Industry News

Buckle up - it was one insane month of changes that all SEOs who care about Google need to catch up on. We had very unstable and heated Google search results, Google is testing links in AI-answers in SGE, the Search Console links report is broken and Google News had an indexing bug for three full weeks.

Looks like all the negative feedback around the lack of links within the AI-generated answers that are generated by Google's Search Generative Experience has made a difference. Google is testing links directly in those answers in the SGE results.

Google has posted a new policy saying AI-generated reviews are against its policies, disallowed and considered spam. If you find such content, Google said you must mark it as spam in your feed with the is_spam attribute.

I am seeing a significant increase in chatter from within the SEO community around a possible Google Search ranking algorithm update. While most of the tracking tools have calmed, except for Semrush and Mozcast, I am seeing a big spike in SEO chatter yesterday and into today.

Here’s a great post by Camille Fournier about The Product Culture Shift, and how every part of an engineering culture needs to change when product managers are added to traditional software infrastructure organizations.

To start, let’s be clear about one thing: as tempting as it might be, just hiring product managers won’t fix this problem. Even if you could find enough good product managers who want this type of job, which you can’t, product managers are only useful when they are paired...

Excellent post by danah boyd, reminding us that with social networks it all comes down to nurturing the network dynamics, not the technical features.

That’s the thing about social media. For people to devote their time and energy to helping enable vibrancy, they have to gain something from it. Something that makes them feel enriched and whole, something that gives them pleasure (even if at someone else’s pain). Social media doesn’t come to life through military tactics. It comes to life...

Molly Graham makes a key distinction about good management in the post Manage the What, Not the How:

The key to exceptional management is to get great at defining the “what”. As a leader, you need to know how to create alignment, how to clarify what you expect, and how to communicate all of it. 

She goes on to explain that a big mistake she sees some managers make is to focus too much on how work is done. And when you do have to get involved in the “how”, do it through coaching:...

I love the point Simon Sarris makes here about the importance of reading fiction, and how it’s useful for work purposes as well:

I also tend to stress fiction because I think, especially among my professional peers in the industry of software, that there is too great a fondness for non-fiction. I think this arises from a belief that superior knowledge of the world comes from non-fiction. This thought is attractive to people who build systems, but over-systematizing and seeing systems in...

Allie Conti frames the remote work debate really well in this post. In short, how someone feels about remote work and “return to office” is extremely personal:

I’ve given you this narration of my personal experience because, for all the talk of productivity and metrics and company culture, the topic of returning to the office is intensely personal. My needs and desires, for a variety of reasons relating to my age, finances, circumstances, health situation, and lifestyle, might be very...