Google describes it as:

a way to connect authors with their content on the web. We are experimenting with using this data to help people find content from great authors in our search results.

For now it seems more relevant for large sites that have multiple authors, rather than for individual blogs. In the case of a multi-author site, when an author posts a piece of content, they can use the “rel=author” atrribute in a link that points to their author page on the same site, which gives Google a way of understanding that multiple pieces of content are by the same author. Additionally from that author page, the “rel=me” markup can be used in links to other sites that belong to the author such as their personal site, social profiles, etc. What this does is allow Google to better understand how this author is connected to their other content on the web, and eventually Google will  have an understanding of that author’s online influence.  So for individual bloggers, it could end up being a way network your guest posts for other sites and develop a whole new infrastructure that Google can process,  based around your name and authorship.

Mediapost describes these implications as follows:

This attribute allows authors to claim pieces of content as their own, so that Google can begin to identify and accrue additional social signals. This support is initially limited to a single domain, but will eventually allow guest bloggers/columnists to claim their work across multiple domains.

This is significant for a few reasons. The first is that this signals Google’s desire to further understand influential voices online. Many attendees referred to rel=author as “personal PageRank,” a nod to Google’s PageRank algorithm which identifies authority web pages based on backlink profiles. It appears that online authority will no longer be housed at the domain or page level; specific authors will now send relevancy and credibility signals that will be accounted for.

Overall this would seem to be another tool in Google’s waged war on content-scrapers, content farms and other producers of low quality content. I’m sure those unscrupulous types will find ways to game this, as they do everything else, but even in these initial stages, this does seem to have the potential to help authors identify themselves as the original owner of a piece of content, and thereby demonstrate to Google that the credit (ie. search engine ranking) belongs to them and not some lousy content scraper that stole your blog post!

Thoughts? Opinions? A potentially useful development? Or just another annoying way in that we bloggers have to worry about more code than we’d like?  Leave a comment!

** image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keso/108805307/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Google Recipe View

If you’ve Google-d for a recipe lately you may have noticed a new feature Google has launched, which is a recipe-specific search – they call it Recipe View. It allows the user to search results specifically designated as recipes, and also to narrow searches by ingredients, prep time and even calorie count. You access it via the  “Recipes” option in the left menu bar on search pages.

What About Food Bloggers? Another Reason You’re Better Off With WordPress

It seems pretty useful for web searchers, but what does this mean for food bloggers?  Well in order for your recipes to show up in this special search, Google is looking for you to use special markup i.e. code, to designate your content to be recipes. It’s called a microformat, which is a specific set of code tags used to designated content as recipes, with special parameters such as prep time, ingredients, reviews and more. Click here to see all the gory details

Integrating this formatting into your website and blog posts  could actually be a serious drag depending on what blogging platform you use. Luckily, for self-hosted WordPress users, there is a plugin to help you with this. hRecipe gives you an easy to use interface in which to input your recipes with the correct markup. This should allow them to show up in Google recipe searches.  On the downside it will probably make the process of entering your recipes a little more laborious. The plugin is easy to use, but requires a couple more small steps to creating your post. I’m sure more plugins will crop up as word of this development spreads. If you’re using another blogging platform, such as Google’s own Blogger, I’m not too sure how you would conveniently go about using the recipe microformat, without being willing to code (and let’s face it, people use Blogger because they don’t want to deal with code). You might be a little screwed, to be quite honest.

The more I look at it, the more I think this new development seems quite unfriendly to the food blogging community, as evidenced by the fact that currently you’ll see that the recipe results are being dominated by heavyweights like Foodnetwork, AllRecipes etc.

So the question is, will it be worth the effort for food bloggers to try and get on board? Since the pool of blogs using the markup is currently probably pretty small, if you jump on it, I would think you can leverage this change to your benefit and gain extra traffic.

Impact on Google Search Results Pages

One thing I did notice, which is another reason in favor of using the recipe microformat, is that if you do a regular Google search (ie. not using the Recipes submenu) for food-related things, especially if you include the word ‘recipe’, you’ll start to see ‘blended’ search result pages which include listings pulled from Recipe View. In a few searches that I tried, the results utilizing the recipe microformat seemed to be given priority.  So this means that even if your blog post ranked highly for a particular recipe, that result could now be bumped down in the listings. See the screenshots below for a couple of examples I tried.  You can tell if a result is using the Recipe Microformat because you’ll see additional info such as prep or cook time, reviews, and possibly a thumbnail image. Traditional web listings just show the title and description of the blog post. From this point of view  it seems like it might be important to try and utilize this new markup. And if you are still using Blogger or another platform – this is yet another impetus to transition over to WordPress so you can utilize the plugin and take advantage of this development.

A regular Google search for ‘mango salad’: [click the images below to see the full size]

A regular Google search for ‘roast chicken’:

Are you planning on using the new recipe format? Seen any difference in traffic since this new development? Leave your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

*header image courtesy: ?http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodthinkers/4301030794/sizes/l/

Perhaps the biggest news this week in the online world is that Seth Godin announced he is giving up on traditional book publishing and is going all-digital. Seth has the following and the leverage to make this an exciting development for digital publishing. This could be a big step in mainstreaming electronic publishing and changing the consumption of “books.” He has published 12 bestsellers in the traditional manner, so it’s possible he will be the reason some consumers start buying digital products.

Google announced their Google Voice service, which allows you to place calls to other Gmail users, right from your inbox, for next to nothing – free domestic calls and 2cents per minute for many international locations. Sounds like a cool feature, although PC World suggests it’s more about convenience rather than a game-changer, and definitely not a Skype killer.

In other Google news, their Realtime search feature now has its own homepage at google.com/realtime
Realtime results are pulled from sources like Twitter and Facebook status updates. These results were previously only accessible by clicking on the “Updates” link on the left of the Google search results page, or for ‘trending’ topics they are integrated into the main search results. So it’s not a major breakthrough, but will perhaps raise the profile of realtime search a little more. They’ve also added a couple more features such as integration with Google Alerts, and access to the full conversation that an update may be part of.  ReadWriteWeb has a nice summary of the good and the bad of this announcement.

Has Google dropped Yelp reviews from their Places listings (those are the local map results you get typically when you search for a local business)? Techcrunch believes so. Catch up on the drama.

Digg launched their new re-design this week which, according to VentureBeat gives a more personalized experience and “makes it easier to find new sources to follow and connect to friends via Facebook, Google and Twitter accounts.” I barely use Digg at the moment, but if you regularly use it, I’m interested to know how you like the new design and if it means you will be using it differently in any way now.

Finally, a couple of awesome and stream-enhancing Tweeters to follow this week:

@Alizasherman

@Suzannevara

Anyway, Gary from Relevant Trafik has thankfully written a great piece on exactly why this guarantee is bogus. I’ll definitely be referring clients and business-owners to it!

Here’s one of my favorite parts since it comes straight from Google’s mouth:

Question from a user to one of the Google Engineers: Should I believe SEO agencies that promise to make my site rank first in Google in a few months and with a precise number of links?

Google’s response: No one can make that promise; therefore the short answer is no, you should not.