Industry News

Officially, Google distinguished engineer Matt Cutts heads Google’s web spam fighting team. Unofficially, he’s Google’s chief debunker. If someone seems to be talking crazy about Google, Matt may turn up with a polite clarification. When does Matt react? This is Search Engine Land’s guide, based on years of observations (you can click to enlarge it). Origin Of The Flowchart

This flowchart originally appeared two years ago, on May 31, 2011. I was delivering on a promise I once jokingly made...

Ken Norton wrote a really nice post about the problem with prioritized feature lists in product development, using his team’s early work on Google Docs as an example. Specifically, here is the problem he highlights in Babe Ruth and Feature Lists (Why Prioritized Feature Lists Can Be Poisonous):

Our wish list approach also created false equivalence. There was a huge chasm between what #1 meant to us and what it meant to our users. For us, it was first amongst equals. To them it was a...

Rebekah Cox wrote a great post discussing the difference between product Demo Modes (in-store displays, on-stage demos that work without a glitch, picture-perfect product intros) and what she calls Reality Mode:

Reality mode takes time, iteration, data and user research. It takes honestly using what you’ve created and putting it through its paces. It takes asking yourself “is it useful?” and honestly answering. The result may not align with conventional wisdom, you may have to sacrifice...

The great thing about HTML is that it’s so flexible and offers so many ways to do things. The worst thing about HTML is that it’s so flexible and offers so many ways to do things. I’ve looked at a lot of websites and I still see people doing things new ways.

An issue that’s [...]

The post Google Files Patent for Understanding Multiple URLs for the Same Page appeared first on SEO by the Sea.

John Pavlus wrote a great piece about the phrase “intuitive interfaces”, and comes to the following conclusion in I’m Boycotting “Intuitive” Interfaces:

I think what we all want from technology are interfaces and interactions that feel familiar, legible, and evident. They should teach us in ways we would like to learn, and speak to us in a way we can understand. This doesn’t mean that technology ought never to surprise or challenge us. But desperately seeking “intuitive” feels, to me,...

Lucas Rocha talks about the importance of designers and developers working closely together in Mind the Gap:

Iterative design processes that engage designers and engineers very early tend to result in higher UI quality because it provides the necessary flexibility and agility to steer ideas as they are implemented. Sounds obvious but this is much easier said than done. Just see how rare is to find products with outstanding user interfaces.

This is very true, and the power of small,...

Cliff Watson in Teens aren’t abandoning “social.” They’re just using the word correctly:

What is Facebook to most people over the age of 25? It’s a never-ending class reunion mixed with an eternal late-night dorm room gossip session mixed with a nightly check-in on what coworkers are doing after leaving the office. In other words, it’s a place where you go to keep tabs on your friends and acquaintances.

You know what kids call that? School. For kids who still go to school,...

We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.

This is the fourth Penguin-related launch Google has done, but because this is an updated...