Industry News

It is time for the Google webmaster report, where I summarize the most important SEO and webmaster-related Google topics for the past month. Google completing the long rollout of the December 2022 helpful content update and link spam update may be the biggest news for the past month.

Inside the Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Soviet spaceflight. Dang this thing is beautiful. And what an amazing piece of engineering.

Youth Spies and Curious Elders. Life goals: “Waters is what I call a Curious Elder — someone who manages to retain their curiosity as they age and stays interested in what young people are up to. The curious elder isn’t interested in judging youth, they’re interested in learning from them.”

The Thoughts of a Spiderweb. This is a...

I have a few product-related articles that I wanted to reflect on and write more about, but I just don’t think I’m going to get to it. They’re all really good though, so instead of just archiving those notes I wanted to share them so you can check it out. 1.

Here’s some solid advice from Jason Knight on what to do when your product is a mess and you have to fix all the things all at once:

In a situation like this, you’re going to have to get super-pragmatic. You’ve got lots of...

On Thursday, January 26th, there were some signs of a possible Google search ranking algorithm update. The signals and chatter I was tracking, honestly, were not at super high levels. However, now that I see Glenn Gabe shared some really shocking charts of sites previously impacted by Google updates but now seeing a big swing. This is not necessarily a product reviews update but rather sites in the product reviews space that are seeing massive swings on the 26th.

Yandex had a boatload of its source code across all its technology allegedly leaked by a disgruntled employee and part of that was the source code for Russia's largest search engine - Yandex. As you can imagine, SEOs and others are diving in and seeing what they can learn from the source code.

I love when people get obsessed with a topic and then turn that obsession into an “iterative project” where they do the same thing over and over until the topic has nothing left to give. An example: my friend Dave watches sci-fi movies hundreds of times and obsesses about the typography for his blog Typeset in the Future. I think his post on Alien is my favorite:

The opening credits for Alien are nothing short of a typographic masterpiece. You can watch them in their entirety on the...

The Minimalist Photography Awards for 2022 are out. The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think. “Depression has often been blamed on low levels of serotonin in the brain. That answer is insufficient, but alternatives are coming into view and changing our understanding of the disease.” The Battle Over Bike Lanes Needs a Mindset Shift. “Installing protected routes tends to boost local shops. But many store owners remain attached to their street parking—and fight to protect it.”...

Some great tips here from Will Larson on how to improve internal communications as a leader. I especially like “Maintain the drip”:

These updates establish a persistent drip of information from you to the wider organization. Some weeks you might have a light update, but rather than folks thinking that you’re not doing much, they’ll be reassured that they are up-to-date on what’s important. Dense updates are good, but it’s the brief updates that reassure the team that you would have...

I enjoyed David Pereira’s breakdown of The Three Phases of Product Managers—and not just because he got me with his jazz reference. The third phase:

A Product Manager acting as a Jazz Player will set the context, and team members will build upon it. They relentlessly search for opportunities to create something innovative and outstanding. This scenario is more or less like the following: Context: Product Managers bring the proper context to the team. Goal, audience, value...