Industry News

Catch up on interesting new discussion and industry news.

    Google Tests Automating The Removal Of Manual Actions For Hacked Sites

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Sep 24, 2015
    Google announced a ton of reminders around their handling of hacked sites within the Google Search Console...

    “Baidu Windows 10 Express” Deal Makes Baidu The Search Default For Windows In China

    dannysullivan
    by dannysullivan
    Sep 23, 2015
    Many in China will be using Baidu rather than Microsoft’s Bing search engine within Windows 10, thanks to a new distribution deal that Microsoft has announced.

    “Baidu Windows 10 Express” is a new way to get Windows, through a deal signed between Microsoft and Baidu, China’s dominant and homegrown search engine.

    As part of the deal, the default search engine will be Baidu rather than Microsoft’s own Bing search engine. Usually, Bing is the default search engine in Windows 10, unless...

    Google May Have Changed How PageRank Flows With Nofollow Links

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Sep 22, 2015
    Back in 2009, Matt Cutts from Google wrote on PageRank sculpting saying:

    So what happens when you have a page with âten PageRank pointsâ and ten outgoing links...

    How to display threaded discussions on the web

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Sep 21, 2015
    I’ve been doing some work on threaded discussions and comment threads in our web and mobile apps, and I thought it might be useful to summarize some of my findings here. The particular issue we’re trying to address is how to deal with infinitely threaded discussions, like the kind you find on Hacker News and Reddit1:



    The first thing I did was some research on the different approaches currently used on the web and mobile for discussions and comments. There are some weird outliers,...

    Mobile first: not the right answer, just an efficient one.

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Sep 21, 2015
    Here’s some solid pragmatism from James Archer in Why is it so Easy to Get “Mobile First” Wrong?:

    Mobile-first design isn’t, in itself, the right answer. It’s just an efficient answer. If you can design for one device and then tweak it to more or less function on other devices, you shave a lot of time off the design process. With the cornucopia of possible devices you’d otherwise have to design for, that’s definitely a good thing.

    Developers: our best source of true innovation

    by Rian van der Merwe
    Sep 21, 2015
    I find the common meme of “Oh, that’s ugly—a developer must have designed that” pretty misguided (and I’m not even a developer). The reason is that most developers I know have exceptional ideas (and taste). So these words from Marty Cagan really resonated with me:

    I consider this mindset of the product owner (or more generally, the CEO or stakeholders) as the only one that can determine what to build, as toxic to teams, and a major reason for the lack of innovation. I’ve tried to...

    Former Googler: Google's Warning To Repeated Violators Was "Unnecessary"

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Sep 21, 2015
    Last Friday, Google posted a warning to repeated violators of the Google Webmaster Guidelines that Google may take "further action" and/or it may be "more difficult" to be successful in reversing the penalty. Again, this was aimed at manual actions only...

    Google Snubs & Bing Embraces The 2015 Rugby World Cup

    dannysullivan
    by dannysullivan
    Sep 18, 2015
    Photo from Rugby World Cup site.

    Looking to get the latest information on the 2015 Rugby World Cup, which began today and runs through October? Don’t google it. Bing it — because Bing’s got scores, line-ups and information while Google has nothing.

    Search for “rugby world cup” on Bing, and you get the latest scores of any matches:



    That includes a link to the current standings. You can also click from the box to various days to see upcoming matches, along with Bing’s prediction...

    How Google Now, Siri & Cortana Predict What You Want

    dannysullivan
    by dannysullivan
    Sep 18, 2015
    Google, Apple and Microsoft all have agents that want to be your personal assistant. But how well Google Now, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana can predict your needs depends on how much you want to share, how wedded to particular platforms you want to be and, in some cases, how much you actively want to help make those predictions happen. Going Under-The-Hood

    Ferreting out how these agents work is a challenge. The companies all have pages that describe Google Now, Apple Siri and...

    Google: If You Repeatedly Spam, You Will See Harder Penalty Actions

    rustybrick
    by rustybrick
    Sep 18, 2015
    Google published a blog post this morning named Repeated violations of Webmaster Guidelines explaining that if you have repeated violations of Google's Webmaster Guidelines and those violations lead to numerous manual actions...