Industry News

Google is releasing a new Search Queries Report tool in Google Webmaster Tools and they are offering an Alpha preview of the tool to a select number of beta/alpha testers.

If you want to test out the new Search Queries report...

In The Cathedral of Computation Ian Bogost makes the argument that algorithms have replaced religion for many people:

Here’s an exercise: The next time you hear someone talking about algorithms, replace the term with “God” and ask yourself if the meaning changes. Our supposedly algorithmic culture is not a material phenomenon so much as a devotional one, a supplication made to the computers people have allowed to replace gods in their minds, even as they simultaneously claim that...

On Friday, we reported on some early chatter around a possible Google update. That is now heating up, or should I say getting turbulent as Winter Storm Juno threatens the east coast with serious blizzard conditions.
The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has a lot more chatter as of this morning and last night...

Matt Cutts talks about the early days at Google, how he got to work on search quality and even shares a slide on his relationship with the SEO/webmaster community. I believe Greg Boser got a call out. :)

Sigh… Every few years, there’s a renewed effort in the worlds of shoddy journalism, clickbait, and cheap pageviews to claim the death of SEO. Recently, a few articles, a handful of folks on Twitter, and some presentations I’ve come across have been using this chart to PROVE that this time, SEO really is dying: Google Trends Search for “SEO”

See how there’s a slight downward trend from the middle of 2012 to today? Our doom must be at hand!

Those of us in the search world know that...

Earlier this month I did a talk at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill about lessons learned from the early days of Google. The video is now online and watchable, or you can watch it on YouTube:



We did the talk in a pretty large room, and the camera at the back of the room couldn’t easily record me and the slides at the same time. So here are the slides to go along with the talk:



Or you can view the slides at this link.

I believe all the pictures should be...

Richard Seroter’s 10 Architecture Tips From “The Timeless Way of Building” is highly relevant to software development as well:

“Each building when it is first built, is an attempt to make a self-maintaining whole configuration … But our predictions are invariably wrong … It is therefore necessary to keep changing the buildings, according to the real events which actually happen there.” (p. 479-480) The last portion of the book drives home that fact that no building  (software...

This is pretty fantastic. The new Sonos logo pulses like sound waves when you scroll up and down. Brand New comments:

There is no doubt this is a party.

Indeed.

Designed by Bruce Mau Design.

This may be a bit premature but I am seeing very early signs of a possible Google search algorithm update touching down. A WebmasterWorld has some European webmasters noticing some shifts and changes in the Google search results...

Melissa Dahl talked to some people to find out Why You Keep Mishearing That Taylor Swift Lyric:

“There’s a piece of what we understand that comes from the sound that comes in our ear,” but another piece of our understanding comes from our minds — from our expectations, in other words. It’s easy to see how this explanation applies to many misheard lyrics, specifically the most-often cited one from Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” which contains the lyrics “Excuse me while I kiss the sky”;...