Industry News

Google's Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, was asked about if a business should always have a website and if so, should they also have a blog. Sullivan replied that he believes all businesses should have at least a basic website, but when it comes to a blog, that depends on what they have to say on that blog.

Google has added new 3D models markup support to the product structured data documentation so that you can connect, associate or link your products to the appropriate 3D model.

Did you know that Google Search does not support the AVIF image format? At least not yet. Google Search doesn't list it on its supported image formats and Google Image Search simply won't index them. But John Mueller of Google said on X, "I'm sure this won't be necessary long term."

Mikhail Parakhin, the head of Bing Search and Microsoft Advertising, is stepping down from that role as Parakhin "decided to explore new roles." We've quoted Mikhail Parakhin here countless times over the past couple of years, to hear that he is leaving the role makes me super sad. His transparency and willingness to listen to the community was amazing.

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

Josephine Conneely shared some thoughts that might seem controversial in The Alignment Fallacy. The basic premise is that the need for full alignment within a team can sometimes hide some deeper problems within an organization:

The need for complete explicit agreements in organisations can reveal a culture which requires you to be on defense (a cover your a*s culture if you will). Alternatively, it can be driven by a culture which suffers from being too collaborative (it happens). Plans...

Austin Kleon has a really interesting post on the word “meek” in the Beatitudes. In short, “meek” doesn’t mean “weak”:

Meekness as a habit of calm attentiveness, stillness, freedom from the fretting worry of keeping control, a stillness that allows others to feel welcome around you, can appear as something very different from the shrinking back that the word so easily suggests. If anger is very much to do with the “pushing out and pushing away” element in our psyche, “meekness” in the...

I found the article I Asked Experts for Tips to Navigate LinkedIn’s Cringe Factor surprisingly helpful, not just for its advice but also because it articulates well why LinkedIn can feel so weird sometimes:

LinkedIn users are trapped in a culture of professionalism and all that comes with it. The person you are with your boss or a client is probably not your truest self. This setting makes posting — or even just creating and maintaining a profile — feel extra high-stakes and, in turn,...

I wouldn’t want to work in an environment like this because even though delivery is a fun part of building product, I find that for most PMs it’s so much more fulfilling (and you usually get better results!) when they are part of strategy and discovery as well. That said, I’m now long enough into this product journey to recognize that as long as you have a team of people who love execution and are excellent at it, this is a completely valid way to build a company:

We changed this model...

Google's Search Liaison responded to a series of posts on Twitter, leading him to beg SEOs to stop trying to "show Google" things, explaining that the process of doing things to your site to rank better in Google is the opposite of the advice Google is giving. Instead, show things to your users/visitors that those people will like.