Industry News

Putting the linkbait title aside, Steve Denning’s The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value1 is a really interesting article about the difference between “real markets” and “expectations markets”:

In today’s paradoxical world of maximizing shareholder value, which Jack Welch himself has called “the dumbest idea in the world”, CEOs and their top managers have massive incentives to focus most of their attentions on the expectations market, rather than the real job of...

In this mornings Google Webmaster Hangout with John Mueller on Google+, one question asked was about why Panda has not really updated since October. Truth is, I am not if that is true, Google may have pushed out smaller Panda refreshes since...

In Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm Is a Human Tim Wu writes about the importance of human intervention in data-driven decision making:

Of course, there is a big difference between using data in combination with intuition and relying entirely on an algorithm—the decision-making equivalent of Siri finding gas stations near you. I don’t think anyone—Netflix, Mitt Romney—makes big decisions that way. As Chris Kelly, the C.E.O. of Fandor, an indie-film Internet channel told me, “It just...

Folks are still wondering about the status of the Google Penguin updates. As you may remember, there has not been much activity around it since early December after they put it on a holiday break...

Forever, Google said to treat Google's crawlers, GoogleBot, as you would any searcher or user accessing your site from the United States. But now this is going to change because Google may crawl your site from IP addresses outside of the US and also may crawl your site with language settings outside of English-US.

I’ve written about some of the patents involved in Google’s Project Glass in the past, and very recently about the Google Ventures’ funded Magic Leap. Project Glass still exists, but it appears to now have new leadership and a new direction. And...

Yesterday I reported on webmaster chatter around a lot of shuffles in the Google search results and named it Google Search Algorithm Juno Blizzard.

It isn't a massive update...

Google is releasing a new Search Queries Report tool in Google Webmaster Tools and they are offering an Alpha preview of the tool to a select number of beta/alpha testers.

If you want to test out the new Search Queries report...

In The Cathedral of Computation Ian Bogost makes the argument that algorithms have replaced religion for many people:

Here’s an exercise: The next time you hear someone talking about algorithms, replace the term with “God” and ask yourself if the meaning changes. Our supposedly algorithmic culture is not a material phenomenon so much as a devotional one, a supplication made to the computers people have allowed to replace gods in their minds, even as they simultaneously claim that...

On Friday, we reported on some early chatter around a possible Google update. That is now heating up, or should I say getting turbulent as Winter Storm Juno threatens the east coast with serious blizzard conditions.
The ongoing WebmasterWorld thread has a lot more chatter as of this morning and last night...