1. Optimizing your business for local search starts with working through the fundamentals. Brush up on your tactics with the ultimate guide to local SEO ranking.
2. Looks matter. An experiment revealed that news site homepages get more pageviews and user engagement when they have contemporary image-rich and modular layouts. Modular pages have discrete blocks of customizable and portable content, rather than a running list of stories. Another interesting finding: users of the contemporary layout also retained more information about the homepage content.
3. Animation in interface design is magical when well implemented — it can illustrate a function, effect a transition, or prompt feedback. Too often, though, animation is added thoughtlessly, and is irritating and disruptive. Learn from an interactive lesson on when to use animation in design.
4. A new Pew report shows similarities and differences in news consumption among Facebook and Twitter users. Least surprising finding: younger users are more likely to cite the social networks as a primary source of news.
5. Hate waiting in line? Google will now show you how busy it is at that trendy restaurant. It’s yet another example of Google surfacing relevant information (sports scores, movie times, plane status) right into search results.

Weekend fun: Census data is usually displayed in aggregate — monstrous spreadsheets or useful, summary chart. This Twitterbot does just the opposite by mining rows of census data and turning them into mini-narratives. Have a good weekend, and beware of spiders — even the cute ones.

Every Friday, find five, highly subjective pointers to compelling technologies, emerging trends, and interesting ideas that affect how we live and work digitally. Try out the Friday 5 archive, or sign up for a weekly email.