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Video On Demand content comes to mobile Twitch app in latest update

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Twitch announced today that its mobile application now supports video on demand content, a feature that has been requested by fans of the service for quite some time. While the app was previously streaming-only, users can now access “highlights and past broadcasts” from all Twitch Partners and what Twitch says is a growing list of broadcasters whose videos are HTTP live streaming (HLS)-enabled.

While the official change log for this version only mentions this one major new feature, looking at reviews for the Android version reveals a few more details. The latest version of Twitch reportedly also sports a new colored status bar, and a new emote panel as well. At least one user reported that “some of the emotes are very small and hard to see” in the new emote panel.

Twitch says that they encountered a security concern that required them to re-list the app on the Play Store, rather than simply providing a new version. So for those that already have the app, you’ll need to head over to the new app listing and download version 4.0. Twitch recognizes that this might be an annoyance to some and says they’re going to do their best to “make it a one-time deal.”

Low-quality content aggregators are the big losers in Google’s Panda update

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Earlier this week, Google rolled out Panda 4.0 and Pay Day 2.0. These updates to the search algorithm were touted as being designed to further reduce the ranking of low-quality and spammy content. According to analysis by Searchmetrics, Panda and Pay Day did just this, with websites that offer undifferentiated content suffering in terms of overall ranking.

However, Panda did not just punish websites: various major websites actually increased their rank in Google Search as a result of the change in algorithm. From the study:
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Google’s latest updates to its search algorithm continue the crusade against spam, low-quality content

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Google has made two notable changes to its search algorithm in the past 24 hours, both of which continue Google’s crusade to keep its search results relevant. The 4.0 release of the Google Panda algorithm is intended to make it more difficult for websites with poor quality to rank highly in search results (via SearchEngineLand).

Payday Loan Algorithm 2.0 was also released yesterday, and it targets “very spammy queries,” and is unrelated to Panda’s rollout:
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