Global app downloads topped 175 billion and consumer spending exceeded $86 billion in 2017, thanks to growth in emerging markets including China, India, Brazil and Russia, according to a new report from App Annie out this morning. Notably, India has now become the number two country by downloads, passing the …

Google’s Project Fi cell service never played the “unlimited data” game that most carriers in the U.S. like to play (and which is never truly unlimited). Instead, Google simply offered data at $10/GB/month and would give you a refund for any data you paid for but didn’t use. Now, however, …

Google today announced a significant change in how it ranks websites for mobile searches: it will now take page speed into consideration as one of its signals, the company says. The change, which Google is referring to as the “Speed Update,” will go into effect in July 2018, and will downrank very …

A newly discovered species of bird-like dinosaur, Caihong juji, had a beautiful iridescent coloration, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications. Caihong juji lived in China about 161 million years ago and may have used its impressive feathers to attract mates. Image credit: Velizar Simeonovski, Field Museum. …

Chameleons are small to mid-size tree-dwelling reptiles that are famous for their ability to change colors. A team of researchers from Germany has now discovered that the crests and tubercles on the heads of many chameleon species emit blue fluorescence when illuminated with ultraviolet (UV) light. A paper reporting this …

Review snippets, in which review stars appear next to your SERP listing, have long been among the most coveted rich results sought out by SEOs. Unfortunately, the pursuit of these review snippets over the years led to a lot of abuse — webmasters and SEOs would attempt to gain the rich …

I believe artificial intelligence (AI) will be a key driver of change in PPC in 2018 as it leads to more and better PPC intelligence. So far, I’ve discussed the roles humans will play when PPC management becomes nearly fully automated and six strategies agencies can take to future-proof their …

Google today announced a new ranking algorithm designed for mobile search. The company is calling it the “Speed Update,” and it will only impact a small percentage of queries, Google reiterated to us. Only pages that “deliver the slowest experience to users” will be impacted by this update, the company says. The …

Google has just announced its latest algorithm update, named the Speed Update, that will be launching in July of this year. We asked Google several questions about this update, including how this impacts desktop pages, whether pages with AMP URLs but slow canonical URLs will be impacted, if webmasters will …

In a follow-up to mid-2017 research on US smart speaker ownership, NPR and Edison Research have released new findings indicating that nearly 40 million Americans now own the devices. That number is roughly double what it was in July 2017 and shows the impact of 2017 holiday sales on the …