Industry News

So we had a nice number of updates to the Google search ranking algorithm in September. Google is honestly not saying much but they did confirm some of these updates, including the Google Birthday update. John Mueller from Google has commented about the update both in yesterday's video hangout and on a Reddit thread.

On Friday we reported on a possible Google update that touched down on September 27th. Google's Danny Sullivan confirmed on Saturday that Google did do a "smaller" update this past week but would not classify it as a big update like the Medic Update from August 1st.

I am hearing some chatter around a possible Google search algorithm update that took place yesterday, September 27th. To be honest, not all of my indicators, i.e. the community chatter and the tracking tools, are 100% convincing that there was a big update. I do believe that a nice number of sites were impacted yesterday but the impact was not as large as a bigger update.

Google said on Monday that they have updated their image search algorithm to use the authority of a web page as a more important factor. They also said they are looking at prioritizing images from fresher content and Google looks at the placement of the image on the page. So an image that is central to the page, and higher up on the page is valued more to Google.

As part of the blitz of new announcements from Google this past Monday, Google also introduced what they call the Topic Layer in the Knowledge Graph. With that, they can also dynamically categorize knowledge panels based on sub-categories and topics to better provide search answers to their users.

Sheila Marikar wrote a very interesting piece for Bloomberg called The Race to Disrupt Your Tedious Treadmill Workout Is Heating Up. It talks about the mind-numbing boredom of running on a treadmill, with a focus on their design:

Today’s electric machines absorb shock better and look sleeker, but the ones in most gyms retain a certain quaintness, with their last-gen phone-charging cables and omnipresent menu of Calorie, Heart Rate, Manual, Random, Hill.

It then discusses how...

Ok this is creepy:

Over the past few years, Spotify has been ramping up its data analytic capabilities in a bid to help marketers target consumers with adverts tailored to the mood they’re in. They deduce this from the sort of music you’re listening to, coupled with where and when you’re listening to it, along with third-party data that might be available.

And they’re not alone:

Spotify is far from the only platform helping brands target people according to their emotions;...

I enjoyed this interview with Anna Charity, the head of design at Headspace. Here she explains designing the product specifically to make meditation feel more inclusive:

One of the main things that we considered when we created the brand was that meditation should feel like it’s for everybody, and it should feel accessible and inclusive. More importantly, we try to show meditation in a really everyday way — we show it in contexts that people can easily imagine. And one thing that all...