Besides being named the best place to work in the U.S. and seeing its stocks dip this week after releasing disappointing fourth-quarter earnings, Google has cropped up in tech news recently with a few new features. Here are three that marketing and design professionals should note:

Google algorithm tweak

Google tweaks its algorithm relatively often, so its announcement of yet another tweak in the way Googlebot crawls web pages might have gone unremarked. This tweak, however, affects web design and page layout in relation to page rank, so design professionals and others who rely on page rank should pay close attention.

To sum up the change, Google’s search algorithm will now punish pages that push advertising at users beyond a normal degree, especially “above the fold.” The idea is to improve user experience by downgrading pages that irritate users by putting too much unrelated content in premiere web page real estate.

Google mentions that it only one in 100 searches will show a user a different page order than before the change. The user feedback-prompted change does show Google’s commitment to using its algorithm to provide the best search experience, not just on the results page, but also on the pages that float to the top of those results. Design and web marketing professionals should take this as a continued step in that direction.

Google+ integration with search

The search giant’s recent foray into social media with Google+ has earned mixed results, but Google’s recent actions show its determination to make the new social media platform an integral part of its search experience. Google recently started showing “personal” results above regular search results – meaning that if a user searches for a TV show, their Google+ acquaintances’ posts about that show will appear above the Wikipedia entry.

The change has upset some media commentators, and it remains to be seen whether this is a permanent change for Google, or if it will be short-lived like its Buzz platform. While the change is in place, however, personal results have the highest placement in the results page, meaning that social engagement on Google+ could, at least temporarily, be just as important as the No. 1 page rank.

It might not push Google+, with its 90 million users, past Facebook, but at least in the short-term, it raises the platform’s viability as a marketing tool.

Google Web Fonts

If you’re a fan of the popular blog I Love Typography, no one needs to tell you what role typeface plays in design and everyday life. Fonts can often be an expensive investment, but Google has turned that on its head, as it did for books and scholarly articles years ago. With Google Web Fonts, users can download a huge library of font files for free. The repository of open-source fonts will open up typography to people beyond designers and typeface enthusiasts, and should be a wonderful resource for print and web designers.

Seventy percent of us search via Google. We’ve all done a Google search, clicked on a link that seems appropriate only to open a lame page that includes regurgitated content from a PR Newswire press release or a meaningless article loaded with keywords that is there simply for its word count. The offending sites are called content farms, which employ freelance writers to generate textual content designed to satisfy search engine algorithms.  Content farms try to game Google search thereby generating passive ad revenue by attracting reader page views.

Now Google is fighting back.

Reporter Zoe Chace, in this interesting National Public Radio segment, reveals a change Google made in late February geared to push low-quality content out of top search results.

We know unscrupulous marketers will continue to create and use black hat techniques to rise up in the Google search results – for many companies it is do or die.  We will take a different tack and keep reminding clients if you want to get found, generate quality content that others will value.