Google Will Soon Rank “Passages.” Does It Matter? [CXL]
On October 15, Google announced that it will integrate more artificial intelligence into its search algorithm and focus on “passages”:
By better understanding the relevancy of specific passages, not just the overall page, we can find that needle-in-a-haystack information you’re looking for. This technology will improve 7 percent of search queries across all languages as we roll it out globally.
The sky isn’t falling. You may not need to do anything differently, but there are some new opportunities.
Google will give priority to some less-powerful pages (those that’d otherwise rank lower) and even less relevant pages if there’s a passage on that page that does a great job of answering the query.
Fundamentally, this update is not going to turn search upside down. If nothing else, this update may be a good reminder for the search community to:
- Focus on giving useful answers.
- Create content covering more related questions and topics.
- Cater to users’ search intent (what would be the most helpful copy here?) instead of matching the copy to identified keywords.
- Leave quality-degrading metrics like “keyword density” behind.
A practical guide to solving product debt [UX Collective]
Most teams produce it, but few know how to fight it.
You will benefit most from this article if you often find yourself struggling with too many things you’d like to fix and not enough time.
In product development, product debt typically refers to anything that either ruins the user experience or the internal productivity, and is caused by how the product is designed. It could be unclear bad information architecture, copy on a button, a confusing workflow, accessibility problems, …
To solve the problem durably, the plan is to:
- Make the problem visible
- Stop producing new debt
- Absorb the existing debt
The article goes into much detail on each of these steps.
The 100% correct way to do CSS breakpoints [freeCodeCamp]
This one is very technical. It goes into great detail about what specific breakpoints to use for the layout of your product.
Some pages are not complicated, like simple blog posts. But most of the web is not that simple and it needs to look good on all devices.
When does it make sense to create separate layouts? Think in ranges:
- Phone
- Tablet portrait
- Tablet landscape
- Desktop
- Big desktop
Mobile UX: Avoid Using Subpages within the Product Details Page (26% Don’t) [Baymard Institute]
The amount of content available on a typical mobile product page makes maintaining an overview and sense of orientation difficult for many users.
To mitigate this, some sites place some of the product page content on subpages.
However, on sites that use subpages for some product page information, a subset of users during testing couldn’t find this information, while others who found the information had trouble retaining a sense of orientation or navigating back to the product page.
Yet, 26% of mobile sites use subpages for some of their product page content.
If users fail to find critical information on the product page some will abandon, thinking, sometimes wrongly, the product won’t meet their needs.
It’s better to use “Vertically Collapsed Sections” than subpages.
How to Grow a SaaS Company From $100k-$1m ARR – Experience from Mailshake & Right Inbox [Sujan Patel]
Last week, there was an article about maximizing growth for businesses at that early startup stage, with annual recurring revenues (ARRs) of up to $100,000.
Now, it’s about the next stage – companies with an ARR of $100k to $1 million.
At this stage, you need to start hiring your first salesperson and marketing person, if you haven’t already. The article explains what these first hires need to be able to do to take the company to the next level.
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Until next Thursday!
And try to survive these next few days, with all the companies bombarding you with Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers. If you can, lock up your wallet and forget all your credit card numbers 🙂
Radek Sienkiewicz
PS. Remember the article from last week about how similar company logos are becoming? I wrote it inspired by Revolut’s recent logo change. It turns out someone has posted it on Revolut’s subreddit and it was the top article there in the past week 🙂
I’ve just checked and it’s #2 story for the past month, too.
