Karan S.

It's not a stupid move at all. Google's end user is the searcher and with this they are making the SERP CTR less influenced by unrelated aspects like the picture of the author and the G+ circle count. In the long run, this will be better for the end user. Marketers will have to adapt and evolve. 

Thats one point. For a user, an author picture and G+ circle count don't add any content related value. With every major update/action Google is telling us to stop using tricks and loopholes to get a better ranking; instead focus on creating amazing content and engage with your audience in a genuine way. 

I think that this move is hitting that nail again.

Hi Patrick, thanks for the comment. What other weirdness did you find. Please share, as I'm also the creator of the infographic and the study report, I'd like to learn from the experts here at inbound.

Good recount of recent developments. SEO and Social integration has been around for some time but hasn't received much attention yet. This is a good read.

Great infographic. Really useful. Cheers

Great slides overall. Not sure I agree with Hack 2, I think they somehow bring a sales orientation to the content shared. I know the example of Quicksprout, which is a pop-up function for all the blog posts so the reader doesn't associate the content with the sales message. But having the offer displayed in the body of the webpage with the prices is surely to trigger distrust in the readers mind.