jan korbel

1. We ran a series of tests that verified Google is able to execute and index JavaScript with a multitude of implementations. We also confirmed Google is able to render the entire page and read the DOM, thereby indexing dynamically generated content.

2. SEO signals in the DOM (page titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, meta robots tags, etc.) are respected. Content dynamically inserted in the DOM is also crawlable and indexable. Furthermore, in certain cases, the DOM signals may even take precedence over contradictory statements in HTML source code. This will need more work, but was the case for several of our tests.

Read the whole article on Search Engine Land blog.

Ben Thompson writes about Google and what could eclipse it:

I think Google is quite safe when it comes to search, and that they will be a very profitable company for the foreseeable future. I just suspect we will all think differently about that dominance when it’s a small percentage of total digital advertising, just as we thought differently about IBM’s dominance of mainframes in the age of the PC, or Microsoft’s dominance of PCs in the age of the smartphone.

From article of the same title…

Smart people have a problem, especially (although not only) when you put them in large groups. That problem is an ability to convincingly rationalize nearly anything.

Go read it.

Via Daring Fireball

Michael Mace writing for his MobileOpportunity blog:

I believe Google’s mission statement to “organize the world’s information” is no longer a meaningful guide to its actions. To me, the company looks less and less like a unified product company and more and more like a post-modern conglomerate.

The idea behind the “Internet of Things” is that network connectivity is moving into almost everything. If that’s Google’s investment thesis, it could rationalize an investment in almost any industry. Appliances? Absolutely. Shipping and logistics? You bet.

Via Asymco

Matt Drance writing:

Facebook Home is a trojan horse designed to steal the Android experience, and the Android user base, right out of Google’s hands.

Via Daring Fireball

A Short Translation from Bullshit to English of Selected Portions of the Google Chrome Blink Developer FAQ.

Dieter Bohn and Ellis Hamburger writing for The Verge:

When Page took office, his first directive was clear. “Larry said ‘hey everyone, we’re going to redesign all of our products,’” recalls Jon Wiley, lead designer on Google Search. Wiley and co had just two months to give Google a fresh coat of paint, and to start thinking holistically about how Google as a whole was perceived. “We had a mandate to make this all look good,” Wiley says.

I would just add that, as Steve Jobs said:

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

And there is a lot of emphasis on the “looks” of things in the article and video. That said, the new Google Maps on iOS are great, better than Apple’s.

Benedict Evans has an interesting view of Google’s strategy:

In other words, Android, like Plus, allows Google to tie searches and advertising to individual people and places. In the long term, the data that Google gets from Android users is probably just as important as Pagerank in understanding intent and relevance in search.

Hence, the real structural benefit to Google from Android now comes from the understanding it gives of actual users, and the threat comes from devices that do not provide this data – even if, like the iPhone, they do provide plenty of search traffic.

Via Daring Fireball

This pure javascript library allows you to do simple A/B testing working only on your client-side code. All data is registered as custom variables in your website Google Analytics profile, so you don’t need to configure anything server side.

AngularJS lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application. The resulting environment is extraordinarily expressive, readable, and quick to develop.

Worth a look.

gmaps.js allows you to use the potential of Google Maps in a simple way.
No more extensive documentation or large amount of code.

Google’s doodly tribute to Moog synthesizer is really something. Here’s a guide for the UI in JPG.

Of course, what interests us is that it’s done with HTML5 technologies only. I hope someone digs through it and writes about it.