Renewable energy is becoming increasingly popular as people look for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and become more sustainable. Experts like Neville Voss in Hampshire, UK, say renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power, provide clean alternatives to traditional energy sources like coal or natural gas. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most popular aspects of renewable energy and why they have become so popular in recent years.
Solar Power
Neville Voss says solar power is one of the most popular forms of renewable energy. Solar panels can be installed on roofs to capture the sun’s energy and convert it into electricity. Solar power is beautiful because it does not require any fuel and can produce electricity for free once installation costs are paid off. Solar energy is versatile; it can generate electricity for homes and businesses, heat water, or even run a car!
Wind Power
Wind turbines are another popular form of renewable energy that has recently seen a surge in popularity. Wind turbines harness the power of the wind by converting its kinetic energy into electrical power. The amount of electricity generated depends on several factors, including location, size, type, and efficiency of the turbine being used. Wind turbines do not rely on fuel and can generate large amounts of electricity with minimal maintenance required once installed.
Geothermal Energy
Geothermal energy has been gaining traction recently due to its low emissions, renewable nature, and ability to provide reliable base-load capacity when combined with other forms of renewable energy, such as solar or wind power. Geothermal plants use underground reservoirs of hot water or steam, which are tapped to generate electricity; these reservoirs are heated naturally by the earth’s core temperature, which remains relatively constant regardless of external weather conditions, making them a reliable source year-round. Geothermal plants also require minimal land space compared to other forms of renewable energy, such as solar or wind farms, making them ideal for areas where land availability is limited.
Hydroelectricity
Neville Voss says hydroelectricity is another form of renewable energy that has been around since ancient times but has seen a resurgence in popularity due to its low environmental impact and cost efficiency compared to other forms such as nuclear or fossil fuels. Hydroelectric plants use running water from rivers or lakes to turn turbines that generate electricity; this makes them a desirable option for areas near bodies of water where construction costs are lower than those associated with building a new plant from scratch elsewhere. Hydroelectricity also produces no emissions making it one of the cleanest forms of generation available today.
How to Get Started with Renewable Energy
Renewable energy is a growing trend in modern society that pays to get on board with. The benefits of renewable energy are clear — an environmentally friendly source of power, savings in costs over time, and attractive tax breaks at various levels. But getting started with renewable energy can seem like an intimidating prospect. With that in mind, take it step by step.
First, research options: review the available renewable resources in your area and assess if your property is suitable for solar or wind power systems. Secondly, Neville Voss says to contact renewable energy professionals for advice and guidance to determine what will be best for you. Lastly, get competitive quotes from certified sellers to estimate the system cost and potential savings from transitioning to renewable energy. Investing in renewable energy may be a significant upfront cost, but the rewards include being more sustainable and saving money on bills over time; everyone loves more disposable income!
How to Know When It’s Time to Upgrade
Renewable energy technology is rapidly advancing, and there are often new developments in efficiency or cost that make upgrading to a unique system worthwhile. When considering an upgrade, think about the following.
First, consider the current state of your system. Has it been functioning well and providing you with reliable power? If not, then an upgrade may be necessary to restore performance. Second, evaluate if your system is more than five years old; newer technology and improved efficiency can significantly reduce electricity costs. Third, assess if incentives or tax credits are available for upgrading to a unique system. Lastly, investigate if subsidies are available to help offset the installation cost and make it more affordable.
Conclusion
Neville Voss says renewable energies have grown increasingly popular over recent years due to their environmental friendliness and cost savings potential compared with traditional sources like coal or natural gas — all without sacrificing reliability or stability. Solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric energies offer diverse solutions suitable for residential applications, such as powering homes with rooftop solar panels up to large-scale industrial projects like building massive offshore wind farms capable of producing hundreds of megawatts worth of electricity — enough to entirely power cities! With technology advancing at an ever-increasing rate, renewables will likely continue gaining ground against traditional sources in terms of both popularity and market share in the coming years. Now is the perfect time for individuals and businesses alike to invest in greener solutions!
We are approaching the halfway mark of winter. Home business owners are revitalized after the holidays. In addition, they look forward to sunshine, green trees, flowers, and Valentine’s Day. There are many fabulous products on the market today for this time of year for entrepreneurs, their friends, their families, and their “valentines.”
The products featured in Home Business Magazine’s Valentine’s and Pre-Spring 2023 Gift Guide include ergonomic home office furniture, tasty treats, health and beauty products, clothing and accessories, and home products. Check out these products that make perfect gifts for home business owners to use themselves this pre-spring or to say, “thank you,” “I appreciate you,” or “I Love You” to their valentines.
Photo Credit: Flexispot
FlexiSpot Soutien Ergonomic Office Chair
With its 3D lumbar support system, 135° lounge tilt and 4D adjustable armrests, the FlexiSpot Soutien Ergonomic Office Chair gives you the ultimate seating experience behind your desk. Featuring three height adjustment levels and a gentle rebound system, the elegantly curved backrest ergonomically conforms to the neck and spine for maximum headrest and lumbar support. The Soutien is adjustable in four dimensions, and the flexible armrests contour effortlessly to your arms and elbows for maximum comfort. Made from Italian-imported chenille and K+R temperature-sensitive fiber, its premium fleece mesh offers maximum ventilation and protects the most delicate fabrics.
A 45° backrest tilt lets you recline in comfort during your lunch break at work. Moreover, its adjustable seat depth enables you to customize your sitting experience according to your body shape. Featuring a best-in-industry Samhongsa Class 4 Gas Lift and certified by TUV/BIFMA/SGS with over 10000+ pressure test cycles means the Soutien can manage whatever you throw at it. The Soutien comes in black or grey. Price: $269.99. Visit https://www.flexispot.com/ergonomics-3d-lumbar-support-office-chair-oc10b-oc10g.
Troubadour Apex Backpack
This Troubadour Apex Backpack is perfect for your commute, gym kit, and day trips. Its lightweight waterproof fabric, lining, and zippers keep your gear dry. The padded section fits up to a 17” laptop. Multiple internal pockets are for easy organization. The backpack includes a zipped external pocket and two retractable bottle holders. It also includes a breathable back panel and ergonomic padded shoulder straps for comfort. A trolley sleeve slides over a suitcase handle. It is also available in a compact version. Price: $245. Visit https://www.troubadourgoods.com/collections/backpacks/products/apex-backpack?variant=43417929875688
Also visit Mujjo, which is now part of the Troubadour family, and check out its line of Slings and Messengers.
No Ruff Waves Men’s Surf Tee in Charcoal
No Ruff Waves offers adventure apparel for dog dads. Stylish, soft, and lightweight, this surf shirt is a must-have for any dog dad’s wardrobe. Shirts are true-to-size for men, and are made with 90% organic cotton/10% recycled polyester. They are easy care, machine washable – preshrunk, tagless, and crew neck – perfect for valentines. Fetch the Sun donates $2 to animal shelters for every shirt sold. Check their homepage to see whom your purchase will benefit this month. Price: $45. Visit https://www.fetchthesun.com/product-page/no-ruff-waves-men-s-surf-tee-organic-cotton.
Cozy Earth Women’s Bamboo Ultra-Soft Midi Skirt
Comfort meets class in Cozy Earth’s first women’s skirt made from the same softness of their Oprah-approved Women’s Bamboo Ultra-Soft Jogger. Featuring two knee-length slits to offer free-flowing, feminine flair and ultra-soft brushed finish, this seasonless midi skirt offers endless styling options for valentines to look effortlessly elegant in less time. A drawstring stretch waist enhances comfort while patch pockets give your essentials a place to stay. The fabric is made with 62% Premium Viscose from Bamboo, 28% Acrylic, and 10% Spandex. Price: $124. Visit https://cozyearth.com/products/women-s-ultra-soft-bamboo-midi-skirt?variant=41544978759860.
Photo Credit: Uber Appliance
Uber Appliance’s Air Fryer XL Deluxe
Backyard BBQ’s? Summer celebrations? Family dinner night? Have no fear! Cook up all your family meals this summer with Uber Appliances Air Fryer DELUXE! It comes with a 5 quart basket so you have enough room to air fry an entire chicken! The basket is also dishwasher safe, so forget the hassle of cleaning up after yourself. The Uber Air Fryer XL features an easy-to-use touch display for temperature and time setting with temperatures ranging from 150 Fahrenheit to 400 Fahrenheit, the digital display also has several pre-set cooking temperature and time to perfectly cook chicken, steak, fries, wings and so much more with a single press of a button.
Cooking temperature is adjustable up to 400 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal hot air frying environment. You can cook your favorite fried foods without all the oil. Oil less air fryers are proven to reduce 80% of fat from fried foods. The gift receiver can make their favorite foods without all the fats with one multi-function countertop appliance. Furthermore, many clients find the plastic odor from air fryers off-putting, so Uber listened. By pre-venting the plastic at the factory, it becomes an odorless air fryer. The only smell that comes from the air fryer will be the appetizing aroma of the foods. Price is $109.00. It is available at Uberappliance.com, Amazon, Wayfair and more.
Valentine’s Day gifts can be tricky to pick, but no matter who you are treating this year, they’ll be thankful to receive a Valentine’s Day cheese and charcuterie board from West Palm Beach, FL-based Boarderie. Honored by Oprah Winfrey in November 2022 on her exclusive “Favorite Things” list and featured on ABC’s ‘Shark Tank” on November 18, 2022, Boarderie is the first and only company that is shipping completely pre-assembled, catering-quality cheese and charcuterie boards overnight, nationwide. Boarderie has changed edible gifting and “Shark Tank” investor Lori Greiner agrees … She accepted the chance to work with Aaron Menitofff (Co-CEO & Managing Partner) and Rachel Solomon (Co-CEO & Partner) to take their business to the next level.
Pictured above is the Cheese Lovers Ciccetti Cheese & Charcuterie Board. Included in box: 15 hand-selected artisan cheeses, meats, dried fruits, nuts and chocolates artfully-arranged and ready-to-serve, 1 box of rosemary and olive oil crackers, Acacia wood board (9in x 9in x 1.5in), Bamboo cutlery kit.
Boarderie’s Limited Edition Valentine’s Day Ciccetti serves 2-3 and arrives chilled, fully arranged and ready-to-serve in an acacia wood board. Simply cut open the freshly sealed pouch and enjoy. This board features 16 hand selected, artisan ingredients sourced from around the world for a perfectly balanced pairing.
Cheeses include: Huntsman 2-Layer, Peppadew Pepper White Cheddar, Truffle Gouda, Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Cheddar, and White Cheddar Heart. Charcuterie includes: Angel’s Black Truffle Salami and Salami Piccante. Accompaniments include: Dried Strawberries, Turkish Dried Figs, Candied Walnuts, Everything Seasoned Cashews, Tangerine & Chili Marinated Green Olives, Chocolate Hearts, Sun Dried Tomatoes, and Rosemary & Olive Oil Crackers.
Cheese Lovers Ciccetti Cheese & Charcuterie Board is $139.00. Check out their other amazing options for Valentine’s Day and future celebrations. Visit https://boarderie.com/.
Photo Credit: Good Molly’s Cookies
Good Molly’s Cookies
Good Molly’s, a woman-owned startup, offers delicious cookies in a variety of options that will delight your loved ones for Valentine’s Day. Good Molly’s Bakehouse Cookies are handmade with premium and organic ingredients like Certified Gluten Free and Purity Protocol Wyoming Oats (without glyphosate) and Vermont Maple Syrup. You won’t find any artificial ingredients or preservatives in their cookies — just pure, delicious indulgence! Just about everyone can enjoy Good Molly’s Bakehouse Cookies because they are gluten free, dairy free, egg free, soy free, peanut free, sesame free, tree nut free (other than coconut), and vegan.
Good Molly’s Cookies are made in a gluten free, peanut free, tree nut free (other than coconut), and soy free facility. Dairy and egg are processed in the facility (in other products and on different days). Finished product is tested for gluten.
The Bakehouse Dozen Box includes 12 oversized 2-oz cookies (4 each of Sea Salt Double Chocolate, 3 each of Chocolate Chunk and Cinnamon Oatmeal and 2 each of Peppermint Brownie), makes for a great gift, anytime. Box measures 8″ x 8″ x 3″. The oversized cookies are perfect for sharing — or for keeping all to yourself. Eat or freeze upon receiving. Perfect for gatherings and celebrations. It is $39.95. Visit https://goodmollys.com/.
Photo Credit: BakeMeAWish.com
BakeMeAWish.com Valentine’s Day Lineup
BakeMeAWish.com, the leading national online gourmet gifting company, has introduced two new unique flavored delights to their Valentine’s day lineup, the Pink Champagne Cake and Chocolate Truffle Cake. There’s no need for generic chocolate or candy hearts when you can send your message of love with delicious, fresh-baked treats from BakeMeAWish.com’s beautifully crafted gourmet confections for Valentine’s Day. Each gourmet gift comes with festive packaging and a greeting card to share your love. With guaranteed next-day delivery, you can be sure to spread the love anywhere! In keeping with their seasonal good-will efforts, 5% of sales support a variety of non-profit organizations through Bake Me A Wish! Cares. You can find BakeMeAWish.com on Rakuten.
The Pink Champagne Cake is a fluffy yellow cake with a hint of champagne flavor and a delectable raspberry cream inside. The Chocolate Truffle Cake is a unique chocolate cake experience with decadent chocolate cake that features chocolate truffle balls on top and is covered in chocolate sprinkles around the side. Send your special someone a message to feel extra loved this Valentine’s Day with the“Happy Valentine’s Day” themed cake and heart-shaped cake decorated with the classic “Be Mine.”
Also included in the Valentine’s Day lineup like the Solid Gold Valentine’s Day Tower, JUMBO Valentine’s Day Cupcakes, and the Heart-shaped Cookie Tin. For the romantics looking for chocolate, BakeMeAWish.com offers delectable chocolate truffles in their Classic Chocolate Truffle Gift Box and Deluxe Chocolate Truffle Gift Box. These truffles include a mix of dark, white and milk chocolates with creamy fillings like caramel, coffee or amaretto.
“Valentine’s Day is the perfect time to send a sweet message of love to brighten someone’s day!” said Joseph Dornoff, President of BakeMeAWish.com “It isn’t just for couples and lovers. It’s a great opportunity to let someone special in your life know you’re thinking about them.”
The Valentine’s Day lineup from BakeMeAWish.com includes: Beloved Brownie Sampler ($42), Be Mine! Heart-Shaped Chocolate Cake ($60), Be Mine! Heart-Shaped Red Velvet Cake ($60), Solid Gold Valentine’s Day Tower ($64), Valentine’s Day Boutique Tower ($59), JUMBO Valentine’s Day Cupcakes ($50), Mini Valentine’s Day Cupcakes ($52), The Valentine’s Day Basket ($55), Heart-Shaped Cookie Tin ($38), Pretty in Pink Valentine’s Day Cake ($60), True Romance Valentine’s Day Cake ($60). To order gourmet bakery gifts for family and friends for Valentine’s Day please visit www.bakemeawish.com.
Photo Credit: @sugarwish
Sugarwish Valentine’s Luxe
It’s no surprise gift experiences have been named one of the biggest gifting trends for 2023. Experiences reign supreme as they are so much more personable, memorable (and fun!). With this in mind, Sugarwish has launched its most luxurious and extravagant gift experience of them all — The Sugarwish Valentine’s Luxe. The new Valentine’s gift experiences deliver even more choice (giftees can choose their own gift category) and then their favorite flavors, scents or varietals! The best part? Sugarwishes can be sent via email or text (or the app of their choice).
Sugarwish Valentine’s Luxe starts at $35 shipped. It is the perfect gift for those that deserve something extra this heart-warming season! Giftees get to choose between Ultra Premium Wines and Wine Tastings, Beautiful Farm Fresh Flowers, Boutique Candles, or Candy!… and then they pick their favorites.
Photo Credit: @sugarwish
Furthermore, you can consider gifting Sugarwish Valentine’s Treats. They start at $25 shipped. Send the perfect gift of candy, cookies, popcorn, snacks, coffee or tea to your entire Valentine’s list! Your recipients will love you for it. Valentine’s themed gifts arrive in limited edition pink and red striped boxes. Visit Sugarwish.com.
Photo Credit: Eat Me Guilt Free
Eat Me Guilt Free
This Valentine’s (or Galentine’s) Day, treat your sweetheart or favorite gal pal to Eat Me Guilt Free – a health-focused line of bread, brownies, snacks and tortilla wraps. To celebrate Eat Me Guilt Free is offering 15% off on all brownies from February 13-19, 2023.
Cuban-American Cristie Besu started baking Eat Me Guilt Free treats straight from her very own kitchen in 2013 while working as a registered nurse and certified sports nutritionist. Eat Me Guilt Free was created to fill a void for Besu’s original customers. She worked closely with clients to craft nutrition programs, helping them with everything from disease management to improving labs, to just being able to move and feel better about themselves.
Products are available for purchase at more than 9,000 independent retailers nationwide including Winn Dixie, United Supermarkets, Safeway, Giant Food, Albertsons, Market Street, Faire Market Place, GNC, The Vitamin Shoppe, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Planet Fitness, Gold’s Gym, Anytime Fitness, Go Puff, and Navy Exchange Stores as well as Amazon.com, Walmart.com and EatMeGuiltFree.com.
Here a few of EMGF’s Valentine’s Day brownie favorites:
Red Velvet ($38 – box of 12) – She may be smooth like velvet on the outside, but it’s the inside that matters – and she’s got it all! This red velvet brownie is filled with white chocolate chips, non-GMO, free of preservatives, protein-packed, and low-carb!
Tuxedo ($38 – box of 12) – Dressed to the nines and OOF‚ also fine, Eat me Guilt Free’s Tuxedo brownie always makes an impression. A rich chocolate brownie, detailed with white chocolate chips. This snack will have you feeling oh-so-sophisticated.
Nothing But Chocolate ($38 – box of 12) – This protein-packed variety box is filled with nothing but chocolate brownies. For a limited time, enjoy 3 of each (Galaxy, Tuxedo, Original Chocolate, and PB Bliss) in ONE box! This one is for all the chocoholics out there!
In development for two years, Eat Me Guilt Free’s new and improved formula has less sugar, is non-GMO and uses modified atmosphere packaging to exclude unnecessary preservatives. It features ingredients sourced in Europe, where regulations against food additives are more stringent than in the U.S. The new formula is packed with 14 grams of protein, and is low-carb, with approx. 200 calories per serving. While improving the quality of ingredients in its products, Eat Me Guilt Free remains focused on maintaining an unprecedented protein-packed and low-carb ratio. Visit https://www.eatmeguiltfree.com/.
doTERRA MetaPWR Supplement System
The MetaPWR system includes six supplement products designed to support your metabolic health on a cellular level. Products in the system are also available individually. The MetaPWR system helps you live your most powerful life, supporting your metabolism, energy, and health on a cellular level.* Designed to be used in a system, each MetaPWR product offers a specialty, while also supporting and enhancing the benefits of the other products. The MetaPWR System includes the following:
For a limited time, this kit qualifies as an enrollment kit. Furthermore, it will include one year of doTERRA Wholesale membership for new doTERRA customers! Price: $238.67. Visit https://www.doterra.com/US/en/p/metapwr-kit.
Cozy Earth Women’s Bamboo Jogger Pant
Our irresistibly soft Women’s Bamboo Joggers have all the coziness of pajamas woven into a stylish silhouette that valentines can wear anywhere. With their flattering fit and phone-friendly side pockets, these super soft joggers will be your softest all-season staple wardrobe whether you are staying in or stepping out. This ultrasoft brushed fabric is made of 62% Premium Viscose from Bamboo, 28% Acrylic, and 10% Spandex. Awarded Oprah’s Favorite Things 2020. Price: $124. Visit https://cozyearth.com/products/cozy-earth-ultra-soft-bamboo-jogger-pant?variant=31072660750433.
A3 Direct K Cup Drawer Organizer
A3 Direct K Cup Drawer Organizers allow you to keep all of your pods organized and easily accessible, saving you time and space in your kitchen. Store your coffee pods in style with these convenient k cup holders for counter display or tucked away in your drawers. Compatible with Keurig coffee pods, this acrylic Keurig coffee pod holder is a must-have for coffee-loving valentines and those who love to keep their countertops tidy. This k-cup holder conveniently stores up to twenty-five of your favorite K-Cup pods holders for counter display or tucked away in your drawers. Each drawer K Cup organizer is made of durable and lightweight acrylic sized 10.63″ L x 10.63″ W x 1.57″. Price: $23.99. Visit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09PTJDDGH.
A3 Direct’s Team Bride Bachelorette Cups
A3 Direct’s rose gold bachelorette party cups are perfect additions to your party no matter the theme. Bridesmaid cups can hold up to 16 oz. of your favorite drink, making sure you never run on empty! Set of 11 cups include 1 white Bride Cup + 10 rose gold Bridesmaid cups! These cups will be ready for the party and after-party! Durable, reusable, and dishwasher-safe material. Price: $16.99. Visit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D537SCT. For additional A3Direct Party Supplies for a bachelorette party, wedding, or baby shower, check out the following:
A3 Direct’s set of stunning bridesmaid sunglasses is perfect for a wild night out with the girls or just lounging by the pool. The stylish white and rose gold frame colors are sure to match any outfit too! These bachelorette party sunglasses are not just pretty! They are made with stylish reflective UV 400 lenses that will keep your eyes safe from harmful rays while still looking fabulous! A set of these classy vintage-styled bride sunglasses include one white pair of Bride and six pairs of rose gold Bride Tribe frames. Price: $22.99. Visit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GDTNMLZ.
A3 DIRECT LED Glasses
A3 DIRECT’s set of twelve LED light up, glow in the dark sunglasses comes with twelve pairs of LED glasses in four colors (red, blue, green, purple) with batteries pre-installed, so you can use them right away. Moreover, they have 12 hours of life. Each LED glasses party favor is made to universally fit both adults and kids, making this fun and vibrant glow party favors pack a sure hit at your glow in the dark party or neon party. These light up sunglasses are perfect for adults’ and children’s glow in the dark parties, neon parties, birthday parties, parties for valentines, New Year parties, concerts, and more! Price: $15.99 for 12 Pack. Visit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DBYSR3M.
A3 Direct N2 Makeup Brush Organizer
Store all your favorite makeup brushes, eyeliner, and lip pencils with this acrylic makeup brush holder. With six large storage slots, you can fit all your brushes in a convenient and stunning way. Dimensions: 8.0″ x 4.5″ x 3.5″ / Slot dimensions: 2.25″ x 2.x25″. You will love how much the makeup brush organizer can fit! Store brushes of all lengths (especially long ones) without the fear of tipping thanks to its sturdy design and gripped bottom base. The N2 brush holder makeup organizer is made with premium scratch-resistant acrylic complete with a sleek black finish. This brush makeup holder will look great on your vanity or bathroom countertops. Price: $25.00. Visit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CT4EGFY.
Marbela Yamma Jamma Soap
Georgia based Marbela creates cruelty-free, handmade bath products that will help valentines enjoy their “me time,” while also making you feel good about your purchase due to the brand’s minimal environmental impact. Marbela’s Yamma Jamma Soap offers the aroma of marshmallows roasting in the oven with brown sugar melting on top is a favorite childhood scent for many. Sweet Potato, Marshmallow, and Pumpkin. Made with Saponified Oils of: Olive Oil, Organic Virgin Coconut Oil, Shea Butter, Castor Oil, Vitamin E, Mica, Sodium Lactate (for hardness), Titanium Dioxide (natural colorant), Fragrance. 3.5 oz Handmade, Vegan Friendly, Cruelty Free. Price: $9.95. Visit https://marbela.com/en-ca/collections/handmade-artisan-soaps/products/yamma-jamma-handmade-soap.
Balance Your Buzz Cocktail Mixers
These vitamin and electrolyte drink mixers were formulated by a naturopathic physician to replenish what alcohol depletes for a better tomorrow. They are awesome for mocktails. Moreover, if you forgot to “Balance Your Buzz” the night before, these cocktail mixers work well as recovery drinks too! Healthy cocktails just became a thing! Balance Your Buzz Cocktail Mixers are easy to travel with 8-oz. vitamin infused, no added sugar packets that mix with alcohol for a delicious cocktail. Use them post-workout, hydrate while traveling, and boost immunity. Moreover, enjoy with valentines.
There is NO alcohol in these mixers. In addition, they are available in five delicious Passion Fruit, Mixed Berry, Coconut Blood Orange, Lemon Lime, and Apple Cider. They are keto-friendly, gluten-free, low calories, low carbs, and contain no preservatives or sugar. Moreover, they are vitamin-, antioxidant- and electrolyte-rich. Price: Variety 8-Pack (2 Of Each Flavor + 2 FREE Apple Cider) – $13.99. Visit thebuzzongifts.com.
Zoop Complete Pet Bundle: Health + Odor Grooming Wipes, Towels & Stain + Odor Pro Eliminator Spray
Zoop makes utterly genius pet solution products that are better for pets, people, and the planet. Zoop’s nontoxic pet products are made without gross, unpronounceable ingredients — instead, they find powerfully simple formulations that work, every time! Zoop is a non-toxic pet grooming brand that allows you to clean your pet’s fur, paws, and ears with ease and harm free. After use, your pet will feel refreshed and cleaner than ever with Zoop’s effective Health + Odor Grooming Towels – 15 Count , Health + Odor Grooming Wipes – 60 Count, and Stain + Odor Pro Eliminator Spray. Price: $48.99. Visit https://zoopbrand.com/products/complete-pet-bundle.
Papadelics Trippin’ Truffle Parm
Shiitake mushrooms have long been a part of Asian cuisine due to their diverse potential medicinal benefits such as activating the immune system, supporting heart health, and increasing energy levels. After all, shiitake mushrooms still account for over 25% of the world’s edible mushroom production. Cue Popadelics, a line of crunchy shiitake mushroom chips that are vegan, non-GMO, and pack 6g of fiber and 3g of protein per 1.4 oz serving. They are available in three flavors — Trippin’ Truffle Parm, Twisted Thai Chili, and Rad Rosemary + Salt. A portion of all sales of Popadelics supports various causes centered on health and wellness, including the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research and their exploration of innovative treatments for improved mental health. Price: $30.00 for three bags (4 oz each). Visit https://www.popadelics.com or https://popadelics.com/collections/snacks-2/products/trippin-truffle-parm.
dōTERRA SuperMint Oil
Crisp, clean, and compelling, doTERRA SuperMint brings together CPTG® Peppermint, Japanese Mint, Bergamot Mint, and Spearmint essential oils for a powerfully refreshing blend. When diffused or used topically, doTERRA SuperMint offers valentines an invigorating and energizing aroma, creating an uplifting environment that is ideal for mental focus and enhanced stamina. Menthol—the primary chemical constituent of doTERRA SuperMint—promotes a cooling sensation when inhaled, which may contribute to feelings of open airways. When applied to the skin during a massage, its cooling effect may be soothing and comforting. This synergistic blend helps freshen the breath. In addition, it supports a healthy digestive system when taken internally. * Price: $42.67. Visit https://www.doterra.com/US/en/p/supermint-oil or for this product in beadlets for $21.33 at https://www.doterra.com/US/en/p/supermint-beadlets.
dōTERRA Motivate® Touch Encouraging Blend
Breathe in the refreshing, citrusy, and minty aroma of doTERRA Motivate as you set yourself up for success and strive to make the most out of every day. This blend includes hints of mint and citrus and can be applied in an easy roller on temples, wrists, and pulse points. Trying new things or developing healthy habits can be difficult or uncomfortable, causing you to doubt yourself or feel pessimistic. Positive self-talk, goal setting, and recorded progress are all effective ways to keep you moving forward.
As you work to find the courage to take the next step, roll on doTERRA Motivate Touch. Convenient and gentle, the roll-on essential oil blend is ideal for valentines with sensitive skin or children. Examples of its uses include: rolling onto your temples before a day of challenging work; applying to the back of the neck before giving a speech. Gliding onto the pulse points before participating in sports or other competitions. Price: $22.67. Visit https://www.doterra.com/US/en/p/doterra-motivate-touch-encouraging-blend-oil.
Plantmade Scalp and Beard Massager
Plantmade’s Scalp and Beard Massager, a perfect gift for valentines, gets rid of dead skin cells and reduces dandruff. It removes excess build-up, dirt, and toxins. The soft silicone bristles exfoliate, providing gentle relief from itchiness. Moreover, they help you get to those hard-to-reach places. The massager stimulates blood flow to spark hair and beard growth at the follicles. It creates the perfect environment for a healthy scalp and beard. Price: $14. Visit https://www.weareplantmade.com/products/scalp-and-beard-massager.
Earlybird Full Spectrum CBD Gummies
Earlybird is an Austin-based recreational hemp company that makes gummies and tincture formulated to make you feel good. It is one of the first companies to formulate a full-spectrum hemp edible with an intentional microdose of natural THC from hemp that delivers a consistent, relaxing experience and puts a smile on your face. Earlybird’s Full Spectrum CBD Gummies target ~2.5mg of natural THC from hemp in each serving. They come in strawberry, watermelon, lemon flavors or of a flavor trio. Price for three pouches: $29.99. Visit: https://earlybirdcbd.com/collections/cbd-edibles/products/full-spectrum-cbd-gummies-4-pack?.
PlantMade’s Origin Hair Growth Kit
PlantMade offers Ppure, plant-based, and powerful formulations designed to target your unique hair issues. This wellness hair care brand strives to give you healthy and hydrated hair! Mend and repair damaged hair and strands. Reactivate “sleeping” follicles to fill in those bald spots. Reduce excessive breakage and shedding. PlantMade’s Origin Hair Growth Kit products are made of 100% vegan, plant-derived ingredients. PlantMade’s Origin Hair Growth Kit includes Drizzle – Hydrating Mist, Soil – Hair/Beard Soufflé, and Inches – Strengthen|Grow|Mend. Price: Separately Starting at $29.00, or all three in the Origin Hair Growth Kit for $91.00. Visit https://www.weareplantmade.com/collections/all-products/products/origin to purchase PlantMade’s Origin Hair Growth Kit or https://www.weareplantmade.com/collections/all-products to purchase products separately.
BLITHE Pressed Serum Line
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BLITHE Bubbling Splash Mask
BLITHE’s Bubbling Splash Mask contains extract of Aloe Vera, Avocado, and African Whitewood that are full of Vitamin A, C, and E and help soothe sensitive skin, control excessive sebum, and minimize pores. This innovative mud mask provides a deep cleanse and minimizes/tightens pores. A blend of clay from Canada and glacial water from Alaska, the mask removes impurities and excess oil and decreases pores without drying the skin. It leaves skin looking healthy and fresh. The mask can be used as a mud or foam mask (add water for it to be foam). It’s great for a quick exfoliation or an at-home spa day! Vegan, Cruelty-Free, Gluten Free, Hypoallergenic. Price: $24 for 4.0 fl oz. Visit https://www.blithecosmetic.com/collections/cleansers/products/bubbling-splash-mask-indian-glacial-mud.
TableTopics®
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OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, today released an AI Text Classifier that might be able to help you determine whether the text you’re reading was written by AI or a human.
But there’s a but.
OpenAI notes it’s “impossible to reliably detect all AI-written text” and it has “not thoroughly assessed the effectiveness of the classifier in detecting content written in collaboration with human authors.”
Why we care. There are already a variety of AI content detectors. If these tools are able to do a fairly effective job of identifying AI-generated text, it’s safe to assume search engines can. Think: Google’s helpful content system.
Also, if you are publishing content, it may be smart of you to run any content submitted by your agency or freelance writers through these tools. We’re entering a new era – and you don’t want to publish anything that could potentially get your site flagged as publishing automatically generated content, which is against Google’s guidelines. We have already started using tools like this for all contributed content here at Search Engine Land.
What is the AI Text Classifier? OpenAI calls its new tool a “fine-tuned GPT model that predicts how likely it is that a piece of text was generated by AI from a variety of sources, such as ChatGPT.”
It has some limitations – most notably the results may be inaccurate. OpenAI primarily trained the tool on English content written by adults so it’s entirely likely there will be false positives. Also, as OpenAI pointed out, it’s easy to edit AI-generated text to pass as human-generated. As noted in its FAQ section:
“The results may help, but should not be the sole piece of evidence, when deciding whether a document was generated with AI. The model is trained on human-written text from a variety of sources, which may not be representative of all kinds of human-written text.”
The results of the classifier. After you paste your text into tool (Open AI says you need a minimum of 1,000 characters, which is roughly 150-250 words) the AI Text Classifier will evaluate whether the text was generated using AI. You will see one of five labels:
Very unlikely.
Unlikely.
Unclear if it is.
Possibly.
Likely.
Here were the results after I pasted in the text of this article you’re reading (human written, I swear):
And thankfully, the classifier thought it was “very unlikely” that this article was AI-generated.
With the inevitable demise of cookies, marketers are scrambling for ways to deliver personalized experiences with user consent, all without compromising convenience or security. Today, many are turning to the login box as a critical first step in executing an effective first-party data strategy. It’s no longer just a security requirement – it’s now the doorway into their brand’s digital user experience.
Join Salman Ladha, senior product marketing manager from Okta, as he shares techniques that marketing and digital teams can use to remove friction from their login experience – leading to improved acquisition, retention, and increased revenues.
We have reached the finish line – the seemingly longest month on record has finally ended. January is no more!
However, as we head into February, there are a few events and changes you may need to be aware of. These could impact your finances and the wider economy. It’s good to stay up to date to ensure you don’t face any nasty shocks during the coming weeks.
Here are six financial changes happening in February.
At the end of February, energy regulator Ofgem will announce the new energy price cap. This will be announced on February 27th, and will apply between April and June of this year. Although nothing is yet confirmed, Ofgem’s Chief Executive Jonathan Brearley has suggested the price cap may drop below £3,000.
If the energy cap does fall below this amount, customers would only save a small amount of money due to the current energy price guarantee set by the Government. Although the price cap will be below £3,000 annually for the average household, your energy bills will ultimately depend on your usage.
Water bill rises
Nothing has been confirmed as of yet, however in 2022, Water UK announced how much water bills could rise this month. Of course, the amount your bill will rise by (or reduce by, in some areas!), will depend on your geographical location, how much you currently pay and your usage.
Different locations across the UK are under different water companies, with each company responsible for setting bill prices in their area.
Passport renewal fees
From the beginning of February, passport renewal fees are going to increase – by a whopping 9%! The Home Office has said new fees will help the system meet its costs through those who use it.
From Thursday, 2nd February 2023, it will now cost £82.50 to renew an adult’s passport, up from £75.50. The cost of a new passport for a child will also increase by just under a fiver to £53.50.
Applying for a new passport via the Post Office will also increase in price. An adult will now be shelling out £93, an £8 increase from the previous £85. Children’s passport applications will also rise from £58.50 to £64.
In terms of overseas standard paper applications, the cost for adults will increase from £95.50 to £104.50. Applications for children will also increase, from £65.50 to £71.50.
Bank of England’s quarterly meeting
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meets every quarter to decide if interest rates should increase. The next meeting will take place in just two days’ time, on February 2nd.
If interest rates should increase again, the cost of borrowing will become more expensive. This includes loans, credit cards and mortgage repayments even more costly.
This could be good news, however, for those with savings. Savings rates will get a boost as banks continue to offer the highest interest rates seen in years.
Changes to Universal Credit
If you are in receipt of Universal Credit, an important change is being put into place. Around 120,000 people on UC will be impacted as a result of this, so make sure to take note!
The Administrative Earnings Threshold (AET) is increasing. This means people have to earn more to be exempt from the requirements of looking for or preparing for work.
Previously, households on UC had to earn the equivalent of 12 hours pay a week (at the National Living Wage). This meant they did not have to meet certain requirements, including looking for work.
Now, the threshold has increased from 12 hours to 15 hours, meaning 120,000 more people will be pushed into earning more in order to be exempt from requirements.
Household support
The final of the financial changes happening this month is the deadline for the Household Support Fund. The Household Support Fund was launched in October 2022 in order to help the most vulnerable of Brits through the cost-of-living crisis, especially during the winter months.
Struggling households are eligible for extra financial support through the scheme, however, some deadlines are approaching, with eligible households encouraged to act fast.
Each council has a different deadline, so make sure to contact your local authority if you are unsure. However, all councils have until March 31st 2023 to give out this financial support.
Sous vide steak is certainly having its moment. As modern chefs and home cooks seek ways to maximize flavor and texture, this cutting-edge cooking technique has become increasingly popular. Sous vide involves slow-cooking food in a vacuum-sealed bag in a low temperature water bath for precise results and more tender, juicy cuts of meat. The benefits of sous vide steak extend further than better flavor and juiciness; the method also offers convenience, since the cook can prepare it ahead of time without worrying about overcooking or drying it out. With new sous vide apps available to help guide home cooks, this cooking method will likely only continue to gain traction as an innovative way to make dinner delicious.
In recent years, the sous vide cooking technique has been rapidly adopted by restaurant industry professionals, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down. This French cooking method requires ingredients to be sealed in a bag and then submerged in a preheated water bath for prolonged periods of time at an almost exact temperature. The amazing thing about this approach is that it locks in all of the flavorful juices and oils of the food being cooked, making for intensely flavorful dishes with immaculate texture. With the sous vide technique, ingredient and texture accuracy become more accessible than ever to any kitchen seeking precision.
The sous vide technique is an incredibly versatile and efficient way to cook a wide range of dishes. With its simple preparation and minimal cleanup, there is virtually no effort required on your part. When it comes to seasoning, there is little if any at all needed: the natural flavors and juices produced during this cooking method are enough to make a delicious meal. Cooking with the sous vide technique is bound to produce tasty results every time. Thus, this tried-and-true approach guarantees you will enjoy the perfect dish no matter what affair you might be hosting or occasion you may be celebrating.
Sous vide steak has taken the culinary world by storm! By using this method, chefs and hobbyists alike have become able to prepare restaurant-quality steaks without the expensive equipment and time required for traditional methods. The best part of sous vide steak is that it always comes out perfectly cooked regardless of thickness or cut, resulting in tender and juicy steaks with a complex flavor unlike any other.
Restaurant kitchens are under a lot of pressure to deliver consistent meals time and time again — and using sous vide to prepare steak is helping them to meet that challenge. Instead of having to guess when it comes to cooking steaks, chefs can now make use of the precise temperature control that sous vide offers in order to achieve perfect results every single time — no matter how many orders have come before or will come after. As a result, restaurants no longer have to worry about serving undercooked steak or guests sending back dry steaks due to overcooking, saving precious kitchen time and increasing customer satisfaction. With sous vide, consistency is definitely key!
Sous vide prepared steaks are an absolute boon for restaurants, providing consistency and precision with meal preparation. Thanks to advanced techniques such as sous vide, chefs no longer have to worry about under- or overcooking their steaks as it is virtually impossible. This gives them more time freed up from the traditional steak-cooking process to focus on other areas in the kitchen. Efficiency within a restaurant is key, so freeing up staff members from having to actively participate in steak-cooking and allowing them to manage other aspects of the kitchen is incredibly valuable. With the time saved, chefs can easily focus on enhancing other dishes with intricate preparations and ingredients or working on perfecting small details that make a big impression.
Sous vide is a revolutionary new way to cook steak that ensures it turns out perfect, and flavorful every time. With this technique, steaks are cooked slowly in their own juices and natural flavors; connecting with minimal disruption from the traditional cooking methods of grilling or pan-frying. Unlike these, sous vide allows the flavor locked within the steak to remain sealed throughout the entire cooking period, ensuring maximum flavor and tenderness remain within the finished product.
Gourmet steak houses across the country are discovering the benefits of sous vide prepared steaks. Sous vide utilizes a water bath to precisely heat the steak for an extended period of time, ensuring that each steak is cooked at a consistent temperature and creating a steak that is meltingly tender and bursting with flavor. On top of all this, sous vide delivers it all at an incredibly efficient rate, making them a great choice for busy restaurant kitchens. All in all, sous vide prepared steaks make for a spectacular option on any restaurant’s menu. Customers will no doubt be delighted by an evenly cooked, high-quality steak that bursts with flavor and oozes juiciness — what’s not to love?
Starting an online jewellery business can be a great way to share your knowledge and passion for jewellery with the world. There are a few things you should keep in mind to make sure your business is successful. Here are some top tips from Royale Johnson, co-founder at PRYA Jewellery, on starting an online jewellery business:
1. Carry out research on your industry
It’s important to know who your target audience is and what they want.
Prior to launching an online jewellery business, it is important that you conduct extensive research. Research into your target audience will assist in understanding what they prefer and this can help with tailoring your products accordingly at the conceptual stage of your business.
Does personalised jewellery interest them?
Are there seasonal buyers or do customers seek out evergreen items?
Knowing who you are catering for can help pinpoint the types of products which should be offered in order to ensure maximum appeal.
Online surveys are an incredible asset for gathering feedback from potential customers so you can design products that meet their needs and provide maximum success. By utilising these surveys, you gain invaluable insight into which features your customers deem most important when making a purchase decision.
2. Select a niche for your jewellery business
There are a lot of jewellery businesses in the e-commerce world, so you must find a way to make your business stand out.
Finding a specific niche that sets you apart from the competition is essential when setting up your jewellery business. This could mean offering unique designs, specialising in handcrafted pieces or utilising cutting-edge technology for the trendiest designs. By differentiating yourself from other businesses, you’ll create and optimise your business for consumer interest while setting yourself apart from competitors.
3. Prioritise having a user-friendly and visually appealing website or online store
If you want to start a jewellery website or store, think of it as an opportunity to create an amazing experience for customers. For instance, the ideal site should be effortless and enjoyable to navigate; meaning that customers can easily find what they are looking for with clear product pages, search functionality, and organised menus. Additionally, consider adding stunning visuals which further elevate the customer journey — complemented by a neutral colour palette so the products stand out even more!
Prioritising user experience in the design of your website will make it effortless for visitors to locate what they need, crafting a delightful journey that encourages them to delve deeper into the site and be more likely to purchase.
4. Invest in high-quality photos for your products
Crafting stunning photos of your jewellery is essential to ensure that your products get noticed. Investing in high-quality images will make them truly stand out.
Jewellery photography is more than simply showing off its beauty; it’s also a way to showcase the item’s unique features, such as materials and design. These aspects have the potential to draw attention from customers and spark their interest in purchasing your products.
Taking professional photos to showcase your jewellery designs can pay dividends in terms of brand awareness and sales. If you’re intending to scale your jewellery business, investing in good-quality photos is the way to go. From winter picks to new arrivals, you want your customers to have the experience of being in a jewellery storefront through your imagery.
Not only will high-quality images contribute to brand recognition and sales growth, but they will also give customers the feeling of being inside a jewellery store when they view your images; whether it’s new arrivals or winter picks. Your images should provide an immersive experience that gives potential buyers as much visual information on the jewellery they’re interested in as they require.
5. Utilise social media and other online channels to promote your business
Promoting your business through social media and other online channels is an effective way to grow your customer base and increase sales. Developing a comprehensive digital marketing strategy is key for success, as it can make all the difference in getting noticed. Underscore the positive elements of your product or services so customers know why they should trust your brand.
You can also increase brand awareness, garner organic reach and precisely target potential customers by utilising SEO, content marketing and influencer outreach. Remember that having multiple online channels not only allows you to tailor diverse micro-campaigns to various audiences, but also provides valuable insights into customer preferences and how various online campaigns perform.
“Fragments” of Yandex’s codebase leaked online last week. Much like Google, Yandex is a platform with many aspects such as email, maps, a taxi service, etc. The code leak featured chunks of all of it.
According to the documentation therein, Yandex’s codebase was folded into one large repository called Arcadia in 2013. The leaked codebase is a subset of all projects in Arcadia and we find several components in it related to the search engine in the “Kernel,” “Library,” “Robot,” “Search,” and “ExtSearch” archives.
The move is wholly unprecedented. Not since the AOL search query data of 2006 has something so material related to a web search engine entered the public domain.
Although we are missing the data and many files that are referenced, this is the first instance of a tangible look at how a modern search engine works at the code level.
Personally, I can’t get over how fantastic the timing is to be able to actually see the code as I finish my book “The Science of SEO” where I’m talking about Information Retrieval, how modern search engines actually work, and how to build a simple one yourself.
In any event, I’ve been parsing through the code since last Thursday and any engineer will tell you that is not enough time to understand how everything works. So, I suspect there will be several more posts as I keep tinkering.
Also, shout out to Ryan Jones for digging in and sharing some key findings with me over IM.
OK, let’s get busy!
It’s not Google’s code, so why do we care?
Some believe that reviewing this codebase is a distraction and that there is nothing that will impact how they make business decisions. I find that curious considering these are people from the same SEO community that used the CTR model from the 2006 AOL data as the industry standard for modeling across any search engine for many years to follow.
That said, Yandex is not Google. Yet the two are state-of-the-art web search engines that have continued to stay at the cutting edge of technology.
Software engineers from both companies go to the same conferences (SIGIR, ECIR, etc) and share findings and innovations in Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing/Understanding, and Machine Learning. Yandex also has a presence in Palo Alto and Google previously had a presence in Moscow.
A quick LinkedIn search uncovers a few hundred engineers that have worked at both companies, although we don’t know how many of them have actually worked on Search at both companies.
In a more direct overlap, Yandex also makes usage of Google’s open source technologies that have been critical to innovations in Search like TensorFlow, BERT, MapReduce, and, to a much lesser extent, Protocol Buffers.
So, while Yandex is certainly not Google, it’s also not some random research project that we’re talking about here. There is a lot we can learn about how a modern search engine is built from reviewing this codebase.
At the very least, we can disabuse ourselves of some obsolete notions that still permeate SEO tools like text-to-code ratios and W3C compliance or the general belief that Google’s 200 signals are simply 200 individual on and off-page features rather than classes of composite factors that potentially use thousands of individual measures.
Some context on Yandex’s architecture
Without context or the ability to successfully compile, run, and step through it, source code is very difficult to make sense of.
Typically, new engineers get documentation, walk-throughs, and engage in pair programming to get onboarded to an existing codebase. And, there is some limited onboarding documentation related to setting up the build process in the docs archive. However, Yandex’s code also references internal wikis throughout, but those have not leaked and the commenting in the code is also quite sparse.
Luckily, Yandex does give some insights into its architecture in its public documentation. There are also a couple of patents they’ve published in the US that help shed a bit of light. Namely:
As I’ve been researching Google for my book, I’ve developed a much deeper understanding of the structure of its ranking systems through various whitepapers, patents, and talks from engineers couched against my SEO experience. I’ve also spent a lot of time sharpening my grasp of general Information Retrieval best practices for web search engines. It comes as no surprise that there are indeed some best practices and similarities at play with Yandex.
Yandex’s documentation discusses a dual-distributed crawler system. One for real-time crawling called the “Orange Crawler” and another for general crawling.
Historically, Google is said to have had an index stratified into three buckets, one for housing real-time crawl, one for regularly crawled and one for rarely crawled. This approach is considered a best practice in IR.
Yandex and Google differ in this respect, but the general idea of segmented crawling driven by an understanding of update frequency holds.
One thing worth calling out is that Yandex has no separate rendering system for JavaScript. They say this in their documentation and, although they have Webdriver-based system for visual regression testing called Gemini, they limit themselves to text-based crawl.
The documentation also discusses a sharded database structure that breaks pages down into an inverted index and a document server.
Just like most other web search engines the indexing process builds a dictionary, caches pages, and then places data into the inverted index such that bigrams and trigams and their placement in the document is represented.
This differs from Google in that they moved to phrase-based indexing, meaning n-grams that can be much longer than trigrams a long time ago.
However, the Yandex system uses BERT in its pipeline as well, so at some point documents and queries are converted to embeddings and nearest neighbor search techniques are employed for ranking.
The ranking process is where things begin to get more interesting.
Yandex has a layer called Metasearch where cached popular search results are served after they process the query. If the results are not found there, then the search query is sent to a series of thousands of different machines in the Basic Search layer simultaneously. Each builds a posting list of relevant documents then returns it to MatrixNet, Yandex’s neural network application for re-ranking, to build the SERP.
Based on videos wherein Google engineers have talked about Search’s infrastructure, that ranking process is quite similar to Google Search. They talk about Google’s tech being in shared environments where various applications are on every machine and jobs are distributed across those machines based on the availability of computing power.
One of the use cases is exactly this, the distribution of queries to an assortment of machines to process the relevant index shards quickly. Computing the posting lists is the first place that we need to consider the ranking factors.
There are 17,854 ranking factors in the codebase
On the Friday following the leak, the inimitable Martin MacDonald eagerly shared a file from the codebase called web_factors_info/factors_gen.in. The file comes from the “Kernel” archive in the codebase leak and features 1,922 ranking factors.
Naturally, the SEO community has run with that number and that file to eagerly spread news of the insights therein. Many folks have translated the descriptions and built tools or Google Sheets and ChatGPT to make sense of the data. All of which are great examples of the power of the community. However, the 1,922 represents just one of many sets of ranking factors in the codebase.
A deeper dive into the codebase reveals that there are numerous ranking factor files for different subsets of Yandex’s query processing and ranking systems.
Combing through those, we find that there are actually 17,854 ranking factors in total. Included in those ranking factors are a variety of metrics related to:
Clicks.
Dwell time.
Leveraging Yandex’s Google Analytics equivalent, Metrika.
There is also a series of Jupyter notebooks that have an additional 2,000 factors outside of those in the core code. Presumably, these Jupyter notebooks represent tests where engineers are considering additional factors to add to the codebase. Again, you can review all of these features with metadata that we collected from across the codebase at this link.
Yandex’s documentation further clarifies that they have three classes of ranking factors: Static, Dynamic, and those related specifically to the user’s search and how it was performed. In their own words:
In the codebase these are indicated in the rank factors files with the tags TG_STATIC and TG_DYNAMIC. The search related factors have multiple tags such as TG_QUERY_ONLY, TG_QUERY, TG_USER_SEARCH, and TG_USER_SEARCH_ONLY.
While we have uncovered a potential 18k ranking factors to choose from, the documentation related to MatrixNet indicates that scoring is built from tens of thousands of factors and customized based on the search query.
This indicates that the ranking environment is highly dynamic, similar to that of Google environment. According to Google’s “Framework for evaluating scoring functions” patent, they have long had something similar where multiple functions are run and the best set of results are returned.
Finally, considering that the documentation references tens of thousands of ranking factors, we should also keep in mind that there are many other files referenced in the code that are missing from the archive. So, there is likely more going on that we are unable to see. This is further illustrated by reviewing the images in the onboarding documentation which shows other directories that are not present in the archive.
For instance, I suspect there is more related to the DSSM in the /semantic-search/ directory.
The initial weighting of ranking factors
I first operated under the assumption that the codebase didn’t have any weights for the ranking factors. Then I was shocked to see that the nav_linear.h file in the /search/relevance/ directory features the initial coefficients (or weights) associated with ranking factors on full display.
This section of the code highlights 257 of the 17,000+ ranking factors we’ve identified. (Hat tip to Ryan Jones for pulling these and lining them up with the ranking factor descriptions.)
For clarity, when you think of a search engine algorithm, you’re probably thinking of a long and complex mathematical equation by which every page is scored based on a series of factors. While that is an oversimplification, the following screenshot is an excerpt of such an equation. The coefficients represent how important each factor is and the resulting computed score is what would be used to score selecter pages for relevance.
These values being hard-coded suggests that this is certainly not the only place that ranking happens. Instead, this function is most likely where the initial relevance scoring is done to generate a series of posting lists for each shard being considered for ranking. In the first patent listed above, they talk about this as a concept of query-independent relevance (QIR) which then limits documents prior to reviewing them for query-specific relevance (QSR).
The resulting posting lists are then handed off to MatrixNet with query features to compare against. So while we don’t know the specifics of the downstream operations (yet), these weights are still valuable to understand because they tell you the requirements for a page to be eligible for the consideration set.
However, that brings up the next question: what do we know about MatrixNet?
There is neural ranking code in the Kernel archive and there are numerous references to MatrixNet and “mxnet” as well as many references to Deep Structured Semantic Models (DSSM) throughout the codebase.
The description of one of the FI_MATRIXNET ranking factor indicates that MatrixNet is applied to all factors.
Description: “MatrixNet is applied to all factors – the formula”
}
There’s also a bunch of binary files that may be the pre-trained models themselves, but it’s going to take me more time to unravel those aspects of the code.
What is immediately clear is that there are multiple levels to ranking (L1, L2, L3) and there is an assortment of ranking models that can be selected at each level.
The selecting_rankings_model.cpp file suggests that different ranking models may be considered at each layer throughout the process. This is basically how neural networks work. Each level is an aspect that completes operations and their combined computations yield the re-ranked list of documents that ultimately appears as a SERP. I’ll follow up with a deep dive on MatrixNet when I have more time. For those that need a sneak peek, check out the Search result ranker patent.
For now, let’s take a look at some interesting ranking factors.
Top 5 negatively weighted initial ranking factors
The following is a list of the highest negatively weighted initial ranking factors with their weights and a brief explanation based on their descriptions translated from Russian.
FI_ADV: -0.2509284637 -This factor determines that there is advertising of any kind on the page and issues the heaviest weighted penalty for a single ranking factor.
FI_DATER_AGE: -0.2074373667 – This factor is the difference between the current date and the date of the document determined by a dater function. The value is 1 if the document date is the same as today, 0 if the document is 10 years or older, or if the date is not defined. This indicates that Yandex has a preference for older content.
FI_QURL_STAT_POWER: -0.1943768768 – This factor is the number of URL impressions as it relates to the query. It seems as though they want to demote a URL that appears in many searches to promote diversity of results.
FI_COMM_LINKS_SEO_HOSTS: -0.1809636391 – This factor is the percentage of inbound links with “commercial” anchor text. The factor reverts to 0.1 if the proportion of such links is more than 50%, otherwise, it’s set to 0.
FI_GEO_CITY_URL_REGION_COUNTRY: -0.168645758 – This factor is the geographical coincidence of the document and the country that the user searched from. This one doesn’t quite make sense if 1 means that the document and the country match.
In summary, these factors indicate that, for the best score, you should:
Avoid ads.
Update older content rather than make new pages.
Make sure most of your links have branded anchor text.
Everything else in this list is beyond your control.
Top 5 positively weighted initial ranking factors
To follow up, here’s a list of the highest weighted positive ranking factors.
FI_URL_DOMAIN_FRACTION: +0.5640952971 – This factor is a strange masking overlap of the query versus the domain of the URL. The example given is Chelyabinsk lottery which abbreviated as chelloto. To compute this value, Yandex find three-letters that are covered (che, hel, lot, olo), see what proportion of all the three-letter combinations are in the domain name.
FI_QUERY_DOWNER_CLICKS_COMBO: +0.3690780393 – The description of this factor is that is “cleverly combined of FRC and pseudo-CTR.” There is no immediate indication of what FRC is.
FI_MAX_WORD_HOST_CLICKS: +0.3451158835 – This factor is the clickability of the most important word in the domain. For example, for all queries in which there is the word “wikipedia” click on wikipedia pages.
FI_MAX_WORD_HOST_YABAR: +0.3154394573 – The factor description says “the most characteristic query word corresponding to the site, according to the bar.” I’m assuming this means the keyword most searched for in Yandex Toolbar associated to the site.
FI_IS_COM: +0.2762504972 – The factor is that the domain is a .COM.
In other words:
Play word games with your domain.
Make sure it’s a dot com.
Encourage people to search for your target keywords in the Yandex Bar.
Keep driving clicks.
There are plenty of unexpected initial ranking factors
What’s more interesting in the initial weighted ranking factors are the unexpected ones. The following is a list of seventeen factors that stood out.
FI_PAGE_RANK: +0.1828678331 – PageRank is the 17th highest weighted factor in Yandex. They previously removed links from their ranking system entirely, so it’s not too shocking how low it is on the list.
FI_SPAM_KARMA: +0.00842682963 – The Spam karma is named after “antispammers” and is the likelihood that the host is spam; based on Whois information
FI_SUBQUERY_THEME_MATCH_A: +0.1786465163 – How closely the query and the document match thematically. This is the 19th highest weighted factor.
FI_REG_HOST_RANK: +0.1567124399 – Yandex has a host (or domain) ranking factor.
FI_URL_LINK_PERCENT: +0.08940421124 – Ratio of links whose anchor text is a URL (rather than text) to the total number of links.
FI_PAGE_RANK_UKR: +0.08712279101 – There is a specific Ukranian PageRank
FI_IS_NOT_RU: +0.08128946612 – It’s a positive thing if the domain is not a .RU. Apparently, the Russian search engine doesn’t trust Russian sites.
FI_YABAR_HOST_AVG_TIME2: +0.07417219313 – This is the average dwell time as reported by YandexBar
FI_LERF_LR_LOG_RELEV: +0.06059448504 – This is link relevance based on the quality of each link
FI_NUM_SLASHES: +0.05057609417 – The number of slashes in the URL is a ranking factor.
FI_ADV_PRONOUNS_PORTION: -0.001250755075 – The proportion of pronoun nouns on the page.
FI_TEXT_HEAD_SYN: -0.01291908335 – The presence of [query] words in the header, taking into account synonyms
FI_PERCENT_FREQ_WORDS: -0.02021022114 – The percentage of the number of words, that are the 200 most frequent words of the language, from the number of all words of the text.
FI_YANDEX_ADV: -0.09426121965 – Getting more specific with the distaste towards ads, Yandex penalizes pages with Yandex ads.
FI_AURA_DOC_LOG_SHARED: -0.09768630485 – The logarithm of the number of shingles (areas of text) in the document that are not unique.
FI_AURA_DOC_LOG_AUTHOR: -0.09727752961 – The logarithm of the number of shingles on which this owner of the document is recognized as the author.
FI_CLASSIF_IS_SHOP: -0.1339319854 – Apparently, Yandex is going to give you less love if your page is a store.
The primary takeaway from reviewing these odd rankings factors and the array of those available across the Yandex codebase is that there are many things that could be a ranking factor.
I suspect that Google’s reported “200 signals” are actually 200 classes of signal where each signal is a composite built of many other components. In much the same way that Google Analytics has dimensions with many metrics associated, Google Search likely has classes of ranking signals composed of many features.
Yandex scrapes Google, Bing, YouTube and TikTok
The codebase also reveals that Yandex has many parsers for other websites and their respective services. To Westerners, the most notable of those are the ones I’ve listed in the heading above. Additionally, Yandex has parsers for a variety of services that I was unfamiliar with as well as those for its own services.
What is immediately evident, is that the parsers are feature complete. Every meaningful component of the Google SERP is extracted. In fact, anyone that might be considering scraping any of these services might do well to review this code.
There is other code that indicates Yandex is using some Google data as part of the DSSM calculations, but the 83 Google named ranking factors themselves make it clear that Yandex has leaned on the Google’s results pretty heavily.
Yandex has anti-SEO upper bounds for some ranking factors
315 ranking factors have thresholds at which any computed value beyond that indicates to the system that that feature of the page is over-optimized. 39 of these ranking factors are part of the initially weighted factors that may keep a page from being included in the initial postings list. You can find these in the spreadsheet I’ve linked to above by filtering for the Rank Coefficient and the Anti-SEO column.
It’s not far-fetched conceptually to expect that all modern search engines set thresholds on certain factors that SEOs have historically abused such as anchor text, CTR, or keyword stuffing. For instance, Bing was said to leverage the abusive usage of the meta keywords as a negative factor.
Yandex boosts “Vital Hosts”
Yandex has a series of boosting mechanisms throughout its codebase. These are artificial improvements to certain documents to ensure they score higher when being considered for ranking.
Below is a comment from the “boosting wizard” which suggests that smaller files benefit best from the boosting algorithm.
There are several types of boosts; I’ve seen one boost related to links and I’ve also seen a series of “HandJobBoosts” which I can only assume is a weird translation of “manual” changes.
One of these boosts I found particularly interesting is related to “Vital Hosts.” Where a vital host can be any site specified. Specifically mentioned in the variables is NEWS_AGENCY_RATING which leads me to believe that Yandex gives a boost that biases its results to certain news organizations.
Without getting into geopolitics, this is very different from Google in that they have been adamant about not introducing biases like this into their ranking systems.
The structure of the document server
The codebase reveals how documents are stored in Yandex’s document server. This is helpful in understanding that a search engine does not simply make a copy of the page and save it to its cache, it’s capturing various features as metadata to then use in the downstream rankings process.
The screenshot below highlights a subset of those features that are particularly interesting. Other files with SQL queries suggest that the document server has closer to 200 columns including the DOM tree, sentence lengths, fetch time, a series of dates, and antispam score, redirect chain, and whether or not the document is translated. The most complete list I’ve come across is in /robot/rthub/yql/protos/web_page_item.proto.
What’s most interesting in the subset here is the number of simhashes that are employed. Simhashes are numeric representations of content and search engines use them for lightning fast comparison for the determination of duplicate content. There are various instances in the robot archive that indicate duplicate content is explicitly demoted.
Also, as part of the indexing process, the codebase features TF-IDF, BM25, and BERT in its text processing pipeline. It’s not clear why all of these mechanisms exist in the code because there is some redundancy in using them all.
Link factors and prioritization
How Yandex handles link factors is particularly interesting because they previously disabled their impact altogether. The codebase also reveals a lot of information about link factors and how links are prioritized.
Yandex’s link spam calculator has 89 factors that it looks at. Anything marked as SF_RESERVED is deprecated. Where provided, you can find the descriptions of these factors in the Google Sheet linked above.
Notably, Yandex has a host rank and some scores that appear to live on long term after a site or page develops a reputation for spam.
Another thing Yandex does is review copy across a domain and determine if there is duplicate content with those links. This can be sitewide link placements, links on duplicate pages, or simply links with the same anchor text coming from the same site.
This illustrates how trivial it is to discount multiple links from the same source and clarifies how important it is to target more unique links from more diverse sources.
What can we apply from Yandex to what we know about Google?
Naturally, this is still the question on everyone’s mind. While there are certainly many analogs between Yandex and Google, truthfully, only a Google Software Engineer working on Search could definitively answer that question.
Yet, that is the wrong question.
Really, this code should help us expand our thinking about modern search. Much of the collective understanding of search is built from what the SEO community learned in the early 2000s through testing and from the mouths of search engineers when search was far less opaque. That unfortunately has not kept up with the rapid pace of innovation.
Insights from the many features and factors of the Yandex leak should yield more hypotheses of things to test and consider for ranking in Google. They should also introduce more things that can be parsed and measured by SEO crawling, link analysis, and ranking tools.
For instance, a measure of the cosine similarity between queries and documents using BERT embeddings could be valuable to understand versus competitor pages since it’s something that modern search engines are themselves doing.
Much in the way the AOL Search logs moved us from guessing the distribution of clicks on SERP, the Yandex codebase moves us away from the abstract to the concrete and our “it depends” statements can be better qualified.
To that end, this codebase is a gift that will keep on giving. It’s only been a weekend and we’ve already gleaned some very compelling insights from this code.
I anticipate some ambitious SEO engineers with far more time on their hands will keep digging and maybe even fill in enough of what’s missing to compile this thing and get it working. I also believe engineers at the different search engines are also going through and parsing out innovations that they can learn from and add to their systems.
Simultaneously, Google lawyers are probably drafting aggressive cease and desist letters related to all the scraping.
I’m eager to see the evolution of our space that’s driven by the curious people who will maximize this opportunity.
But, hey, if getting insights from actual code is not valuable to you, you’re welcome to go back to doing something more important like arguing about subdomains versus subdirectories.
Google has released three new updates for the GA4 dashboard, allowing advertisers to find information about current properties or accounts.
Dig deeper. The following updates were posted by Google on their Analytics Help documentation.
Find data stream details
The following search terms allow you to open the details for a web or app data stream in the property you are using:
the keyword “Tracking”
a web stream measurement ID (i.e., “G-XXXXXXX”)
an app stream ID (i.e., “XXXXXXX”)
Find the current property and account settings
The following search terms allow you to open the settings for the property you are using:
the keyword “Property”
the current property ID or property name
The following search terms allow you to open the settings for the account you are using:
the keyword “Account”
the current account ID or account name
Go to other Google Analytics 4 properties
The following search terms allow you to navigate to a different Google Analytics 4 property from the one you are using. Analytics shows you up to 7 properties that match the search query.
the property ID or property name of the other property
a web stream measurement ID (i.e., “G-XXXXXXX”) in the other property
an app stream ID (i.e., “XXXXXXX”) in the other property
Why we care. The additional information will help advertisers analyze streams, accounts, and properties in their GA4 accounts.
Modern technology allows you to do what was previously impossible. Modern management differs from traditional management, because there are modern technologies that can significantly automate any business process. Today, we will consider one of these technologies, which is called an online data room.
Management with VDR
Managing a company with a virtual data room becomes much easier and more efficient. But this is being sent away by a large number of independent researchers who are developing new practices and testing old ones. In fact, at the moment, data room software has become one of the most effective tools for managing an entire company and related paperwork. Everything becomes much easier if you are going to conduct any business transaction that will be important to your company and its financial growth. For example, the whole process of the following business transactions changes if you have a virtual data room set up:
The merger and acquisition process. This is one of the most popular business transactions at the moment that uses a virtual data room. Some newcomers don’t understand why this is the case, but it’s actually quite prosaic. Since virtual data rooms allow businesses to enter all of their business information online and with automated setups, the process of going through the merger and takeover process becomes much easier for both the business owners and the other party that is involved in this process. The management of this process becomes much easier, and the reason for this is the huge number of different improvements that the virtual data room provides. You will be given the help of artificial intelligence to go through the due diligence process.
Fundraising and capital raising. Whether your company is fundraising on an ongoing basis or has decided to run a one-time fundraising campaign, VDRs will help you considerably with proper virtual data room pricing. This is quite similar to the case with mergers and acquisitions. Since all stakeholders in the crowdfunding process need a secure and stable online space where they can store secure documents for months or even years, a virtual data room is the best fit for this process. Having flexible security policies, which are also present there, can allow multiple companies to have a safe presence at once to review various documents. Potential investors will be happy to see that your virtual data room is working properly.
Manage financial and legal documents internally. You can store all legal financial documents, which are confidential and sensitive to being stolen, on local media within the company itself. So, what will you do if you need to provide one or two documents to a third party? How will you protect it from possible data leakage? Virtual data rooms allow you to do this in the most secure and open way possible. It is the virtual data room that can provide 24/7 access so that every party interested in a business process can have access to all the documents they need. It gets more interesting when you find out that data leakages are impossible if you use these enterprise solutions. Even if an employee breaches a security system and steals the data, you will be able to identify that employee and when they did it precisely and thoroughly. Also, you will be able to prove it in court. No one, knowing these factors, would dare steal data from you.
We have looked at just a few cases of management, which govern the virtual data room and you can read more about it at https://datarooms-review.com/virtual-data-room-pricing/. It’s hard to disagree that without this technology, things would be much more complicated. Independent researchers say that the number of data breaches and thefts of confidential documents has decreased precisely with the introduction of virtual data rooms. It’s hard not to notice, especially if you’re looking at the daily news about what’s going on within the corporate walls.
The Question of Lawfulness
Virtual data rooms follow privacy and data protection laws around the world. For example, developers of this type of technology focus on the American market, but also pay attention to the British and other European segments. This is the main market for this technology, so they have to follow every letter of the law. Consequently, you will not have any problems using this technology completely legally. Moreover, you can use this as evidence in court in the event of unforeseen circumstances.
Obviously, the following benefits will await you from the implementation of this technology:
Your security system will be quite predictable and, at the same time, hacker-proof. If you’ve used some piecemeal data protection tools or free solutions like file storage before, you don’t know what you should expect tomorrow. With virtual data rooms, you will know exactly what you should expect and what level of security you will be given. Surprisingly, hackers do not attack virtual data rooms for several reasons, which are essential if you are going to implement this technology in your company. Attackers typically attack popular tools, which are usually limited to virtual storage. Virtual data rooms, on the other hand, are protected against hacking, not just from a legal standpoint but from a functional standpoint as well. All necessary government certificates are accounted for in every virtual data room.
As we said above, you will be fully protected by the law while using this product. All products from virtual data room developers are certified products. This means that all of the security policies that are used in this solution are completely legal and approved by the government for use by large corporations. This means that the courts will side with you if there are any unresolved issues. In case any employee decides to steal any data from you, it can be easily traced through a huge number of means. You can provide copies of virtual data room protocols for the courts to look at your problem from this side. Because of government registrations and regulations, it will be easier for you to prove your case.
You can also use additional tools for your corporate security that are not explicitly stated in the law but are still particularly important for full-fledged corporate security. We’re talking about tools like internal security policies or external security preferences. Obviously, you can’t hurt your company by having something set up wrong. All security settings are, in general, regulated automatically by companies that produce online data rooms. You’re left with editing internal policies, such as roles. This is necessary if you’re going through some complicated process like mergers and acquisitions or if you want to regulate internal access to certain resources among employees.
The virtual data room phenomenon has become especially popular in developed parts of the world. This means that you can count on unquestioning compliance with the most up-to-date privacy and data protection laws.
Conclusion
Virtual data rooms are not only completely legal, but also help to significantly improve management within the company. You can count on all of these benefits, which have been described above. In terms of the law, it is quite a profitable proposition because you will be fully protected not only technologically, but also legally.
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