Industry News

When a Google Patent uses the word “Content” they often mean advertisements, rather than just the content on a website. That was true when I wrote about a Google patent about combining advertisements and organic results in the post Google to...

We all know that Google has said numerous times that you cannot fix core ranking algorithm updates. But John Mueller from Google this morning said in a webmaster hangout that there is a reason for this - he said it is not just one thing to fix but many fundamental issues you need to fix or improve on your site so Google can trust the site.

Thales S. Teixeira distills years of research on how companies are disrupted in his HBR article Disruption Starts with Unhappy Customers, Not Technology:

For eight years I’ve visited leading companies in more than 20 industries around the world that claimed to be in the process of being disrupted. Each time, I’d ask the executives of these incumbent companies the same question: “What is disrupting your business?” No matter who I talked to, I would always get one of two answers:...

Jase Clamp asks, What’s in the DNA of Product People? I especially like his depiction of the complementary forces of empathy and optimism.

This process of synthesis we call empathy. We all know that is what is needed to begin the job of product. But if it stopped there, we’d just be counselors, sitting with people, understanding their pain, and journeying with them.

We harness an opposing force that provides balance — it’s our ability, while reaching into the present to...

Danny Sullivan from Google informed me on Twitter that the June 2019 core update that started to roll out on Monday afternoon, June 3rd, has finished rolling out on Saturday, June 8th. So the process took about five-days to fully roll out, which seems pretty quick to me.

A New Patent on Categorical Quality

Some of the people who write patents for Google tend to stand out to me. One of those is Trystan Upstill. I noticed that he has published another one that looks really interesting, and worth reading. When...

Tremis Skeete has a good write-up of a recent Marty Cagan talk in his post Product vs. Project Managers: Marty Cagan’s Twelve Best Lessons for Product Team Work. His four traits of a competent product manager is something most of us have probably read about before, but it’s a nice refresher. Especially the first two:

The first is a deep knowledge of the users and customers. This seems like a daunting task, but if a product manager just gets out of the office and talks to users and...

In The Importance Of A Clear Career Path For Product Managers the Intercom team links to their Product Manager expectations by level (PDF). It’s a really good resource and fascinating look at their approach to product management. Here’s how they define the role at Intercom:

There are many elements and facets to being a PM at Intercom, but ultimately it comes down to: “Identify the most valuable problems to solve, enable your team to ship and iterate high-quality solutions quickly, and...

Google announced last night, as I covered in detail at Search Engine Land, that they released another update earlier this week that finished rolling out yesterday. This update restricts how many times a search results listing can show in the Google search results for most queries.