Industry News

So the update we broke yesterday, that Google update that I said didn't feel like Panda, is not Panda as I said. But Google did say that it was a normal "improvements to our search algorithms and the web is constantly evolving," a Google spokesperson told me...

Yesterday we reported about weekend chatter that was so low that I called it the Google cricket update. But starting yesterday afternoon, that chatter in the SEO community spiked significantly...

I speak a lot.

In the last 3 years, I’ve given nearly 80 unique presentations at 100+ events in the technology and marketing fields. A good percent of the time, I get scores back from the organizers telling me how the audience perceived my talk in relation to other speakers. And, though it feels deeply, uncomfortably arrogant to say, I’m often in the top 1-3.

Based on my experiences of watching the other speakers I lose out to and observing when I get the top scores, I’ve...

I don’t want Yelp; I want to know where to eat. I don’t care about Google Calendar; I care about not missing appointments. I don’t buy iPhones; I buy best-in-class pictures of my kids. I’m loyal only to results, and I suspect you are, too.

— From John Pavlus’s Apple and Google Race to See Who Can Kill the App First, a good reminder that users care about outcomes, not features

Chris Palmieri’s A Practice of Ethics gets a bit rambly at times, but I really like the questions he wants designers to ask themselves. This bit on friction is particularly good:

Some friction is borne of our simple incompetence. This friction leads to the potholes of user experience — hidden data entry requirements, inscrutable error messages, long page loading times. Some friction is borne of greed, such as the tedious impedance of user abandonment. “Are you sure?” Yes, I’m sure....

Bing announced yesterday that this summer Bing will begin defaulting all search over HTTPS/TLS, which means they will be stripping out the keyword referrer data to web sites.

Bing is doing this to secure their search results and protect their searchers...

Looking for the latest results from Google for the 2016 FIFA Women’s World Cup tournament? On Android, you’ll get a special section at the top of the search page. But on iOS and desktop, Google has no such special feature. That’s in contrast to how things worked for the 2014 FIFA Men’s World Cup.

On Friday, we reported how Google was inconsistently showing match results. Some searching for “world cup” would get them; others wouldn’t. Now the mystery is solved. Google said it only shows...

Search engines often provide extra links to display in search results for a site that are known as Sitelinks. Google’s help page about site links tells us that their purpose is to: … help users navigate your site. Our systems analyze the link...

Last week, we reported how Google Capital backed Thumbtack received a Google penalty for unnatural links. In short, they told their businesses to link to them with keyword rich anchor text in exchange for progress points to a completed profile. The penalty was reversed less than a week later.