Homebuying activity faded in February. Existing home sales declined 7.2% to a seasonally adjusted 6.02 million units in February from a month earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The number of sales was down 2.4% from the same month a year ago. January home sales figures were revised slightly down to 6.49 million from 6.5 million. The results came in much higher than analysts’ expectations of a 6.2% month-over-month decline to 6.1 million units, according to… Source link

Gas prices in the U.S. keep going up and up, and Washington’s Democrats have found a convenient scapegoat for the pain inflicted on American drivers — Big Oil. President Joe Biden says oil companies “shouldn’t pad their profits” while crude oil prices fall. Meanwhile, Democrats are pushing for a windfall tax on oil profits, and industry CEOs may face a grilling in Congress next month. But halfway around the U.S., the Democratic governor of an important oil-producing state has a… Source link

Youtube logo is placed on a Russian flag in this illustration picture taken February 26, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Russia demands YouTube stop spreading threats to Russians Google offers no immediate comment Facebook, Instagram blocked in Russia; Google under pressure Russia says it has tools to develop its own social media March 18 (Reuters) – Russia on Friday demanded that Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google stop spreading what… Source link

News groups dedicated to discrediting misinformation have a history of amplifying misinformation. On Wednesday, The New York Times conceded the authenticity of a laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden whose content was found and published in October 2020 then censored as “fake news.” The computer’s files, first obtained by the New York Post after the laptop was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, exposed new layers of family corruption as then-former Vice President Joe Biden ran… Source link

Reconsideration requests are indirectly related to search rankings, as they’re an essential step in the process of recovering from a Google manual penalty. They make the difference between a site getting reinstated in search results or remaining deindexed. Reconsideration requests play an important role in SEO when rankings are manually held down by Google, but it’s not accurate to call them a “ranking factor.” Here’s more about the relationship between reconsideration requests and… Source link

The West African country will be the first landing of the ‘Equiano’ cable, which will run from Portugal to South Africa. The West African country of Togo will be the first landing of a new Google undersea internet cable connected to Europe, in what the tech giant and the Togolese government have hailed as a “major digital infrastructure transformation initiative”. The announcement on Friday comes months after Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced a five-year $1bn investment… Source link

We know Google wants to reward content and entities (like organizations and brands) that demonstrate high levels of expertise, authoritativeness and trust (E-A-T). We also know Google advises us to become familiar with its quality rater guidelines, especially when it comes to broad core algorithm updates. What we don’t know with 100% certainty is how Google turns E-A-T – which is a concept, not a direct ranking factor or score – into signals the search engine can… Source link

John Mueller answered a question about why a site that ranked for one keyword phrase didn’t rank for what they said was a synonym for the same phrase. John answered the question in general terms, explaining how what’s important is the full context of the search query. Synonyms and Search Results Before Google Hummingbird Google generally ranked sites by matching keywords in the search query to keywords in a web page. After the Google Hummingbird update Google swapped out some important… Source link

It’s going to take days, weeks and maybe months to process what exactly happened with Davante Adams and the Green Bay Packers. But it should take no time to process that Aaron Rodgers now has a big problem on his hands. That whole last dance thing? The one that the team worked so hard to bring back for an encore? It’s over. Now the problem is sitting in the lap of Rodgers the football player and Rodgers the talent evaluator. He wanted the respect of being granted that kind of influence and… Source link

Did No. 15 seed St. Peters ruin your hopes of a perfect men’s tournament bracket? You weren’t alone. After a day of March Madness, only 14 perfect brackets remain in Yahoo Tourney Pick’Em. By far the biggest bracket-buster was St. Peter’s, the small school from Jersey City, New Jersey that took down college basketball juggernaut Kentucky, a No. 2 seed, in an 85-79 thriller. To get a sense of the scale of upset we’re dealing with here, consider that Kentucky head coach John Calipari’s salary is… Source link