Industry News

Catch up on interesting new discussion and industry news.

    New Visual Search Photo Features from Google

    by Bill Slawski
    Mar 29, 2016
    These details come from an anonymous source who also gave us a bit more details on the project. The report states there will be a new feature integrated, allowing users to outline specific areas of the image in order to directly target their...

    Signs Of A Google Update; Not Sure If It Is Penguin...

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Mar 29, 2016
    I am seeing some early signals within the community that there is a potential Google update being pushed out. It is really early. It might be some limited Google test, which they are constantly doing or really early signs of a Penguin update...

    Google To Complete Major Redesign For AdWords Over Next 12 Months

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Mar 28, 2016
    Google announced this morning they are going to be redesigning the AdWords platform over the next 12-18 months. Of course...

    Former Google Spam Fighter: Machine Learning Already In Spam Algorithms

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Mar 25, 2016
    Yesterday we reported that Google is aiming to use machine learning in spam algorithms, to better fight spam.

    Shortly after I wrote that, former Google spam fighter Murat Yatagan...

    Google: The Top Three Ranking Factors Are Content, Links & RankBrain

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Mar 24, 2016
    Surprise, surprise, the top three ranking signals in Google's search ranking algorithm is content, links and RankBrain. Not necessarily in that order, but content and links are more important ranking signals than RankBrain...

    Google vs. Moz On Clicks Influencing Search Ranking

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Mar 24, 2016
    The debate on whether Google is telling the truth about click data, i.e. pogosticking, clicking on a search result and jumping back to the search results page shortly after, influences the rankings of that search result is a topic that won't die...

    Boxes and arrows: more powerful than we think

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Mar 23, 2016
    Alex Maughan voices some things I’ve been thinking about as well in a great post on user journey mapping. After one particular project he observed this:

    This user flow may seem an obvious solution, but it wasn’t obvious to the company hired to design the app before I got involved, which had up to that point resulted in some very limiting and confusing design flows. I don’t say this to blow my own horn. The point I’m making is had they explored the designs with some rough, high-level...

    Google Granted Patent on How Self-Driving Cars Might Handle Tailgaters

    by Bill Slawski
    Mar 22, 2016
    Google’s self driving cars have covered over a million miles of roadway, and recently, one of them crashed into a slow moving bus. Details about the accident can be found in Google’s bus crash is changing the conversation around self-driving...

    Online experiences begin and end offline

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Mar 22, 2016
    A few years ago I almost went insane with commute-madness (which I’m reasonably sure is a thing). We lived in Bloubergstrand in South Africa, and I worked in the city of Cape Town. This meant that I had to be out of the house and on the road before 6am every morning (and leave work before 4pm), otherwise I would spend upwards of 90 minutes in traffic, as opposed to the more manageable (or so I thought…) 50-60 minutes.

    It’s a little too soon for me to talk about the effect that commute...

    Former Googler: Google's Early March Update Gone Unnoticed Long Enough

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Mar 22, 2016
    Last week, we reported on a Google update that we suspected started a week or so before. There was some chatter in the SEO communities around an update, as well as some of the automated tracking tools noticed some changes - but overall...