Shaad Hamid

I’m not entirely sure if this is something new, but I’m seeing Google display weird listings on the SERPs lately. OK let me try and be a bit more specific. I was manually monitoring rankings for a website I’m helping out with and noticed they were ranking on the first page today (for their most competitive keyword phrase). What was weird was that the site’s set up the following schema on the same page:

• authorship,
• ratings, and
• location schema,

Before today Google would usually override all other rich snippets opting to only display authorship on the SERPs. Sadly I don’t have a screen-grab of how wedding belles photography used to render on the SERPs, but this is how it appears when using the Structured Data Testing Tool.

However, today instead of authorship, Google’s rendering the ratings rich snippets instead of the authorship rich snippet, like so:

What’s even more strange is that Google’s rendering both authorship and ratings schema when searching for the brand name wedding belles photography:

It’s very clever on Google’s part for being able to distinguish the most suitable schema to display. Initially, I did test both rich snippets, authorship and ratings on the home page and noticed  that Google gave preference to authorship when both mark-up were on the same page. However, since Jon’s fairly active on Google plus – and I was encouraging him to start blogging – I didn’t ask him to remove the authorship tag from the homepage, even though I personally felt that ratings rich snippet would be more useful from a CTR perspective (since wedding photography oxford would be a commercial query more than informational). But to my surprise, Google’s doing the sorting for me.

Seems like Google’s trying not to display authorship for transactional and geographically specific queries. Google used to display the following listing when someone searched for Oxford SEO:

The above listing had authorship and local business schema displayed, but today it seems like Google’s removed both these rich snippets for the search queries Oxford SEO and SEO Oxford and included Google places listings:

Oxford SEO

SEO Oxford

Looking at the above listings it seems like Google is testing out different rich snippets based on the query type – e.g. authorship for informational queries, and ratings/reviews for commercial queries. Also could it be that Google’s trying to figure out which rich snippet to display based on the on-page mark-up?

Have you noticed different rich snippets being displayed on any of your sites? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I was browsing the interwebs a few hours ago and thought I’d pop over to Google Plus. While there, I did my bit of +1ing stuff that I found interesting, commented on +Richard Fergie’s post and called Kevin Gibbons a legend (as you do) on a Google plus post

Anyway, I digress…

I was going through Kevin’s Google plus profile page and found something I’d never seen before!

If you’re one of those who know everything about SEO/SEM/Social Media/Content Marketing/Inbounding then this might not be new (based on this thread, it looks like this was a feature released early this month) But I was like WTF! So I checked out Daniel Bianchini’s Google plus profile and saw the same thing!

The first thing that cropped into my head was, “is Google crowd-sourcing  information about people?” You know like how anchor-text was introduced by Lawrence Page in his paper as a method of understanding relevance about documents (web pages) by the words used by those that cite them. Is this the anchor-text equivalent on people?

I have a few nicknames. My mother affectionately calls me Shahad, my brother refers to me as Shaadee, my best friends Shalini and Imran refer to me as Shaadie (which incidentally means ‘marriage’ in Hindi). So I thought this is a pretty clever way of Google trying to understand relationships.

So I tried actually filling this stuff. When you click on the link you are prompted to the following form:

You can click on “show all fields” you’re prompted to this more detailed form:

So I went ahead and began filling em:

And clicked save – this is what you get:

So according to Google plus, this is visible only to me. Also it looks like this syncs with my Gmail contact details. When I search for Dan in my Gmail, these exact descriptions are brought up there too.

So what’s Google trying to do here?

Obviously Google can’t share these personal information with anyone else, so my best guess is that Google’s trying to take personalisation to the next level. I was listening to Amit Singhal at Google who, when describing the future of search mentioned how Google’s goal was to be a trusted and reliable personal assistant. He touched upon the fact that mobile is one of the most personal of objects that anyone owns. So could it be that with the advent of smartphones and the revival of email, that Google will actually be able to gather information from people and figure out how they relate to each other at a personal level?

Will I be able to use Google voice search and say “call Dan1″ and Google will ring him for me? Or say “text my boss” and Google will send Dan a text message? Hmm.. I don’t know. But if I was a gambling person I’d put all my money on this being another step for Google in their quest to become a fully blown answer engine.

I’d obviously love to hear your thoughts What do you think is Google actually up to?

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw an email sitting in my inbox by a member of my readership, Ruwanthi (hi Ruwanthi!  :-) many thanks for your email!). Among many other great content ideas she threw at me, I was asked to touch upon Google’s author/agent rank. So I thought I’d quickly put together a list of some awesome resources that’ll help you get a better understanding of what it is, why it matters, how it will impact web documents along with a quick guide to setting up authorship tags on your blogs or websites.

So, let’s start at the beginning shall we? We can’t really talk about authorship and it’s importance without reading and understanding the patent titled “agent rank”. Click here to access the original patent document. You can also find the latest continuation patent here.

Continue reading “Agent/author rank and overall importance of authorship” »

This is a very quick post. Just seen the following status update posted by a very close friend of mine:

Warning -any person and/or institution and/or Agent and/or Agency of any governmental structure including but not limited to the United States Federal Government also using or monitoring/using this website or any of its associated websites, you do NOT have my permission to utilize any of my profile information nor any of the content contained herein including, but not limited to my photos, and/or the comments made about my photos or any other “picture” art posted on my profile. You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein. The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee, agent, student or any personnel under your direction or control the contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law. UCC 1-103 1-308 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE

For those of you who do not understand the reasoning behind this posting, Facebook is now a publicly traded entity. Unless you state otherwise, anyone can infringe on your right to privacy once you post to this site. It is recommended that you and other members post a similar notice as this, or you may copy and paste this version. If you do not post such a statement once, then you are indirectly allowing public use of items such as your photos and the information contained

Just wanted to make some clarifications before this goes mental on people’s feeds again.

Continue reading “Another Facebook Rumour Doing the Rounds” »

Global City Innovative College students inside the school library. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a learning environment, like OCVC, questions are vital. Lecturers need to ask the right questions which allow their students to express their ideas. Students can demonstrate their abilities or make an impression with a good question. A question can be a beginning. Here are some suggestions of what can make good ones.

1. Good questions need inspiration. The good question might not be the first one that comes to you, or the one that sounds obvious to you. Be creative. Paint pictures with a question. Open doors with what you ask.

Continue reading “How to ask effective questions” »

The term efficient procrastination may seem oxymoronic, but there is a logic, and even an art form in delaying something until just the right moment. Procrastination as a concept gets a lot of bad press. The concept that the word implies is, ‘Why do something today when you can put it off until tomorrow?’ This is a question which smacks of laziness and inefficiency. It conjures up images of someone idling away their hours before scrambling in a blind panic to complete a project. Then making an eleventh hour university deadline with a submission that is scruffily presented, full of errors and destined for a low mark.
Procrastination does not need to be considered from this negative perspective. The term procrastinate refers to the process of replacing urgent tasks with tasks of lower priority. If organized correctly this is not a bad system to have in place. This is particularly true when delivering project work. The deadline on your calendar is avoidable. Even if you can manage a time extension, when the work is due it must be submitted. You may set yourself some personal deadlines, built around free evenings and weekends to ensure that you complete the task ahead of schedule, and procrastination may allow you to put this work off until closer to the ‘real’ deadline. There are some tactics that you can employ to ensure that the work you submit is of high quality.

Continue reading “How to Procrastinate Efficiently” »

Follow any news media in the developed world and after a while you’ll find a story about funding higher education. Getting a degree is seen as a person’s right in some countries and an honour in others. Yet what is consistent is the question of how to pay for it.

In the UK tuition fees were introduced in 1998. In 2012, 64 universities

English: Students, Unions and members of the public protest outside Scunthorpe's John Leggott College about the increase to university tuition fees in November 2010. Also pictured are the two organisers, Jake Hutton and Ollie Nolan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

have been allowed to charge students up to £9,000. The outrage that has followed has taken many different forms but with the same mantra – these charges are unfair and they are wrong.

But sensible arguments about tuition fees do not all reside in the ‘no’ camp.

According to the Guardian Newspaper it’s estimated that these same UK students are likely to receive 23.5% more in annual income if they have a degree than not. Yet universities around the world are struggling with the high cost of maintaining standards and growing to meet the demands of new media, culture and thinking. All this in a time of global austerity. Isn’t it fair that those students who benefit should pay their way?

Continue reading “Education maybe free, but a degree or diploma isn’t” »

English: Online Learning (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Former US Education Secretary Rod Paige argued in a 2002 speech that “Education is the only business still debating the usefulness of technology.” In many ways he was right. Education is a classic discipline – it has a history and a way of doing things. Many people have expectations of what it might be like and how learning will be delivered. Technology provides a challenge to education, but in the sphere of online-learning it appears education is learning.

According to a 2011 Sloan Consortium review nearly a third of all full-time and part-time students at non-profit and for-profit colleges and universities in America took one or more online courses. Massive growth can be charted by the early years of the new millennium. These courses can be as simple as tuning into a lecture screened online. Other courses provide online platforms like ‘Moodle’ and provide creative ways to gain new qualifications.

Continue reading “Educators going completely online” »