Industry News

Catch up on interesting new discussion and industry news.

    Does Google use EXIF data from pictures as a ranking factor?

    Feb 24, 2014
    Christian Oliveira, Madrid Blog post about images: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/20...

    Bing Warns: Poor Grammar May Lead To Poor Rankings

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Feb 24, 2014
    Duane Forrester from Bing strongly implied on the Bing Webmaster Blog that having poorly written content with poor grammar will have a negative impact on your search rankings within Bing...

    What happens when placeholder text doesn’t get replaced

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Feb 24, 2014
    One of the many things I do that prove that I need to get out more is collect examples of placeholder text that ends up in a final interface. But I’ve also noticed that the issue happens more and more in the offline world as well. As I looked through my folder this morning I realized that, in the interest of science, I should post some of my favorites here. If you have any other good examples, please let me know!

    Let’s start with a very common one. Even though error messages are extremely...

    The difficulty of expanding jobs-to-be-done

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Feb 23, 2014
    MG Siegler in Going Against The Grain:

    We’re seeing over and over again now that the behemoths can’t simply add a startup’s funtionality into their own app as a feature and kill said startup. But it’s equally important to note that if you are able to establish your startup, especially those in apps form, it may be hard to get your users to do anything other than what they originally came to do. Especially if the new funtionality is against the grain in any way.

    This comes back to...

    Judgment vs. Understanding

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Feb 23, 2014
    Life decisions are never one-dimensional. Yet we often simplify the decisions others make to squash it into a context that’s easy to understand, because human nature. The problem is that trying to make other peoples’ decisions fit into our own neatly-defined boxes of understanding leads to something that’s poisonous for the soul: judgment.

    We hear about someone’s decision to quit their job, or move somewhere, or marry someone, or drink tea instead of coffee, and we judge. Oh, how we judge. I...

    Everything’s Not Awesome: Google News Spammed With Pitch To Watch “The Lego Movie” For Free

    dannysullivan
    by dannysullivan
    Feb 22, 2014
    It’s definitely not what you expect to make the top of a Google News section, a crappy article promising that you can watch The Lego Movie online for free, not when the film is still in theaters. But that’s what Google is delivering up.

    The screenshot above shows the situation, which reader Vishvesh Agrawal of DhanInfo tipped us to, after coming across it when reading Google News. The “story” appearing at the top of the Google News entertainment section is all types of bad. Supposed News...

    Evolving Google Search Algorithms

    by Bill Slawski
    Feb 21, 2014
    When I’m looking for something at a search engine, I will often start out with a particular query and then depending upon the kinds of results I see I often change the query terms I use. It appears that Google has been paying attention to this kind...

    Business Names Google Places Quality Guidelines Updated

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Feb 21, 2014
    Google has updated their Google Places quality guidelines once again this time to clarify how you can name your business within Google Places/Google Local/Google Maps.

    Jade Wang from Google pulled out the changes and posted them in the Google Places Help forums...

    AI isn’t all bad

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Feb 21, 2014
    In The Dawn of the Age of Artificial Intelligence Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee talk about some of the good things that are coming out of the Artificial Intelligence community:

    A user of the OrCam system, which was introduced in 2013, clips onto her glasses a combination of a tiny digital camera and speaker that works by conducting sound waves through the bones of the head. If she points her finger at a source of text such as a billboard, package of food, or newspaper article, the...

    6 Ways to Earn Higher Rankings Without Investing in Content Creation and Marketing - Whiteboard Friday

    Feb 20, 2014
    With all the buzz about content marketing and how wonderful a way it is to earn higher rankings, it's easy to forget about all the other tools that good SEOs and marketers have at their disposal. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand covers six ways to improve your rankings without spending a dime on content creation and marketing.

    6 Ways to...