Google is slowing down.
Appendix A: Update count sources
2009 – Google's Matt Cutts, video (Search Engine Land)
2010 – Google's Eric Schmidt, testifying before Congress (Search Engine Land)
2012 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2013 – Google's Amit Singhal, Google+ (Search Engine Land)
2016 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Internet Archive)
2017 – Unnamed Google employees (CNBC)
2018 – Google's "How Search Works" page (Google.com)
Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
0 notes
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