Industry News

I just posted another excerpt from Making It Right to Medium. It’s called How to avoid building products that fail, and it’s all about starting the product development process at the right place:

When it comes to building products, the starting point is — always—needs. Not what we assume would be cool, but what users or the business need to be successful. […] One of the biggest mistakes we can make in product development is jumping to execution before an appropriate planning cycle has...

Dave Pell in a short note about music streaming, radio, and high-res audio:

I’m at the tail-end of a pretty severe audio-related midlife crisis (related: Anyone want to buy some vinyl?) and I’m convinced that the return to Vinyl and the quest for audio excellence has less to do with sound quality and more to do with nostalgia for what listening to music used to be — an often communal activity that required focus and was more than just a soundtrack for whatever else you happened to be...

This morning, Google posted on Google+ a request for webmasters to submit their ideas and suggestions on how to improve Google Web Search and Google Webmaster Tools.
Google said that

The other day a friend emailed me asking if I’d ever seen behavior where Google’s autocomplete suggestions would change based on a prior query.



I’ve seen search results change based on prior queries but I couldn’t recall the autocomplete suggestions changing in the way he detailed. So I decided to poke around and see what was going on. Here’s what I found. Query Dependent Autocomplete Example

Here’s the example I was sent. The individual was cleaning up an old computer and didn’t...

There are dozens and dozens of complaints from Google AdSense publishers or rogue Google AdSense ads forcing users from their web site to a spam web site - virtually hijacking their users through weird JavaScript redirects powered by Google AdSense ads servers...

I spend a lot of time here documenting what Google spokespeople are saying in terms of SEO and webmaster advice. Often, I don't spend the time going into all of the alternatives around the statement...

This is the last post in a series about Google’s International patent application Natural Language Search Results for Intent Queries.

This section was inspired by the citations list at the end of a paper used by the listed inventors as a...

A couple of weeks ago Andrew Watts published A Teenager’s View on Social Media, and the post got a lot of attention. Most of the tech world linked to it. Today, danah boyd (whose work researching teen use of social media I highly admire) published a response called An Old Fogey’s Analysis of a Teenager’s View on Social Media. She makes some excellent points about how the story was reported, particularly the narrative that was built around one person’s experiences:

I don’t for a second...

In a video hangout with Google's John Mueller, John said that even without using the disavow file or removing bad links, it is possible to recover from a Penguin penalty (aka algorithm). Let me say that again... If you are hit by a Penguin issue on your site and you don't want to remove...

Don't be surprised if you go to your Google Analytics and try to quickly check in on your search traffic and possibly start freaking out that Google dropped the feature.

They didn't drop the organic search results or remove it...