Industry News

At SMX West Matt Cutts of Google announced they are actively working on the "next generation" Panda update that will "soften" the algorithm.

Matt specifically said this is aimed at helping small businesses that may be impacted by the Panda algorithm...

At SMX West Matt Cutts gave the attendees a few tidbits, one of those items was that making your site secure, encrypted, i.e. SSL enabled, is an important trend for 2014.

At the end of the session...

Giff Constable makes the case for validation and learning in the product development process before you launch something. From You Are Spending 3x-5x More Than You Should:

Agile/lean has helped people debunk the “big upfront design” phase, but far too many replace it with nothing. I agree that waterfall-style, big-upfront-design is a waste of time and money. I do believe that getting into the market with a designer and an engineer and learning is a critical use of time.

As expected, Google was testing a new design for some time now and now it is officially rolling out to everyone.

Jon Wiley, the Lead Designer for Google Search...

When Google moved to secure search in October 2011, it was a blow to publishers, who began losing data about the search terms used to reach their sites. It also opened Google up to claims of hypocrisy, in that advertisers continued to receive the terms. Now, Google says it’s reexamining the issue and seeking a better solution.

Will clicks on non-paid listings go back to passing along search term data again? Will ad clicks have that withheld? Google didn’t say either way, and there could be...

Last night at SMX West, during the keynote conversation with Google's Amit Singhal, Danny Sullivan brought up the knowledge graph a few times and then Dan Barker's tweet about scraper sites...

Yesterday, Google's head spam man, Matt Cutts, issued a stern warning to link spammers in Italy and Spain. This warning will likely be followed up with some unnatural link notifications and ranking penalties within the week...

Lee Hutchinson, who was a system administrator at Boeing at the time of the space shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, looks back at that tumultuous time in a long but absolutely fascinating article for Ars Technica:

In August 2003, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) issued its final report. Behind the direct cause of the foam strike, the report leveled damning critiques at NASA’s pre- and post-launch decision-making, painting a picture of an agency dominated by...