Industry News

Google's John Mueller posted a FAQ on Google+ around questions asked about site migrations from HTTP to HTTPS. Truth is, I don't see anything in there we didn't cover already here when talking about HTTPS but it is a good refresher...

Do 404 errors hurt SEO? It’s a simple question. However, the answer is far from simple. Most 404 errors don’t have a direct impact on SEO, but they can eat away at your link equity and user experience over time.

There’s one variety of 404 that might be quietly killing your search rankings and traffic. 404 Response Code



What is a 404 exactly? A 404 response code is returned by the server when there is no matching URI. In other words, the server is telling the browser that the...

A friend once told me that for him, one of the weirdest moments as a parent was the realization that their kids have a relationship with each other, not just with him. That conversation always stuck with me, and when our own daughters started to have a bond with each other that’s completely separate from their bond with us, I understood what he meant. It’s just something that is, for some reason, very difficult to wrap one’s head around—these people you made, suddenly having lives apart from...

Google’s new experiment in giving US presidential candidates “cards” where they have a guaranteed position are, so far, a disaster in their debut as part of today’s Republican debate.

Earlier this week, Google said that it would be allowing US presidential candidates to post content directly to Google that, in turn, would appear in a “card” format in a guaranteed place atop its search results.

The first test of this experiment happened during today’s “undercard” debate between Jim...

Back in 1979 anthropologist Michael Thompson wrote a book called Rubbish Theory. Considered ahead of its time, the book—which has been out of print for decades—explores how discarded objects can become valuable and fashionable again, and how the line between what is regarded as rubbish and what is not regarded as rubbish can be moved. In the article Highlight the power of creativity from below Lorenz Khazaleh interviews Thompson about how the book (and underlying theory) is now finally...

Ryan Singer shares some tips about prototyping tradeoffs in The Fidelity Curve: How to weigh the costs and benefits of creating UI mockups:

The purpose of making sketches and mockups before coding is to gain confidence in what we plan to do. I’m trying to remove risk from the decision to build something by somehow “previewing” it in a cheaper form. There’s a trade-off here. The higher the fidelity of the mockup, the more confidence it gives me. But the longer it takes to create that...

Google has just replaced the Google Webmaster Guidelines document, known as the holy-grail of SEO guidelines for most in our community. It seems a lot of the content has been revised and updated, which may be part of the new webmaster home from Google...

Did you know that you’re absolutely, positively, not allowed to use Q-tips to clean your ears? Not only that, but you’re not even supposed to clean your ears at all. From Roberto A. Ferdman more-fascinating-than-it-should-be The strange life of Q-tips, the most bizarre thing people buy:

“People have been led to think that it’s normal to clean their ears — they think that ear wax is dirty, that it’s gross or unnecessary,” [Dennis Fitzgerald, an otolaryngologist in Washington, D.C.]...

Dominic Basulto wrote an excellent summary of a recent McGraw Hill Financial Global Institute report called What the world’s best cities will look like in 2030. The main point the report makes is that people in cities are aging, and we’re not really paying attention to that. There are, however, several things we can do to make sure that older people can live comfortably in our cities:

First, the city of the future should have the infrastructure and transportation links to address the...