A recent blog post on Moz by Cyrus Shepard caused quite a stir in the SEO community. This stir was rooted in part over lack of understanding of the difference between correlation and causation, and in ...

There are a lot of SEO studies out there, but not all of them are made equal. Here's how to decide if X is really affected by Y, or merely a coincidence. Every so often the SEO community will erupt ...

Data purists would rap my knuckles for asking this question and reply, "Never". On the other hand, "data sophists" who're accustomed to lying with Big Data in even more crude ways would wonder, “Duh, ...

Much of the time, people derive causation from correlation. Put another way, when two odd circumstances seem to align with one another, people assume that one causes the other. Such logic simply makes ...

One hundred fifty world leaders, with President Barack Obama as the prime mover, and hundreds of their aides and hangers-on, gathered in Paris for an event called the "2014 United Nations Climate ...

So you just saw a big jump in your natural search result rankings? Congratulations, that’s great news! But before you start patting yourself on the back for having all your hard SEO work pay off, it’s ...

If you read a lot, like me, you might notice almost daily there’s a new study that contradicts some earlier research. Something causes cancer — then it’s good for you. You know the drill. What’s going ...

A new study reports that there is an association between HFCS consumption and the incidence of diabetes, but the findings have been dismissed by the Corn Refiners Association. Results published in ...

CORRELATION, CAUSATION, AND BLOGGING....Kieran Healy is annoyed: You only have to hang around the world of social science research- or policy-related blogging for a few hours before you come across ...