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Google search results to show more mobile-friendly sites on phones
Google believes you'd want to see more mobile-friendly websites when you do searches on a phone or tablet. That's why on April 21st, it'll start giving online destinations with mobile versions higher placements on the results page, assuming you're also using a mobile device. Google's updated algorithm will even parse info from indexed apps, if you have them installed on your phone/tablet and (in case it needs log-in credentials to work) if you're signed in. The company has long given ranking points to websites that are optimized for new computers and devices, and it also made finding mobile-friendly ones easier last year, so the change isn't entirely surprising. If you run a website and need to know if Google recognizes its phone/tablet version, though, you can run it through the company's mobile-friendly test tool. You can never be too sure, especially since the company believes this change "will have a significant impact in [its] search results."
Google under fire for promoting own content ahead of competing websites
This isn't exactly a new allegation, but the idea's spreading fast: Google is tuning search results to favor itself, and perhaps that's not entirely fair. Though the European Union is already investigating Google for potential antitrust violations, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal cites several US businesses that aren't too happy themselves, claiming that Google Places, Product Search and the like took a big chomp out of their traffic. Google's defense, as usual, rests on its secret algorithms, which it claims aren't rigged in any way, adding that the prominent placement of location- and product-based search results are just a way to get users quicker answers to their queries. If you type in "day spa nyc," you're looking for some catered suggestions, right? And what of those who argue differently? Well, obviously they're in league with Microsoft.
Google's Amit Singhal tells us about the dreams search engines are made of
Do Googlers dream of electric algorithms? For a little insight into what makes the search engine that became a verb tick, we recently attended a talk by Amit Singhal, one of its chief engineers. Amit is part of the team in charge of tweaking and improving Google's ranking algorithms and has 20 years of experience when it comes to sorting through data, with that time split into even decades spent within the academic sphere and over in Mountain View. What he had to tell us mostly revolved around his aspirations from when he started out back in 1990, but it's the way that Google has acted to meet each of those goals that's the fun and interesting stuff (or as we like to call it around here, the meat). So do put on your reading monocle and join us past the break.%Gallery-97608%
