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Google Panda Penguin Penalties Can Pigeon Hole A Blog

May 17, 2018 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Google Panda Penguin Penalties

The Google Panda Penguin penalties can wreak havoc on a long standing blog. J&L Risk Management Consultant’s blog experienced the wrath of the penalties a few years ago. However, the wrath was due to a change in the rules, not anything we were doing wrong at the time. Well, the link-buying thing from 8 years ago was one on us.

Amsterdam Tumbler Pigeon – Public License

Google Panda Penguin penalties have now made it very difficult to repeat subject matter. For instance if I write about Temporary Total Disability, Google scores the post as a no-count and discounts the other articles that cover Temporary Total Disability. When I started the blog ten years ago, there was no concern for duplicate content if it was not spammy. How times have changed.

The best way to discuss the matter is by realizing that there is only so much technical blog writing on Workers Compensation. I wanted to return back to the basics and cover the terms which are the foundation of technical knowledge in Workers Comp >>>no such luck. I have written on them too many times.

I did experience writer’s block a few years ago.

Blog Icon Google Panda Penguin Penalties On Globe

Extended License Stockunlimited.com Blog Icon

As I sit here in the Denver airport, (good fast WiFi here), I have contemplated how to fix the situation without having to cause major changes to the blog. The major changes would be having to combine articles (yuck) that cover the same subject. Does everyone really want to read articles that drone on forever? (Of course not).

Workers Comp is a static subject. I can pull up an article from 10 years ago and no one would recognize it as being that old. I do include classics in the weekly newsletter a few times per month that covers the old but good articles. The newsletter production has kind of been affected as I cannot produce a newsletter each week with three or more fresh articles.

I think the opioid subject has long been a worn path that I do not need to walk down. Please, if anyone has any ideas or suggested subjects, email, comment or call me to discuss.

I have found that J&L article readers generate great ideas for me to cover in an article. I have written over 2,000 articles. I have eliminated, combined, and carved out 200+ articles to lessen the penalties (if they exist). Hopefully, we will be able to rewrite some of the articles without experiencing any Google Panda Penguin penalties.

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Filed Under: Google Tagged With: Temporary Total

My Favorite Android App For Work Comp Is A Stretch

August 12, 2015 By JL Risk Management Consultants

My Favorite Android App For Work Comp

My favorite Android App for Work Comp is in the Google Store. It is not listed under Workers Compensation in the Store.

If you wish to find the apps that I recommended which were listed in the Google Store, please read the newsletter or type in Android App in the search box.

The Drugs.com medication guide is the app that I have used the most even though it does not relate directly to Workers Comp. Why is it my favorite Android App for Work Comp ?

I have found one of the most complicated and expensive areas in a large proportion of claims is the cost of prescriptions. The interaction checker on the App is the best one that I have located for apps or desktop/laptop applications.

The App would be indispensable to an injured employee who is taking various medications from possibly different physicians. The interactions checker is stellar.

I have used the interactions checker every time I have been given any type of new medication over the past few years. My favorite website for prescriptions is BidRx.

From Drugs.com – The App has seven main tools:

My Drug List – Add your medications to instantly assemble relevant medical information in a simple, easy to read personalized format. Access in-depth consumer information, FDA alerts, drug interactions, plus food, allergy and medical condition interactions. An invaluable tool for medication management and adherence.

• Complete Drugs A to Z listings – Fast search, accurate suggestion engine and the most comprehensive database of drug information available online.

• Pill Identifier – Identify any meds simply by entering an imprint, shape or color. Database updated daily.

• Interactions Checker – Provides a list of interactions that may occur when different drugs are taken at the same time. Also checks food interactions automatically.

• Q & A – Ask a specific question about your medication. Search on thousands of questions and answers.

• Health Professionals – Quick access to all the tools you know and trust.

• Many more helpful tools. Try the Symptom Checker. Lookup specialized databases for side effects and dosage information. Not quite sure how to spell a drug name? Use the phonetic search.

The main screen is below.

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Filed Under: Android, Google, Google Play, pharmacy Tagged With: Google Play Store, medication guide

Android Work Comp Apps – 3 More Reviews

August 5, 2015 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Android Work Comp Apps

The Android Work Comp Apps (Apps) that I downloaded last week showed just how few companies are or were providing Google Play store apps.

These app reviews may seem very short. That is not a bad thing as complicated apps tend to have more errors in them.

The Android Work Comp Apps in this, prior, and future articles are all free of charge. The screenshots will not forward to the apps themselves.

You will need to click on the active links below. Text links are much more reliable than picture links.

NCCI’s coverage verification app was one of the simpler Android Work Comp apps. The app required no logins or passwords and worked well. Last year, Sedgwick provided one of the better WC apps.

Nova Medical Centers and Advantage Healthcare Systems both provided apps to locate their WC medical centers. The Advantage Healthcare System app also provided in-depth information in a resources section.

Screen Of Android Work Comp Apps Resources

The nearest Advantage Clinic to Raleigh was in Texas. The nearest Nova Medical Center was located in Augusta, GA. Both apps did work very well with no crashes. These two apps were obviously apps marketing their services.

MyMatrixx provided an app that required a password. I had reached out to them last week and have not heard back yet. I will review their app once I do receive some type of sign on info from them.

HealtheSytstems had a nice list of medications on their app. The quick-lookup feature of a large list of medications was great and required no username and password. They also had a tool – Ask The Pharmacist-that looks to answer your RX questions. This was a good simple app for medications.

Check back tomorrow for three of my favorite Google Store Apps for Workers Compensation. I will also cover one that did not appear in the search results for WC apps which I have used for years.

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Filed Under: Android, Google, Google Play Tagged With: advantage healthcare systems, NCCI's coverage verification, Nova Medical Center, Sedgwick

NCCI Coverage Verification App Works Well

July 29, 2015 By JL Risk Management Consultants

NCCI Coverage Verification App

The NCCI coverage verification app was one of the better apps mentioned in the article from yesterday. It worked without having to produce a login and password. The app worked quickly for an Android App.

The app is a basic coverage verification app that may come in handy for:

Injured employees to see who the carrier is for their claim
Contractors as a way to verify a subcontractor’s policy – much like Certificates of Insurance
Subcontractors can verify that the contractor actually has insurance if the contractor agrees to provide WC coverage
Employees to make sure their employer has coverage

An example of the main input screen for the NCCI coverage verification app is below. The date of accident or coverage inquiry date and Employer Name are the only inputs required to verify coverage. The Tax ID number will make the search more accurate.

The only real limitation of the NCCI coverage verification app is not all states have the NCCI as their rating bureau. The NCCI does cover approximately 40 states.

I attempted to search for a few companies with accident dates from files that we have in the office. Each one pulled up with no problem.

The NCCI app may be the best workers comp app that I found in the Google Play Store. I have not tested them all yet.

Please remember that you may incur data charges or it may count against your data limit. If possible, use your phone or tablet on a Wi-Fi system.

Additional information

Updated April 2, 2015

Size 1.8M

Installs 500 – 1,000

Current Version 3.1

Requires Android 2.3.3 and up

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Filed Under: Google, Google Play, NCCI Tagged With: android app, certificate of insurance, workers comp apps

Work Comp Apps – My Rabbit Hole Journey

July 28, 2015 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Work Comp Apps

My last foray into the Work Comp Apps for Android was very frustrating yet indicative of the minimal innovation/technology in this industry.

The last attempt to find any useful apps in WC world ended up with a few that were not disguised attorney ads or a banner for a company.

I decided to go down the rabbit hole on my own in April 2014. The three articles that were produced from that trip were:

Please remember that there were no searches of IOS apps, just Android in April 2014 and now.

The number of Android apps has surprisingly not changed that much overall. There were 150 apps that one could say were WC apps. Somehow there are a few anime apps mixed in- and I will not go there.

If you want to come with me down the rabbit hole, just click here for the Work Comp apps . Welcome to the search for apps in the Google Play store. The apps that I thought were even remotely related to WC were:

A few other work comp apps may have been applicable. As this blog has readers from all over the world, I thought the companies should be nationwide.

I downloaded these apps to my Google Nexus 4 phone. Wi-Fi was turned on so that I would not use up my monthly data allocation.

Almost all require a username and password which may prevent me from testing them fully. Check back in tomorrow when I take the harrowing journey of trying to use Android work comp apps.

If you know of any others apps that I missed please let me know. As you can see there are many major WC companies that have no Android Apps.

Should I buy an Apple product to check them out? By the way, all companies mentioned reserve their copyrights and patents. I am not going to go through each one.

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Filed Under: Android, Google, Google Play Tagged With: innovations, IOS apps, technology

Cutcompcosts Is Now Fully Mobile Compliant – Update

February 3, 2015 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Cutcompcosts Is Now Fully Mobile Compliant

Over two weeks ago, Google informed us (Cutcompcosts) that we are not mobile-compliant. As I have a heavy IT background, that seemed to be highly unacceptable.

—We are having a few mobile rendering problems, which is to be expected with a new software system. Hang in there, it will look spiffy soon.

This is the message we received from Google. It sounds serious. I think it was more of a warning shot across the bow, so to speak.

To: webmaster of cutcompcosts

Google systems have tested 1,100 pages from your site and found that 100% of them have critical mobile usability errors. The errors on these 1,100 pages severely affect how mobile users are able to experience your website. These pages will not be seen as mobile-friendly by Google Search, and will therefore be displayed and ranked appropriately for smartphone users.

Fix this now:<<<Idle threat???

1. Find problematic pages
View a report of the non-mobile-friendly pages found on your site, and the issues discovered. Inspect mobile issues

2. Learn about mobile-friendly design
There are a variety of techniques you can use to make your site mobile-friendly. Specifically, look for information about the issues brought up in Webmaster Tools. Follow our guidelines

3. Fix mobile usability issues on your site Fix the issues preventing your site from being mobile-friendly.

Over the weekend, I actually analyzed the Cutcompcosts inbound traffic. The inbound traffic for mobile devices was over 20%. I then realized we had reached the 80/20 rule. (Pareto Principle)

Cutcompcosts is now fully mobile compliant. Feel free to use us on your choice of mobile device. The landing page is actually the blog and not the landing page for desktops or laptops.

If you swipe to the right part of your mobile, the index to the other pages of the website are there.

The theme is bland, but the more bland it is, the easier it will be to use and the faster it will render on your mobile device.

If for some reason, you have any difficulties, please let us know ASAP. We use page-loading accelerators that may interfere with your specific mobile device’s page rendering if not excluded from the accelerator.

I uploaded over 110 exclusions to the accelerator last night. The accelerators should recognize your mobile device. There are so many mobile devices that I am sure we left one or two out of the mix.

Our weekly newsletter is next up for mobile compliance.

Filed Under: Cutcompcosts, Google Tagged With: IT, mobile compliant, smart phone

Could Google Enter The WC Markets – Not Any Time Soon

January 28, 2015 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Google Could Enter WC Markets But Not Likely

Google is poised to enter the US auto insurance market according to an article in the Insurance Journal.

Surprisingly, they already sell Auto Insurance in the UK. That caught me by surprise. I did not think Google was interested in any type of US insurance market. I stand corrected.

According to an article in the Insurance journal, the megalithic web searcher could present formidable competition for other insurance sellers. As many as two-thirds (67 percent) of insurance customers said they would consider purchasing insurance products from organizations other than insurers, including 23 percent who would consider buying from online service providers such as Google and Amazon, according to research by Accenture.

This would be quite a step to reach out from auto insurance to workers compensation. However, one cannot count them out for adopting a sales strategy that may be a profitable business.

I posted an article last year on the possibility of Wal-Mart selling Workers Compensation insurance. Do not count out large corporations when they seek out profitable lines of business.

One only has to look at Insurance Noodle as a way that they or Wal-Mart could broker insurance and not actually be a true carrier. Either giant corporation can cherry-pick data to the nth degree.

Google probably has the largest amount of corporate data of any company in existence. Liberty Mutual has a large amount of data in their Workers Comp database, but Google’s insurance database could rival that amount of data very easily.

That may be hard to believe, then again think of how much data the android smart phone systems feed into Google’s data stream or databases.

This is not likely to happen soon. Agents and brokers should be the most concerned as they may one day own a large portion of the commercial insurance market.

Update – They have pulled out of the insurance market. It is very unlikely to see an expansion into the workers comp markets for Google. However, companies such as Amazon or Wal-Mart could look to expand into the market.

Filed Under: Google Tagged With: insurance, Workers Comp Market

Save On Workers Comp Premiums – Keep Your Website Current

October 22, 2014 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Save On Workers Comp Premiums With An Updated Website

Keeping your company’s website up to date is one of the best ways to save on Workers Comp premiums increase your business no matter the size. One of the first background materials we request from clients is their website address(es).

Why? One of the first places that insurance carrier premium auditors examine for information about an employer is their website. The auditor searches for certain areas in the webpages such as type of products produced; locations; Board of Directors, owners; company-specific or audit-specific information.

If your website says that you manufacture widgets and your company has not produced those for many years, then your website should be updated with that information. Your website can be thought of as a sales brochure. Your website is not the place for out-of-date information.

We came across an employer that was disputing their audit in California. They produced ink dyes a few years ago, but then changed to manufacturing a type of sealant. The auditor became confused when he/she looked at their website. The result was being assessed a larger premium audit bill.

With our help, the situation was cleared up after it was discovered that their website even had a place to order the old ink dyes still active.

This happens more often when the website matches the company less and less each year. One area to watch is that your Google profile links to an active but unlisted website. Googling your company may show many links to a website you quit using long ago.

We actually switched blog sites in 2010. Google still lists some of the old blog and website in their index from 2007.

Filed Under: California, Google, ink dyes, Premium Auditor, sealant Tagged With: background material, googling, owners information

Top Four Workers Compensation Definitions – Back To Basics Or Even More Complicated?

July 23, 2014 By JL Risk Management Consultants

Workers Compensation Definitions

There are many Workers Compensation definitions on the internet. I was recently interviewed by a college student on Workers Compensation for his term paper. He had asked if he could reference articles in the blog, which of course I allowed him copyright permission.

One question that he asked me is “What is Workers Compensation?” I started reeling off info on underwriting, claims, premiums, state laws/rules, etc. He then said, “No I was just wanting the basic Workers Compensation definitions . ”

I was reminded that we in the WC world become so wrapped up on the technicalities and legalities that we should possibly take a step back and look at the basics. I decided to google the definition of Workers Comp to see what results would appear.

The theme that stands out is the lack of one true definition of Workers Compensation. One can see why WC is a complicated subject even when trying to keep it simple.

According to Investopedia:

A state-sponsored system that pays monetary benefits to workers who become injured or disabled in the course of their employment. Sick pay may qualify as workers’ compensation under certain conditions. Workers’ compensation first appeared in the U.S. in the 1930s and 1940s.

The Legal Dictionary’s definition is very long and can be found here.

Merriam Webster’s Dictionary definition:

A system of insurance that reimburses an employer for damages that must be paid to an employee for injury occurring in the course of employment. Program through which employers bear some of the cost of their employees’ work-related injuries and occupational illnesses or disabilities. It was first introduced in Germany in 1884.

In Britain and the U.S. in the late 19th century, there was a movement to secure the right of injured workers to compensation and to improve working conditions through court decisions, employer liability statutes, and safety codes. By the mid-20th century most countries in the world had adopted some sort of workers’ compensation. Some systems take the form of compulsory social insurance; in others the employer is legally required to provide certain benefits, but insurance is voluntary.

The system of workers’ compensation serves as an economic incentive for employers to prevent accidents and illness among employees, since liability for medical costs and the income lost by placing workers in hazardous environments can easily exceed the costs of establishing safe working conditions.

Wikipedia’ definition:

Workers’ compensation is a form of insurance providing wage replacement and medical benefits to employees injured in the course of employment in exchange for mandatory relinquishment of the employee’s right to sue his or her employer for the tort of negligence. The trade-off between assured, limited coverage and lack of recourse outside the worker compensation system is known as “the compensation bargain”.