Industry News

I recently finished the book Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and thoroughly enjoyed it. There’s a little bit of a lull around the 60%–80% mark, but overall it’s a solid 4.5 stars for me. Mostly because the main character is a robot who isn’t sure if he has become self-aware or just imagining things, and he certainly isn’t sure if he even wants that. It is a wonderful premise (albeit clearly inspired by the Murderbot series), and Uncharles is probably my favorite robot character in a...

I loved the story of the honking Waymos when it came out, and I’m glad it got the classic “but what does it all mean!?” treatment from The Atlantic:

Watching the Waymos circle the lot under the cover of darkness—and occasionally getting stuck in an endless loop—scratches a childish itch, akin to the fantasy of watching one’s toys come alive at night. In one video, the cars, bathed in taillight red and trying to exit, give off an aggressive vibe. In others, they seem clumsy. What do...

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Google told us to wait until the August core update is done rolling out to see how we were impacted...

As you know, Google released its August 2024 core update on Thursday, August 15th, followed shortly after by a large search ranking bug hours later. SEOs and site owners are asking how we can differentiate between the two. Google's John Mueller explained that you should not fully judge the effect of the current core update until it is fully done rolling out.

Google's Martin Splitt posted a video in his SEO Made Easy series on the topic of the Google Search Console "Discovered - Currently Not Indexed" page indexing report status note. In short, there are three primary reasons you'd see pages in this category, they are:

Google core updates, such as the August 2024 core update, seem to directly impact if a site shows in the Google AI Overviews or not. Google did say quality is a benchmark for showing in the AI Overviews, plus we know featured snippets and many other search features are all impacted by Google core algorithmic updates.

Google is testing a new search feature named "your related searches" that seems to be pinned to the sidebar of the Google Search results. It reminds me of the Chrome Journeys but this seems to be baked right into Google Search.

Google Search has a new design for the embedded map you see for both local pack maps and knowledge panel maps. The new map has a more subtle design, with blue roads, not yellow roads and other design differences.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Google has confirmed it has fixed the search ranking bug that started over four days ago. The issue was first confirmed by Google on Friday morning, August 16th at around 1:48 am ET. Google confirmed the ranking issue was resolved today, August 20th, at 8:10 am ET.