Industry News

Google already penalizes sites that provide a bad experience to mobile searchers. Now the company has confirmed that it’s testing with what seems like a boost for those providing a great experience.

Google said today that it is experimenting with giving sites that have earned its new mobile-friendly label some type of special treatment within its ranking algorithm. From the post:

We see these labels as a first step in helping mobile users to have a better mobile web experience. We are...

There’s a “Greenway park” near me, built where a train had previously roamed for over 100 years. The park is narrow and not much wider than the width of railroad cars. It cuts a nice path for local residents to use to walk across town, and it’s a...

I am seeing early but significant chatter this morning around Google algorithm and search results changes. Some are saying it is Penguin related and some are saying it is Panda related. It is too early to tell...

Think social media has killed search as a traffic driver? Think again, given that social media giant Twitter shared today that SEO has helped it generate a 10-times increase in logged-out visitors to its web site.

The news came during the Twitter Analyst Day event today. Twitter’s director of product management Trevor O’Brien said the company made a change earlier this year to ensure that search engines like Google and Bing could better access 50,000 popular hashtag pages — pages where...

I really liked this interview with Josh Porter where he talks mainly about good product design, and the importance of user feedback:

Good product design is the result of persistence as much as anything else. That’s why you hear companies like Airbnb and Evernote and others say that it can take years to figure out user onboarding or free trials or other sophisticated flows. It takes a lot of time to get your message right, get the user incentives right, get the interaction right, etc. It...

Lukas Mathis writes about our fear of empty space in visual design in Horror Vacui:

There’s a concept in visual art called horror vacui, or «fear of empty spaces.» It’s the natural tendency of humans to fill empty spaces with stuff. Your new shelf has some empty panels? Put something in there! Your flat has an empty corner? Buy a chair! Or a plant! Something! Anything!

Humans have the same tendency when it comes to visual design. No empty space! Your screen has a few white...