Industry News

There are a number of patents from Google, both granted patents and pending patent applications, that describe ways that Google might learn about entities and about facts associated with those by extracting the information from the Web itself...

Google was officially assigned the pending patent applications from CiiNow last Wednesday (August 27, 2014) in a transaction that was reported as being executed at the end of July. From searching through the USPTO, I don’t see any other patents...

I need to tell you about a conversation I had with my 4-year old daughter this morning. You’re going to have to stick with me, because despite the potty talk this is going somewhere, I promise. The backstory is that lately she’s been forgetting to wipe after going to the bathroom (this is the type of stuff you’re here to read, right?). So when she got up this morning, this happened:

Me: “Did you go to the bathroom?”

Her: “Yes.”

Me: “Did you wipe?”

Her: “Oh… no. I...

Lauren Chapman Ruiz shares an interesting viewpoint about the role of empathy in design in Inside the Empathy Trap. The issue is that we can’t just have empathy with one person, we need to have an understanding of a wide variety of goals and needs:

When we design, we pursue a broader type of empathy. As a colleague once said to me, designers need to identify with the whole user base. User-centricity is about the ability to recognize that there are a number of personas, each with...

Google ended its three-year experiment with Google Authorship yesterday, but the use of Author Rank to improve search results will continue. Wait — you can have Author Rank without Google Authorship? And just what is Google Authorship versus Author Rank? Come along, because they are different things — and Author Rank lives on. What Google Authorship Was

Google Authorship was primarily Google’s way to allow the authors of content to identify themselves for display purposes. You asserted it...

Regular readers will know that I’ve been experimenting with sponsorships on the site for a while, but I haven’t really talked about it. So I wanted to write a short note to say that, yes, I’m officially accepting sponsorships on Elezea now as a way to support my writing.

If you’re interested in sponsoring my writing for a week, you can find out more about sponsorship here (including what you get in return). If you know of anyone who might want to share their product with a bunch of really...

Last night, Google's John Mueller was tasked to announce on his personal Google+ account that Google has dropped support for authorship, completely.

Yes, completely. They simply removed it from their search results interface and from behind the scenes...

I know, the boy who cried wolf, but my job here is to bring to you what the SEO community is buzzing about and they are buzzing about a possible Google Penguin update, or at least Google testing things that may imply Google is pushing out a Penguin update.
Didn't I expect Penguin to be launched...

The title from a Google patent reached out and grabbed me as I was skimming through Google’s patents. It has the kind of title that captures your attention, as a weapon in the war that Google wages against people who might try to spam the search...