Industry News

Here is the big Google webmaster report for November 2023 and it is a big one. We had two confirmed updates; the October 2023 core update and the October 2023 spam update. Let's not forget all the unconfirmed algorithm updates we had this month.

Only two weeks after the October 2023 core update finished rolling out, we have a new core update rolling out - the November 2023 core update. This is a different update to the core update, Google said "We have different systems that are considered core to our ranking process; this month's core update involves an improvement to a different core system than last month."

Google announced a new reviews update is going to roll out sometime next week and this new update will make the reviews update more real time. Thus Google will stop giving periodic notifications of improvements to its reviews system going forward.

Last night, Google confirmed a bug with the Google October 2023 core update that impacted Discover traffic for "some sites." The bug was started on October 5th and lasted through October 31st.

Google announced that its mobile-first indexing "trek" is now "complete." Which is strange to me being that Google said it was done moving sites to mobile-first indexing last May but hey, now it is really done.

On the heels of the last unconfirmed Google search ranking algorithm update that touched down on October 25th, I am seeing signs of another tremor this morning - October 27th.

Good advice here on when (and when not!) to hire the first product manager in a startup. This is also a good reminder to “let PMs be PMs”…

PMs are the strategy arm of this process, and should be empowered to own the roadmaps for how they’ll better the business, not just the execution of getting things built. In an ideal world, PMs will have better decision-making and execution than you within their domains due to focus and proximity to customer needs. This is how you scale. If you...

I am seeing signs of another possible Google Search ranking algorithm update today that kicked off last night into today (October 24 and October 25). This is an unconfirmed update, Google has not announced any official update yet but maybe this is the first set of tremors post the completion of the Google October 2023 core update and spam update?

Google is testing showing ads within the organic (free) search results. Generally, Google would show the ads at the top of each page set, even within the continuous scroll interface. But now Google has confirmed it is experimenting with showing these ads in additional spots within the search results listings.

There’s some good insights in this year’s 2023 State of DevOps Report. It’s well worth skimming through. Things like this aren’t exactly surprising, but it’s nice to have some data around it:

Teams with generative cultures, composed of people who felt included and like they belonged on their team, have 30% higher organizational performance than organizations without a generative culture.