Transportation and Climate Initiative: The Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) is a new cap-and-trade system. It will set a limit on carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation sector in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and auction off allowances to the fuel companies operating in the region. The price of the allowances will increase expenses for fuel companies and lead to a price hike at the pump. TCI is designed to make driving cars and trucks more expensive. In short, the Transportation and Climate Initiative is a transportation cost increase. All aspects of our economy that rely on transportation, including the millions of products delivered by truck each day, will be jeopardized by TCI.
Allowance: A tradable permit that a company must buy in order to deliver or hold the raw material for gasoline and diesel fuel in the TCI region.
Cap-and-Invest: TCI avoids using the term “cap-and-trade,” opting for the focus-group-approved “cap-and-invest.” Under TCI, the revenue from the allowance auctions would go to state governments for new programs. In other words, cap-and-invest means tax-and-spend.
Signatory Jurisdiction: The states that enact TCI. These could include: Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu says his state will not participate, announcing in December, “I will not force Granite Staters to pay more for their gas just to subsidize other states’ crumbling infrastructure.”
Affected Fuel: The raw material that goes into the gasoline and diesel fuel that power our transportation sector.
State Fuel Suppliers: The companies that deliver and own the affected fuel in TCI states. Clean
Transportation Alternatives: Drivers will pay for TCI in the form of higher fuel prices. The revenue will likely be spent on so-called clean transportation alternatives: mass transit and electric vehicle infrastructure. Vehicular Pollution: Carbon dioxide, the target of TCI, is a colorless, odorless gas that presents no harm to the local environment. Vehicles can emit pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, but those are not greenhouse gases, i.e., they do not warm the planet.
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is running for President of the United States, but that’s not all he’s up to.
He’s also working to upend our energy-spurred prosperity. The Bloomberg Family Foundation, a $7 billion organization of which he is the benefactor has made obstruction of our energy economy its raison d’etre. Bloomberg himself also presides over the board the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, an international alliance of cities whose mayors back his climate and energy approach. Bloomberg is also the chairman emeritus of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the chairman of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). These organizations claim to be nonpartisan arbiters of the climate risk that businesses face, but in reality, they’re controlled almost entirely by the network of hyper-partisan foundations that fuel the environmental left, and their recommendations reflect this. Unfortunately, the disclosure standards established by the SASB have an air of legitimacy that makes them insidious. They are starting to creep into legislation, and if a bill currently in the environmental resources subcommittee were to pass, the recommendations would be used in place of the decisions of the government regulatory agencies whose rightful purview this is.1 This interference is just the tip of Michael Bloomberg’s green influence iceberg. Delving into his foundation’s grantmaking paints the full picture. The Bloomberg Family Foundation is a major cog in influence enterprise we call Big Green, Inc.
Last month, the Institute for Energy Research released the latest update to the Big Green, Inc. database, a project that seeks to shine a light on the whopping sums of money quietly fueling the national environmental lobby and its efforts to restrict affordable, reliable energy.
This update covers 1,583 grants originating from the Heinz Endowments, the Kresge Foundation, and the focus of this article, the Bloomberg Family Foundation.
Grantmaking Basics
The Bloomberg Family Foundation supports mainly large national environmental organizations, and does so primarily through million and multi-million dollar grants. From 2012 to 2016 the foundation gave more than $132 million to groups working in the energy and environment space.
These grants were given to groups like the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund for a variety of broad energy-hampering goals. Many of the organizations that Bloomberg funds are advocates for the total abandonment of reliable mineral energy in the near term. These organizations fail to understand the real state of American energy, and do not acknowledge the incredible burden that a significant decrease in energy availability would have on everyday life. Because of the intermittency problem, wind and solar can never truly replace coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Reliable generating capabilities are necessary for the maintenance of our energy economy, not just when the sun shines or the wind blows, but when the energy is needed.
Bloomberg Family Foundation Grants
Energy Foundation
From 2015 to 2016, the Bloomberg Family Foundation (BFF) gave $4,800,000 to the Energy Foundation, “[t]o support the coordination and expansion of the beyond coal campaign”.The Beyond Coal Campaign, a project of the Sierra Club with partnerships throughout the environmental movement, seeks to close all U.S. coal plants. Its self-described main objective is to, “replace dirty coal with clean energy by mobilizing grassroots activists in local communities to advocate for the retirement of old and outdated coal plants and to prevent new coal plants from being built.” Brazen objectives notwithstanding, the reality is that the reliable baseload power provided by coal cannot be interchanged seamlessly with the intermittent generation of wind and solar.
Natural Resources Defense Council
BFF has also supported the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) with a $1.5 million grant “to reduce carbon pollution”. But what do NRDC efforts to limit carbon pollution look like? According to NRDC, its team of lawyers, scientists, economists, engineers, and activists, is seeking to extend government control of our energy use at all levels of governance: state, local, federal, and international.
NRDC’s advocacy “for deep cuts to carbon pollution by ending our dependence on dangerous, climate-warming fossil fuels” tends to involve a heavy dose of both lobbying and litigation. They claim to “win court cases that allow the federal government to limit carbon pollution from cars and power plants.” What NRDC really means is that they facilitate the reduction of people’s energy choices. The upshot is Bloomberg Family Foundation money is funding NRDC’s full-court press on affordable, reliable energy. Curtailing energy freedom has real impacts on people’s lives that organizations like NRDC tend to intentionally gloss over.
World Resources Institute
BFF also gave $2,950,000 to the World Resources Institute (WRI) in 2015 to “[t]o help governments, businesses and society make better-informed decisions on economic development and climate change”. Unsuprisingly, this organization’s view of climate change mitigation is fundamental economic and lifestyle shifts, so although climate concern may sound moderate and reasonable, in this case it is anything but. Their view is that: “[a]ddressing climate change requires dramatic changes to how we power our homes and factories and build our cities to how we feed our families and move around. Yet countries, businesses, states and cities have yet to make the deep structural economic and societal shifts that are required.” These “shifts” that they talk about are toward more government control of the economy and restriction personal autonomy; they mean less driving, less electricity, less trade, and less freedom. This goal is more about giving the government power over our lives than it is about good stewardship of the resources.
Environmental Defense Fund
The Bloomberg Family Foundation has also given significant amounts of money to the Environmental Defense Fund. One such donation was $100,000 in support of the 2015 Climate Leadership Summit, one of the key gatherings for the big organizations at which outrageous, economically disastrous ideas are generated and circulated. BFF also gave the Environmental Defense Fund $1,509,000 for anti-natural gas initiatives. This includes their state and federal level fights for methane standards, as well as attempts to increase government regulation of air and water. To their credit though, the EDF does acknowledge the role of natural gas in reducing overall U.S. air pollution, and at least does not seek an outright ban on natural gas production.
Conclusion
Without the affordable, readily available energy we now have, much of the modern lifestyle would be deleteriously impacted. Driving, keeping our homes warm, and easily accessing consumer products would all be in jeopardy.
Michael Bloomberg’s and the Bloomberg Family Foundation’s attempts to reinvent our energy mix ignore this reality; to go fully renewable is to go without. Renewables accounted for only 11 percent of U.S. energy consumption in 2018. If that other 89 percent is banned in the next 10, 15, or 20 years, the difference won’t be made up in time to prevent catastrophic negative impacts. Imagine electricity prices that are 10 times their current levels, or possibly much more than that, with widespread reliability issues and serious rationing. That is the reality of 100 percent renewables in the near term, the reality that the Bloomberg Family Foundation is funding.
In his run for president, Michael Bloomberg has echoed the positions of the foundations he funds. His plan for the electricity sector includes plans to “(a)chieve a complete transition from gas to clean energy”, as well as to “embed environmental justice into how the government conducts its work”. “Environmental justice” is all too often a shibboleth for plans to redistribute resources and institute government control. Bloomberg is repeating in his presidential platform the exact same extreme ideas that his foundation has long funded.
Nowhere is this more clear than in his plan for electricity, “Mike will completely phase out emissions in the electricity sector. By 2028, 80% of electricity generation in the U.S. will come from clean sources – moving toward 100% as soon as possible thereafter.” His platform, just like the platforms of the organizations his foundation funds, is attempting to convince the public that a near term renewable energy transition is feasible, despite the economic and technical realities.
_____________________________
1 IER’s Director of Policy, Kenny Stein, testified before Congress on issues associated with the Transparency in Energy Act of 2020. His testimony can be viewed below.
It's a brand-new decade, rich with all the promise of a fresh start and new beginnings. But does that mean you should be doing anything different with regards to your SEO?
In this Whiteboard Friday, our Senior SEO Scientist Britney Muller offers a seventeen-point checklist of things you ought to keep in mind for executing on modern, effective SEO. You'll encounter both old favorites (optimizing title tags, anyone?) and cutting-edge ideas to power your search strategy from this year on into the future.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today we are talking about SEO in 2020. What does that look like? How have things changed?
Do we need to be optimizing for favicons and BERT? We definitely don't. But here are some of the things that I feel we should be keeping an eye on.
☑ Cover your bases with foundational SEO
Titles, metas, headers, alt text, site speed, robots.txt, site maps, UX, CRO, Analytics, etc.
To cover your bases with foundational SEO will continue to be incredibly important in 2020, basic things like title tags, meta descriptions, alt, all of the basic SEO 101 things.
There have been some conversations in the industry lately about alt text and things of that nature. When Google is getting so good at figuring out and knowing what's in an image, why would we necessarily need to continue providing alt text?
But you have to remember we need to continue to make the web an accessible place, and so for accessibility purposes we should absolutely continue to do those things. But I do highly suggest you check out Google's Visual API and play around with that to see how good they've actually gotten. It's pretty cool.
☑ Schema markup
FAQ, Breadcrumbs, News, Business Info, etc.
Schema markup will continue to be really important, FAQ schema, breadcrumbs, business info. The News schema that now is occurring in voice results is really interesting. I think we will see this space continue to grow, and you can definitely leverage those different markup types for your website.
☑ Research what matters for your industry!
Just to keep in mind, there's going to be a lot of articles and research and information coming at you about where things are going, what you should do to prepare, and I want you to take a strategic stance on your industry and what's important in your space.
While I might suggest page speed is going to be really important in 2020, is it for your industry? We should still worry about these things and still continue to improve them. But if you're able to take a clearer look at ranking factors and what appears to be a factor for your specific space, you can better prioritize your fixes and leverage industry information to help you focus.
☑ National SERPs will no longer be reliable
You need to be acquiring localized SERPs and rankings.
This has been the case for a while. We need to localize search results and rankings to get an accurate and clear picture of what's going on in search results. I was going to put E-A-T here and then kind of cross it off.
A lot of people feel E-A-T is a huge factor moving forward. Just for the case of this post, it's always been a factor. It's been that way for the last ten-plus years, and we need to continue doing that stuff despite these various updates. I think it's always been important, and it will continue to be so.
This helps optimize your text for natural language processing. It helps make it more accessible and friendly for BERT. While you can't necessarily optimize for something like BERT, you can just write really great content that people are looking for.
☑ Understand and fulfill searcher intent, and keep in mind that there's oftentimes multi-intent
One thing to think about this space is we've kind of gone from very, very specific keywords to this richer understanding of, okay, what is the intent behind these keywords? How can we organize that and provide even better value and content to our visitors?
One way to go about that is to consider Google houses the world's data. They know what people are searching for when they look for a particular thing in search. So put your detective glasses on and examine what is it that they are showing for a particular keyword.
Is there a common theme throughout the pages? Tailor your content and your intent to solve for that. You could write the best article in the world on DIY Halloween costumes, but if you're not providing those visual elements that you so clearly see in a Google search result page, you're never going to rank on page 1.
☑ Entity and topical integration baked into your IA
Have a rich understanding of your audience and what they're seeking.
This plays well into entities and topical understanding. Again, we've gone from keywords and now we want to have this richer, better awareness of keyword buckets.
What are those topical things that people are looking for in your particular space? What are the entities, the people, places, or things that people are investigating in your space, and how can you better organize your website to provide some of those answers and those structures around those different pieces? That's incredibly important, and I look forward to seeing where this goes in 2020.
☑ Optimize for featured snippets
Featured snippets are not going anywhere. They are here to stay. The best way to do this is to find the keywords that you currently rank on page 1 for that also have a featured snippet box. These are your opportunities. If you're on page 1, you're way more apt to potentially steal or rank for a featured snippet.
One of the best ways to do that is to provide really succinct, beautiful, easy-to-understand summaries, takeaways, etc., kind of mimic what other people are doing, but obviously don't copy or steal any of that. Really fun space to explore and get better at in 2020.
☑ Invest in visuals
We see Google putting more authority behind visuals, whether it be in search or you name it. It is incredibly valuable for your SEO, whether it be unique images or video content that is organized in a structured way, where Google can provide those sections in that video search result. You can do all sorts of really neat things with visuals.
☑ Cultivate engagement
This is good anyway, and we should have been doing this before. Gary Illyes was quoted as saying, "Comments are better for on-site engagement than social signals." I will let you interpret that how you will.
But I think it goes to show that engagement and creating this community is still going to be incredibly important moving forward into the future.
☑ Repurpose your content
Blog post → slides → audio → video
This is so important, and it will help you excel even more in 2020 if you find your top-performing web pages and you repurpose them into maybe be a SlideShare, maybe a YouTube video, maybe various pins on Pinterest, or answers on Quora.
You can start to refurbish your content and expand your reach online, which is really exciting. In addition to that, it's also interesting to play around with the idea of providing people options to consume your content. Even with this Whiteboard Friday, we could have an audio version that people could just listen to if they were on their commute. We have the transcription. Provide options for people to consume your content.
☑ Prune or improve thin or low-quality pages
This has been incredibly powerful for myself and many other SEOs I know in improving the perceived quality of a site. So consider testing and meta no-indexing low-quality, thin pages on a website. Especially larger websites, we see a pretty big impact there.
☑ Get customer insights!
This will continue to be valuable in understanding your target market. It will be valuable for influencer marketing for all sorts of reasons. One of the incredible tools that are currently available by our Whiteboard Friday extraordinaire, Rand Fishkin, is SparkToro. So you guys have to check that out when it gets released soon. Super exciting.
☑ Find keyword opportunities in Google Search Console
It's shocking how few people do this and how accessible it is. If you go into your Google Search Console and you export as much data as you can around your queries, your click-through rate, your position, and impressions, you can do some incredible, simple visualizations to find opportunities.
For example, if this is the rank of your keywords and this is the click-through rate, where do you have high click-through rate but low ranking position? What are those opportunity keywords? Incredibly valuable. You can do this in all sorts of tools. One I recommend, and I will create a little tutorial for, is a free tool called Facets, made by Google for machine learning. It makes it really easy to just pick those apart.
☑ Target link-intent keywords
A couple quick link building tactics for 2020 that will continue to hopefully work very, very well. What I mean by link-intent keywords is your keyword statistics, your keyword facts.
These are searches people naturally want to reference. They want to link to it. They want to cite it in a presentation. If you can build really great content around those link-intent keywords, you can do incredibly well and naturally build links to a website.
☑ Podcasts
Whether you're a guest or a host on a podcast, it's incredibly easy to get links. It's kind of a fun link building hack.
☑ Provide unique research with visuals
Andy Crestodina does this so incredibly well. So explore creating your own unique research and not making it too commercial but valuable for users. I know this was a lot.
There's a lot going on in 2020, but I hope some of this is valuable to you. I truly can't wait to hear your thoughts on these recommendations, things you think I missed, things that you would remove or change. Please let us know down below in the comments, and I will see you all soon. Thanks.
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!
The Transportation and Climate Initiative (TCI) is a new cap-and-trade system. It will set a limit on carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation sector in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and auction off allowances to the fuel companies operating in the region. The price of the allowances will increase expenses for fuel companies and lead to a price hike at the pump. TCI is designed to make driving cars and trucks more expensive. In short, the Transportation Climate Initiative is a transportation cost increase. All aspects of our economy that rely on transportation, including the millions of products delivered by truck each day, will be jeopardized by TCI.
Cap-and-Trade: Cap-and-trade is a common term for a government regulatory program designed to limit emissions. In the case of the Transportation and Climate Initiative, cap-and-trade will be used to limit the emission of carbon dioxide. First used nationally to limit criteria pollutants (e.g., sulfur dioxide) from the electric generating sector, the approach has been expanded to cap and reduce carbon dioxide from the generating sector by certain regional programs (e.g., the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative). The Transportation and Climate Initiative is ostensibly designed to use the tool to reduce emissions in the transportation sector. The Transportation and Climate Initiative opts to conceal that its approach is cap-and-trade and uses the term “cap-and-invest.”
Cap-and-Invest: A cap-and-invest program is a cap-and-trade program in which the revenue obtained from the auction of allowances on the regulated commodity is spent within the jurisdiction. The revenue could be used for additional so-called clean transportation programs, infrastructure, other programs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions within the jurisdiction, or anything else the signatory jurisdiction deems related to the Transportation and Climate Initiative. In effect, the Transportation and Climate Initiative will tax gasoline and diesel transportation and spend that money on competing forms of transportation.
Regional Emissions Cap: The total limit on carbon dioxide emissions that the Transportation and Climate initiative will set for the transportation sector in its region. The regional emission cap will be tightened annually.
Allowance: An allowance permits a company to own a unit of the regulated commodity. Under the Transportation and Climate Initiative, allowances will be auctioned off. Allowances can also typically be traded with other companies. That is, a quasi-market is developed for companies to buy and sell allowances. The market trading aspect usually sets the price of the allowance, however, in the case of the Transportation and Climate Initiative, a cost floor will be applied below which allowances cannot be sold. The cost of allowances is bundled to the commodity being regulated, increasing the price for consumers of the final product. The Transportation and Climate Initiative will increase the price of gasoline and diesel fuel.
Signatory Jurisdiction: Signatory jurisdictions are those jurisdictions (states) that sign the final Memorandum of Understanding, indicating that they are participating in the Transportation and Climate Initiative. The signatory jurisdictions may include Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu says his state will not participate because of the increase in gasoline and diesel prices that will result from the initiative.
Model Rule: The model rule is the specific, detailed cap-and-trade program that will be developed by the signatory jurisdictions. The model rule for the Transportation and Climate Initiative is to be completed by December 31, 2020, having provided a 60-day public review and comment period. The Transportation and Climate Initiate will go into effect in 2022.
Regional Organization: The entity, independent of the particular signatory jurisdictions, which will administer the Transportation and Climate Initiative.
Affected Fuel: Affected fuels are the fossil fuel components of motor gasoline and on-road diesel fuel destined for final sale or consumption in participating jurisdictions. State Fuel Suppliers: State fuel suppliers are those companies that bring affected fuel to the market in the participating jurisdictions. In the Transportation and Climate Initiative, the state fuel suppliers are considered in two main categories: Enterers and Position Holders. These are the companies that deliver and own the affected fuel destined to be used within a participating jurisdiction in the form of gasoline and diesel fuel.
Compliance Period: The compliance period is the time period under which the cap-and-trade program is being measured. The Transportation and Climate Initiative is based on a three-year compliance period, at the end of which state fuel suppliers must provide the jurisdiction with emission allowances equal to the emissions that would result from the combustion of a volume of the affected fuel during the compliance period. The first compliance period will begin as early as January 1, 2022.
Banking of Allowances: Banking of allowances is the provision that allows a state fuel supplier to hold allowances into the next compliance period rather than trade them if the company foresees that it may need them in the future because of an impending lower cap, a change in the company’s market strategy, or a change to its production plans.
Alternative Compliance Mechanisms: Alternative compliance mechanisms are also called offsets, which are an indirect method of pursuing the desired goal. For instance, planting trees can reduce atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, without having to cut back on the supply of the affected fuel.
Cost Containment Reserve: The cost containment reserve consists of additional allowances held in abeyance in case the allowance price is higher than projected or desired. In that case, the reserve allowances are offered for sale. Additional allowances raise the cap, lower the price of the allowances, and thereby lower the price of the regulated commodity. It is used to stabilize the market for allowances.
Minimum Reserve Price: The minimum reserve price is a price below which the signatory jurisdictions will agree not to sell allowances. This provision means that the quasi-market for allowances will have a price floor. Effectively, the Transportation and Climate Initiative is a new tax that will be passed from the regulated fuel suppliers to consumers.
Emissions Containment Reserve: The emissions containment reserve allows a signatory jurisdiction to withhold allowances from circulation if emission reductions costs are lower than projected or desired. It is another tool to be used to stabilize the allowance market.
Clean Transportation Alternatives: So-called clean transportation alternatives are non-fossil fuel based transportation methods, which include electric vehicles fueled by electricity produced from renewable fuels, mass transit (buses, trains, subways) powered by electricity, vehicles using hydrogen or biofuels, such as ethanol, etc.
Vehicular Pollution: Vehicular pollution is the introduction of harmful material into the environment by motor vehicles that can have bad effects on human health and the ecosystem. The following are pollution materials associated with the transportation system: ozone, particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide. Some people consider carbon dioxide to be a form of vehicular pollution, despite it having no ill effects on local health or ecosystems.
Solar Energy International (SEI) will be leading two free technical seminars at Middle East Energy running March 3-5 in Dubai. If you haven’t already registered, you can sign up for a free visitor’s pass to attend the “world’s largest power conference,” which includes power professionals from over 130 countries and over 1300 exhibitors from around the globe. In its 44th year, Middle East Energy has become a meeting point for networking, business, learning and debate for the power generation, lighting, transmission & distribution, energy storage & management solutions and solar sectors. During the event, SEI’s Kristopher Sutton, Co-Director of the Middle East and Africa Program, will address two critical topics to the solar industry with trainings on Solar Electric System Design Essentials and Tools and Testing Procedures for PV System Performance.
Solar Electric System Design Essentials is an entry-level PV system design workshop and is recommended for anyone new to the solar market and interested in navigating their way into this fast-growing industry. With a focus on utility-connected PV systems (the largest and fastest-growing market sector), the class begins by introducing primary components, terminology, and applications for solar electric (PV) systems. We will discuss concepts that are critical for good design, and how they are applied in practice. This workshop will provide a solid, basic foundation from which a larger exploration of utility-connected PV systems can be launched.
Tools and Testing Procedures for PV System Performance workshop teaches participants about performing regular inspections, troubleshooting, and verifying system performance. Having the right tools and understanding of test procedures for PV systems is critical to maximize system runtime and keep warranties intact. In this course with a focus on safety, as a system owner, operator, or maintenance technician, you will gain a basic understanding of how to identify and use the common tools of the trade and the troubleshooting strategies used to diagnose some of the problems that you are most likely to encounter on a PV system. In addition, we will describe some basic concepts of system performance that are critical when doing any kind of testing on PV systems. This course is an excellent starting point for understanding the role of operations and maintenance procedures in keeping PV systems functioning safely and optimally over the course of their entire lifespan.
Kenny Stein, IER’s Policy Director, provided testimony before the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives House Natural Resources Committee regarding the “Transparency in Energy Production Act of 2020” on 1/28/20. The Congressional video record begins several sentences into his testimony. Read his full testimony form the link below.
According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), U.S. proved reserves of crude oil and lease condensate increased to 47.1 billion barrels in 2018—a 12 percent increase compared with the previous record set at year-end 2017 of 42 billion barrels. U.S. proved reserves of natural gas increased to 504.5 trillion cubic feet—a 9 percent increase compared with the record level set in 2017 of 464.4 trillion cubic feet. Proved reserves are oil and natural gas quantities that geological and engineering data find with reasonable certainty to be recoverable from known reservoirs under existing economic and operating conditions. Reserves estimates change from year to year as new discoveries are made, existing fields are appraised, reserves are produced, prices and costs change, and technologies develop.
U.S. proved reserves of oil and natural gas have increased despite record production of these fuels in 2018. U.S. crude oil and lease condensate production increased 17 percent in 2018 to an average of 10.96 million barrels per day—1.6 million barrels per day more than in 2017. U.S. natural gas production increased 12 percent in 2018 to 89.9 billion cubic feet per day—10 billion cubic feet per day more than in 2017.
Spurring the increase in proved reserves and production were increased prices of oil and natural gas. In 2018, the annual average spot price for West Texas Intermediate crude oil increased from $51.03 per barrel in 2017 to $65.66 per barrel in 2018—a 29 percent increase. The annual average natural gas spot price at the Henry Hub in Louisiana increased from $2.99 per million British thermal units in 2017 to $3.35 per million British thermal units in 2018—a 12 percent increase.
Proved Reserves by State
The largest net increase in oil and natural gas proved reserves in 2018 was in Texas, totaling 2.3 billion barrels of crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves and 22.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas proved reserves. The major share of that increase was located in the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring shale plays in the Permian Basin.
The next largest net gains in crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves in 2018 were in New Mexico and North Dakota. New Mexico’s crude oil and lease condensate proved reserves increased by 750 million barrels and North Dakota’s increased by 422 million barrels in 2018.
The next-largest net gains in natural gas proved reserves in 2018 were in Pennsylvania and New Mexico. Pennsylvania’s natural gas proved reserves located in the Marcellus shale play increased by 14.2 trillion cubic feet and New Mexico’s located in the Wolfcamp and Bone Spring shale plays increased by 4.2 trillion cubic feet in 2018.
The use of hydraulic fracturing in shale plays has increased both production and reserves of U.S. oil and natural gas. Not only are we seeing record production and reserves since fracking became a major technology in the oil and gas industry, but the record increases have made the United States the world’s largest producer and a net exporter of oil and natural gas, bringing energy independence and bolstering national security.
Expert economist and policy analyst rounds out
leading, energy-only free-market think tank.
WASHINGTON DC (January 29, 2020) –The Institute for Energy Research (IER) has announced David Kreutzer will be joining its organization as a senior economist. Kreutzer’s economic policy work is well known within several circles, especially in energy and climate, but also in labor markets, trade, environment, and regulation.
From 1984 until 2007, Kreutzer taught economics at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where he also served as director of the International Business Program. In 1994, Kreutzer was a visiting economist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and, in the early 1980’s, he was a visiting economics instructor at Ohio University.
Prior to today’s announcement, Kreutzer served as one of IER’s inaugural advisory council members and senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a research and educational think tank focused on public policies. He also served with IER President Thomas Pyle on President Trump’s transition team.
Kreutzer, who grew up in Northern Virginia, earned a doctorate in economics from George Mason University. He also has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from Virginia Tech. He and his wife reside in Falls Church, Virginia. They have three grown children and three grandchildren. Kreutzer also holds local political experience as well. From January 2003 to December 2004, he served as mayor of Dayton, Virginia, a town of about 1,300 in Rockingham County near the West Virginia state line. Before that, he was a member of the Dayton Virginia Town Council for nine years.
Thomas Pyle, President of IER, issued the following statement:
“We are thrilled that David has joined the IER team. His expertise and reputation as one of the leading economists in the country will bolster IER’s role as the voice of reason in debates and discussions surrounding America’s energy and environmental policy. David shares IER’s commitment to free-markets, rejection of proposals that restrict access to affordable, reliable energy, and attempts to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.”
David Kreutzer added the following:
“IER punches well above its weight protecting energy consumers and workers in the fight against regulatory overreach. I am proud to work on their team to ensure America’s great progress on energy freedom continues.”
_____________________
For media inquiries, please contact Jon Haubert
jon@hblegacy.com
303.396.5996
Solar energy education now available to affiliated Generac installers and dealers
Waukesha, Wis., January 29, 2020 — GeneracⓇ Power Systems (NYSE: GNRC) has today announced its partnership with Solar Energy International (SEI) to provide online and in-person training programs for the Company’s dealers and installers interested in expanding into the solar industry. The partnership provides incentive for Generac dealers and installers to gain professional training and education in solar energy through SEI.
Beginning immediately, Generac installers and dealers will have access to all SEI training courses at an exclusive discounted rate. The courses cover a wide range of topics, from introductory to advanced online and hands-on courses, with the option to customize a training path based on dealer or installer needs. Participants can also earn professional certifications through SEI.
SEI is a nonprofit educational organization with a mission to provide industry-leading technical training and expertise in renewable energy to empower people, communities, and businesses. The organization is recognized worldwide as a leader in technical training.
“Generac has a long history of providing industry-leading educational programs for our dealers and installers,” said Jake Thomas, director of service operations for Generac. “Our partnership with SEI helps us continue that tradition by making world-class technical education resources available to Generac-authorized dealers and installers.”
“SEI is excited to be working in partnership with Generac for many different reasons – the biggest being their company is a well-known solutions provider of backup power for both residential and commercial applications,” said Chris Turek, Director of Marketing and Communications at SEI. “Adding solar with storage to the solutions Generac offers gets us one step closer to meeting our mission. We look forward to training their dealers and value our shared vision of a world powered by renewable energy.”
The schedule for SEI’s online courses can be found at www.solarenergy.org/training-schedule. For information on becoming an authorized Generac installer, go to www.generac.com. If you are a Generac dealer or installer, click here to view the partnership flyer that includes a discount code and introduces solar training options.
About Solar Energy International (SEI)
Solar Energy International (SEI) was founded in 1991 as a nonprofit educational organization. Our mission is to provide industry-leading technical training and expertise in renewable energy to empower people, communities, and businesses worldwide. Why? Because we envision a world powered by renewable energy. For more information, visit https://www.solarenergy.org.
About Generac
Generac Power Systems, Inc. (NYSE: GNRC) is a leading global supplier of backup power and prime power products, systems, engine-powered tools, and solar energy storage systems. In 1959, our founder was committed to designing, engineering and manufacturing the first affordable backup generator. Sixty years later, the same dedication to innovation, durability and excellence has resulted in the company’s ability to expand its industry-leading product portfolio into homes and small businesses, on job sites, and in industrial and mobile applications across the globe. Generac offers single engine backup and prime power systems up to 2 MW and paralleled solutions up to 100 MW, and uses a variety of fuel sources to support power needs for our customers. Generac hosts Power Outage Central, the definitive source of U.S. power outage data, at Generac.com/poweroutagecentral. For more information about Generac and its products and services, visit Generac.com.
On January 13th, MozCast measured significant algorithm flux lasting about three days (the dotted line shows the 30-day average prior to the 13th, which is consistent with historical averages) ...
That same day, Google announced the release of a core update dubbed the January 2020 Core Update (in line with their recent naming conventions) ...
On January 16th, Google announced the update was "mostly done," aligning fairly well with the measured temperatures in the graph above. Temperatures settled down after the three-day spike ...
It appears that the dust has mostly settled on the January 2020 Core Update. Interpreting core updates can be challenging, but are there any takeaways we can gather from the data?
How does it compare to other updates?
How did the January 2020 Core Update stack up against recent core updates? The chart below shows the previous four named core updates, back to August 2018 (AKA "Medic") ...
While the January 2020 update wasn't on par with "Medic," it tracks closely to the previous three updates. Note that all of these updates are well above the MozCast average. While not all named updates are measurable, all of the recent core updates have generated substantial ranking flux.
Which verticals were hit hardest?
MozCast is split into 20 verticals, matching Google AdWords categories. It can be tough to interpret single-day movement across categories, since they naturally vary, but here's the data for the range of the update (January 14–16) for the seven categories that topped 100°F on January 14 ...
Health tops the list, consistent with anecdotal evidence from previous core updates. One consistent finding, broadly speaking, is that sites impacted by one core update seem more likely to be impacted by subsequent core updates.
Who won and who lost this time?
Winners/losers analyses can be dangerous, for a few reasons. First, they depend on your particular data set. Second, humans have a knack for seeing patterns that aren't there. It's easy to take a couple of data points and over-generalize. Third, there are many ways to measure changes over time.
We can't entirely fix the first problem — that's the nature of data analysis. For the second problem, we have to trust you, the reader. We can partially address the third problem by making sure we're looking at changes both in absolute and relative terms. For example, knowing a site gained 100% SERP share isn't very interesting if it went from one ranking in our data set to two. So, for both of the following charts, we'll restrict our analysis to subdomains that had at least 25 rankings across MozCast's 10,000 SERPs on January 14th. We'll also display the raw ranking counts for some added perspective.
Here are the top 25 winners by % change over the 3 days of the update. The "Jan 14" and "Jan 16" columns represent the total count of rankings (i.e. SERP share) on those days ...
If you've read about previous core updates, you may see a couple of familiar subdomains, including VeryWellHealth.com and a couple of its cousins. Even at a glance, this list goes well beyond healthcare and represents a healthy mix of verticals and some major players, including Instagram and the Google Play store.
I hate to use the word "losers," and there's no way to tell why any given site gained or lost rankings during this time period (it may not be due to the core update), but I'll present the data as impartially as possible. Here are the 25 sites that lost the most rankings by percentage change ...
Orbitz took heavy losses in our data set, as did the phone number lookup site ZabaSearch. Interestingly, one of the Very Well family of sites (three of which were in our top 25 list) landed in the bottom 25. There are a handful of healthcare sites in the mix, including the reputable Cleveland Clinic (although this appears to be primarily a patient portal).
What can we do about any of this?
Google describes core updates as "significant, broad changes to our search algorithms and systems ... designed to ensure that overall, we’re delivering on our mission to present relevant and authoritative content to searchers." They're quick to say that a core update isn't a penalty and that "there’s nothing wrong with pages that may perform less well." Of course, that's cold comfort if your site was negatively impacted.
We know that content quality matters, but that's a vague concept that can be hard to pin down. If you've taken losses in a core update, it is worth assessing if your content is well matched to the needs of your visitors, including whether it's accurate, up to date, and generally written in a way that demonstrates expertise.
We also know that sites impacted by one core update seem to be more likely to see movement in subsequent core updates. So, if you've been hit in one of the core updates since "Medic," keep your eyes open. This is a work in progress, and Google is making adjustments as they go.
Ultimately, the impact of core updates gives us clues about Google's broader intent and how best to align with that intent. Look at sites that performed well and try to understand how they might be serving their core audiences. If you lost rankings, are they rankings that matter? Was your content really a match to the intent of those searchers?
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!
Transparency is critical, but H.R. 5636 suffers from numerous infirmities, disregards basic administrative law and likely unconstitutional.
WASHINGTON DC (January 27, 2020) – The Institute for Energy Research (IER) announced today that Kenny Stein, Director of Policy, will testify tomorrow before the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources at a hearing, led by Rep. Alan Lowethal (D-CA), to discuss his legislation, H.R. 5636.
In tomorrow’s hearing, Stein will provide a number of reasons why H.R. 5636 is poorly constructed. While this legislative proposal purportedly seeks increased reporting of fossil fuel extraction and emissions by entities with leases on public land, it disregards the basic standards of administrative and constitutional law, duplicates existing regulations and disclosure requirements. In practice, it would merely serve to increase the costs and barriers to energy development on federal lands.
If Congress wishes to create standards for sustainability, for federal leasing or any other federal contracting, the appropriate process is to provide a mandate to the relevant federal agencies to develop standards through the administrative process. In addition to having the advantage of being constitutional, such a process has long-standing administrative procedures and legal principles that ensure that the rights of companies and individuals impacted by the standards are protected. The approach taken by H.R. 5636 should be rejected.
Kenny Stein has worked for Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). He has also held additional policy roles with free-market organizations like Freedomworks and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Stein received his Juris Doctorate from the University of Houston and his B.A. in International Relations from American University and his areas of expertise include: domestic and international energy policy, environmental regulation and policy, federal land management policy, federalism, and legislative analysis.
_________________________
For media inquiries, please contact Jon Haubert
jon@hblegacy.com
303.396.5996
Between February 3-6, Solar Energy International (SEI) will be attending Intersolar North America 2020. Come and immerse yourself in our vibrant, in-depth technical training workshops, along with lively conference sessions to keep you up to speed on the latest trends and tech. On February 3, SEI will be conducting two paid workshops (see below), both of which have been approved for 4 NABCEP CE hours: 4 PVIP JTA. On February 4-5, during the conference, we will also offer two free show floor trainings, each one-hour long and approved for 1 NABCEP CE hour. Come see us at booth # 1541.
About: There is currently a tremendous amount of interest in photovoltaics and energy storage systems, and the growth in the energy storage sector is expected to continue for years to come. In this course, we will discuss common applications and varying topologies of battery-based PV systems. Topics include DC and AC coupled PV, residential storage systems for backup power and energy storage systems (ESS) designed for self-consumption, peak load shifting or demand management. Join SEI instructors with decades of experience to gain awareness of battery-based applications, equipment, and system design.
About: The market demand for energy storage technologies presents new opportunities and varied applications,and battery-based system design is a complex task. This course will take a detailed look at system sizing and component selection, providing both DC and AC coupled design examples for residential battery-based applications. NEC® requirements, best-practice design considerations, and system maintenance strategies will be presented by SEI instructors who have extensive experience with battery-based PV systems. This course has been approved for 4 NABCEP CE hours: 4 PVIP JTA. Lunch will be included. Purchase of workshop required to attend.
Tools and Techniques for Commissioning and Maintenance of PV Systems
When: Tuesday, February 4, 11:15am – 12:15pm
Where: ISNA Innovation and Application Theater, 1200 Aisle of the Exhibit Hall
Approved NABCEP CE hours: 1
About: This presentation highlights the theory behind, and safe and practical use of, tools and equipment designed for operation, maintenance, and troubleshooting of PV systems. We will cover PV system commissioning, performance evaluation, operations and maintenance, and troubleshooting techniques using tools such as I-V curve tracers, specialized PV commissioning tools, insulation resistance testers, and more.
Where: ISNA Innovation and Application Theater, 600 Aisle of the Exhibit Hall
Approved NABCEP CE hours: 1
About: The battery-based PV market is thriving as lower module prices make PV systems with energy storage the most cost effective, reliable power supply in more and more applications. There are a wide variety of battery-based and stand-alone PV system types, ranging from from small PV-direct, to stand-alone, to hybrid systems with multiple power sources, grid/PV multimode, and village micro-grids. The components, power flows, configuration, and common applications for each system type will be examined.
IONITY, Europe’s network for high-power-charging of electric vehicles, announced it will raise its charging prices by over 500 percent effective January 31, 2020. At that price, it will be three times more expensive than a Tesla supercharger in Europe, which average €0.25 ($0.28) per kilowatt-hour, and more than double the price of gasoline there. IONITY is a joint venture founded by the BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford Motor Company, and Volkswagen Group with Audi and Porsche. Its objective is to build an extensive 350 kilowatt High Power Charging network for electric vehicles to facilitate long-distance travel in Europe. It currently has 202 charging stations in 17 countries and plans to double this to 400 locations in 24 countries this year.
Currently, IONITY charges a flat, fixed rate of €8 ($8.87) for a DCFC charging session—a good price if the battery is almost empty. For instance, a battery with 10 percent life remaining and 60 kilowatt-hours used during the charging session would result in a cost of about €0.13 ($0.144) per kilowatt-hour. Starting next month, however, IONITY will be charging users €0.79 ($0.88) per kilowatt-hour, which is over 500 percent more. So, using the Audi e-Tron battery as an example, “filling it up” with 80 kilowatt-hours of power will coat €63.20 ($70.10) to travel about 160 miles.
In comparison, in France, electricity costs about €0.19 ($0.21) per kilowatt-hour for residences, and €0.24 ($0.265) per kilowatt-hour at Tesla Superchargers. In Germany, electricity costs €0.30 ($0.33) per kilowatt-hour for residences, and €0.33 ($0.365) per kilowatt-hour at Tesla Superchargers. These electricity prices are higher than those for residential electricity prices in the United States, which averaged $0.13 per kilowatt-hour for the first 9 months of 2019.
Norwegians are in an uproar due to the price hike. Norway’s power is cheaper than a number of other European countries due to its predominance of hydroelectricity, and it has many more electric vehicle customers, which the Norwegian electric vehicle industry believes should be reflected in the price of charging. Norway leads the world by market share in electric vehicle penetration with 56 percent of all cars sold in 2019 able to be plugged in.
Connected Mobility Service Partners
IONITY has supplier agreements with its car makers, referred to as “Connected Mobility Service Partners” (MSPs), which is a subscription service where the user receives a discounted price per kilowatt-hour, by paying monthly and generally agreeing to the terms of use. Under this service, the vendor is allowed to harvest data to enable other revenue streams for the vendor. IONITY does not provide a complete list of MSPs (prices) on its website.
Members of Connected Mobility Service Providers networks include Audi e-tron Charging Service, Mercedes me Charge, BMW ChargeNow, Porsche Charging Service and Volkswagen WeCharge. Mercedes me Charge announced that it will charge €0.29 ($0.32) per kilowatt-hour at IONITY chargers, with no annual subscription fee for the first year. Audi e-tron Charging Service will cost €0.33 ($0.36) per kilowatt-hour plus a monthly subscription of €17.95 ($19.84), and Porsche Charging Service will cost €0.33 ($0.36) per kilowatt-hour plus a basic annual fee of €179 ($198).
Conclusion
The price increase announced by IONITY effective at the end of this month is making the fuel cost for electric vehicles higher than that of gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles in Europe where those fuel costs are double that of the United States—around $5.00 or $6.00 a gallon. When evaluating the total cost of ownership, rising power costs at public charge points underlines the need for electric vehicle drivers to be able to recharge their cars at home. It also suggests that service and maintenance is the only area where electric vehicles will have a long-term cost advantage over cars with combustion engines. This price hike may be a game-changer to European electric vehicle markets.
I recently finished a project where I was tasked to investigate why a site (that receives over one million organic visits per month) does not rank for any featured snippets.
This is obviously an alarming situation, since ~15% of all result pages, according to the MozCast, have a featured snippet as a SERP feature. The project was passed on to me by an industry friend. I’ve done a lot of research on featured snippets in the past. I rarely do once-off projects, but this one really caught my attention. I was determined to figure out what issue was impacting the site.
In this post, I detail my methodology for the project that I delivered, along with key takeaways for my client and others who might be faced with a similar situation. But before I dive deep into my analysis: this post does NOT have a fairy-tale ending. I wasn’t able to unclog a drain that resulted in thousands of new visitors.
I did, however, deliver massive amounts of closure for my client, allowing them to move on and invest resources into areas which will have a long-lasting impact.
Confirming suspicions with Big Data
Now, when my client first came to me, they had their own suspicions about what was happening. They had been advised by other consultants on what to do.
They had been told that the featured snippet issue was stemming from either:
1. An issue relating to conflicting structured data on the site
OR
2. An issue relating to messy HTML which was preventing the site from appearing within featured snippet results
I immediately shut down the first issue as a cause for featured snippets not appearing. I’ve written about this topic extensively in the past. Structured data (in the context of schema.org) does NOT influence featured snippets. You can read more about this in my post on Search Engine Land.
As for the second point, this is more close to reality, yet also so far from it. Yes, HTML structure does help considerably when trying to rank for featured snippets. But to the point where a site that ranks for almost a million keywords but doesn’t rank for any featured snippets at all? Very unlikely. There’s more to this story, but let’s confirm our suspicions first.
Let’s start from the top. Here’s what the estimated organic traffic looks like:
Note: I’m unable to show the actual traffic for this site due to confidentiality. But the monthly estimation that Ahrefs gives of 1.6M isn’t far off.
Out of the 1.6M monthly organic visits, Ahrefs picks up on 873K organic keywords. When filtering these keywords by SERP features with a featured snippet and ordering by position, you get the following:
I then did similar research with both Moz Pro using their featured snippet filtering capabilities as well as SEMrush, allowing me to see historical ranking.
All 3 tools displaying the same result: the site did not rank for any featured snippets at all, despite ~20% of my client's organic keywords including a featured snippet as a SERP feature (higher than the average from MozCast).
It was clear that the site did not rank for any featured snippets on Google. But who was taking this position away from my client?
The next step was to investigate whether other sites are ranking within the same niche. If they were, then this would be a clear sign of a problem.
An “us” vs “them” comparison
Again, we need to reflect back to our tools. We need our tools to figure out the top sites based on similarity of keywords. Here’s an example of this in action within Moz Pro:
Once we have our final list of similar sites, we need to complete the same analysis that was completed in the previous section of this post to see if they rank for any featured snippets.
With this analysis, we can figure out whether they have featured snippets displaying or not, along with the % of their organic keywords with a featured snippet as a SERP feature.
The next step is to add all of this data to a Google Sheet and see how everything matches up to my client's site. Here’s what this data looks like for my client:
I now need to dig deeper into the sites in my table. Are they really all that relevant, or are my tools just picking up on a subset of queries that are similar?
I found that from row 8 downwards in my table, those sites weren’t all that similar. I excluded them from my final dataset to keep things as relevant as possible.
Based on this data, I could see 5 other sites that were similar to my clients. Out of those five sites, only one had results where they were ranking within a featured snippet.
80% of similar sites to my client's site had the exact same issue. This is extremely important information to keep in mind going forward.
Although the sample size is considerably lower, one of those sites has ~34% of search results that they rank for where they are unable to be featured. Comparatively, this is quite problematic for this site (considering the 20% calculation from my client's situation).
This analysis has been useful in figuring out whether the issue was specific to my client or the entire niche. But do we have guidelines from Google to back this up?
Google featured snippet support documentation
Within Google’s Featured Snippet Documentation, they provide details on policies surrounding the SERP feature. This is public information. But I think a very high percentage of SEOs aren’t aware (based on multiple discussions I’ve had) of how impactful some of these details can be.
For instance, the guidelines state that:
"Because of this prominent treatment, featured snippet text, images, and the pages they come from should not violate these policies."
They then mention 5 categories:
Sexually explicit
Hateful
Violent
Dangerous and harmful
Lack consensus on public interest topics
Number five in particular is an interesting one. This section is not as clear as the other four and requires some interpretation. Google explains this category in the following way:
"Featured snippets about public interest content — including civic, medical, scientific, and historical issues — should not lack well-established or expert consensus support."
And the even more interesting part in all of this: these policies do not apply to web search listings nor cause those to be removed.
It can be lights out for featured snippets if you fall into one of these categories, yet you can still be able to rank highly within the 10-blue-link results. A bit of an odd situation.
Based on my knowledge of the client, I couldn’t say for sure whether any of the five categories were to blame for their problem. It was sure looking like it was algorithmic intervention (and I had my suspicions about which category was the potential cause).
But there was no way of confirming this. The site didn’t have a manual action within Google Search Console. That is literally the only way Google could communicate something like this to site owners.
I needed someone on the inside at Google to help.
The missing piece: Official site-specific feedback from Google
One of the most underused resources in an SEOs toolkit (based on my opinion), are the Google Webmaster Hangouts held by John Mueller.
You can see the schedule for these Hangouts on YouTube here and join live, asking John a question in person if you want. You could always try John on Twitter too, but there’s nothing like video.
You’re given the opportunity to explain your question in detail. John can easily ask for clarification, and you can have a quick back-and-forth that gets to the bottom of your problem.
This is what I did in order to figure out this situation. I spoke with John live on the Hangout for ~5 minutes; you can watch my segment here if you’re interested. The result was that John gave me his email address and I was able to send through the site for him to check with the ranking team at Google.
I followed up with John on Twitter to see if he was able to get any information from the team on my clients situation. You can follow the link above to see the full piece of communication, but John’s feedback was that there wasn't a manual penalty being put in place for my client's site. He said that it was purely algorithmic. This meant that the algorithm was deciding that the site was not allowed to rank within featured snippets.
And an important component of John’s response:
If a site doesn’t rank for any featured snippets when they're already ranking highly within organic results on Google (say, within positions 1–5), there is no way to force it to rank.
For me, this is a dirty little secret in a way (hence the title of this article). Google’s algorithms may decide that a site can’t show in a featured snippet (but could rank #2 consistently), and there's nothing a site owner can do.
...and the end result?
The result of this, in the specific niche that my client is in, is that lots of smaller, seemingly less relevant sites (as a whole) are the ones that are ranking in featured snippets. Do these sites provide the best answer? Well, the organic 10-blue-links ranking algorithm doesn’t think so, but the featured snippet algorithm does.
This means that the site has a lot of queries which have a low CTR, resulting in considerably less traffic coming through to the site. Sure, featured snippets sometimes don’t drive much traffic. But they certainly get a lot more attention than the organic listings below:
Based on the Nielsen Norman Group study, when SERP features (like featured snippets) were present on a SERP, they found that they received looks in 74% of cases (with a 95% confidence interval of 66–81%). This data clearly points to the fact that featured snippets are important for sites to rank within where possible, resulting in far greater visibility.
Because Google’s algorithm is making this decision, it's likely a liability thing; Google (the people involved with the search engine) don’t want to be the ones to have to make that call. It’s a tricky one. I understand why Google needs to put these systems in place for their search engine (scale is important), but communication could be drastically improved for these types of algorithmic interventions. Even if it isn’t a manual intervention, there ought to be some sort of notification within Google Search Console. Otherwise, site owners will just invest in R&D trying to get their site to rank within featured snippets (which is only natural).
And again, just because there are categories available in the featured snippet policy documentation, that doesn’t mean that the curiosity of site owners is always going to go away. There will always be the “what if?”
Deep down, I’m not so sure Google will ever make this addition to Google Search Console. It would mean too much communication on the matter, and could lead to unnecessary disputes with site owners who feel they’ve been wronged. Something needs to change, though. There needs to be less ambiguity for the average site owner who doesn’t know they can access awesome people from the Google Search team directly. But for the moment, it will remain Google’s dirty little featured snippet secret.
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!
