Google Authorship Goes Bye-Bye
Image courtesy of Karen Bryan
Google Authorship is now gone. After months of attempts to get rid of this and that from the once esteemed Google project, Google Authorship simply no longer exists. It didn’t come completely without warning however.
“Webmasters saw disappearing Google authorship photos, reduced video snippets, changes to local packs and in-depth articles, and more,” says Cyrus Shepard in a Moz blog post and case study.
Here’s a little timeline we made of the Google Authorship program and its early termination:
- Roots of Google Authorship go back to 2007 and Google’s Agent Rank/Author Rank Patent Application, according to a Search Engine Land article by Bill Slawski.
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- In June 2011, the plan for Authorship markup was first unveiled, according Menchie Mendoza in a Tech Times article.
- Google’s Matt Cutts discussed changes coming to Google Authorship at Pubcon in October 2013, according to a Search Engine Land article by Greg Finn. Cutts says a “tightening of Authorship may provide better results” and that Google wants to ensure that the “quality of the authorship is still high and relevant.”
- In December 2013, Barry Schwartz wrote in a that Google’s Matt Cutts confirmed at Pubcon that there was a planned 15 percent reduction in the amount of rich snippets displayed in Google search results, which in turn reduced “authorship by 15 percent to only show more authoritative authors.” Eric Enge agrees in a Search Engine Land article that in December 2013, the amount of author photo snippets shown per query was greatly reduced, and only some Authorship results were accompanied by an author photo. Others just had a byline.
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- Also in December 2013, Dr. Peter J. Meyers reported in a Moz blog post that there was a significant “short-term drop in the number of tracked searches displaying authorship mark-up.” Another article by Virante author Mark Traphagen predicted the “Authorshipocalypse” and Great Google Authorship Purge in December 2013.
- In January 2014, Traphagen wrote in a Stone Temple Consulting article about the “Great Google Authorship Kidnapping” and shares that authors were affected differently. Some authors reported no change at all, some authors lost Authorship snippets and went down to “second class” and some authors had a total loss with all Authorship snippets for all content gone.
- Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller made an on his Google Plus page in June 2014 that Google Authorship was basically over. Mueller told readers to seek out the for more information. In another Moz blog post, Meyers says Mueller’s June 28 announcement signaled the end of Authorship photos as they began to disappear. Google removed all author photos from global search, says Enge.
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- On August 5, 2014, Shepard discussed Moz’s changes in organic traffic thanks to the removal of Authorship photos and presented a case study of what had already happened after Google removed author and video snippets. Ironically a few weeks later, the entire project was gone.
- Three short years after it began, the project was abandoned completely on August 29, 2014. Google announced that Google Authorship will no longer impact search results, says TJ McCue in a Forbes article or track data from content with the “rel=author markup,” says Mendoza.
Dissecting Google Authorship
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But what was Google Authorship really? According to a Search Engine Land article definition, it was a way to link the content you create with a Google Plus profile. It included migrating Google Places business listings Google Plus and upgrading to Google Drive, explains DeMers in a Huffington Post article entitled “The Complete Guide to Google Authorship” back in May 2013. If you were previously hooked up on Google Authorship, your photo was displayed prominently in Google search results with your content. Shepard says having a professional Google Authorship photo was a race for more clicks. Photos helped search results stand out, and results with people’s faces competed for clicks. He says without photos, results look about the same.
“One hypothesis speculates that more photos has the effect of drawing eyes down the page. In the absence of rich snippets, search click-through rates might follow more closely studied models, which dictate that results closer to the top earn more clicks,” Shepard explains. “In the absence of author photos, it’s likely click-through rate expectations have once again become more standardized.”
Image courtesy of Rego Korosi
Google also took aim at video snippets or thumbnails with video search results from sites like Youtube. Moz is known for its many teaching videos, and in fact Shepard says the website lost 100 percent of video results around July 2014. At the time of Shepard’s article publication in August 2014, more of the “giant” websites like Youtube, Today and Discovery, these bigger more well-known websites seemed to be unaffected, with video thumbnails still showing up in search results.
Another thing that has come up the discussion of Authorship is the idea of Author Rank. A Search Engine Land article by Danny Sullivan discusses what Google Authorship was and how it differed from Author Rank. He wants to make clear is not the same thing! Author Rank is still alive and well and does affect SEO rankings.
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“Author Rank isn’t actually Google’s term. It’s a term that the SEO community has assigned to the concept in general,” Sullivan says.
Sullivan says Google uses different factors to determine who is the author of a story including bylines within the story.
“These existed before Google Authorship, and they aren’t going away,” he says.
Many of you might even have thought Google Authorship and Author Rank were the same thing. Let us know in the comments section below if so!
Reasoning Behind Google’s Decision
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McCue and many others in the industry have always thought Google Authorship was too difficult to implement.
“It took effort to do the Google Authorship thing, for the average guy or gal interested in helping their corporate profile. Google didn’t make it easy. All that effort just vanished,” McCue says.
But others like Shepard reveled in Authorship.
“In the early days of authorship, many webmasters worked hard to get their photo in Google search results. I confess, I doubt anyone worked harder at author snippets than me,” Shepard shared. “Search results soon became crowded with smiling faces staring back at us. Authors hired professional photographers. Publishers worked to correctly follow Google’s guidelines to set up authorship for thousands of authors.”
An example of a Google Rich Snippet. Image courtesy of Bruce Clay, Inc
As we talked about in a previous blog post on what not to do in local SEO, Google Authorship photos used to show up in search results, but recently in the past couple months, Google took various steps to remove them. Google Authorship expert Jason DeMers polled seven experts in a Forbes article in July 2014 and asked why Google would encourage users for years to participate but then remove the authorship photos. Google has said this move helps to keep pages as clean as possible. This is certainly in line with Google’s recent local update “Pigeon” that is all about giving searchers a better visual. DeMyers says Google also has found that “their testing has revealed that removing the photos has no impact on click-through behavior.” DeMers has done a lot of research and written multiple works on Authorship and building your personal brand. He also discussed the benefits of Authorship in a Forbes article back in June 2014 before word came that Authorship was no more. He has always believed that Google Authorship should be a top priority for business owners and webmasters, but it seems Google execs didn’t exactly agree.
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Mendoza says the decision to end Google Authorship apparently came after Google noticed that it didn’t bring any “significant effect on the users’ search experience.” Also Authorship seemed to be distracting from search results and not helping he says.
Mueller said the reasoning behind the decision was that Google wanted to clean up the visual design of Google search results and wanted to create a better mobile experience by “simplifying the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results, removing the profile photo and circle count.” In fact, about half of Google’s traffic now comes from mobile devices, according to Sullivan.
Mueller also explained that in Google’s tests when removing authorship, traffic was not reduced, and there were no increases in clicks on ads.
Image courtesy of Danny Sullivan
“Google’s decision is just one of the several decisions that the company has made based on its commitment in looking at things that work and those that did not even meet their expectations,” Mendoza says. “When a feature doesn’t work well enough, Google drops it and moves on to the next one.”
Enge agrees and said this change might simply be due to Google’s commitment to testing, as we have seen with the many Google products like Google Answers and Google Dictionary that didn’t make it and were discontinued.
“Every product, and every change or innovation within each product, is constantly tested and evaluated. Anything that the data show as not meeting Google’s goals, not having sufficient user adoption, or not providing significant user value, will get the axe,” Enge says.
Enge also believes that other reasons Authorship might have fallen short of expectation are because of low adoption rates by authors and webmasters and the low value to searchers.
“A whopping 70 percent of authors made no attempt to connect their authorship with the content they were publishing on major web sites,” Enge says.
Enge says many websites didn’t participate or even did the process incorrectly. Additionally, it didn’t seem like author snippets were bringing higher click-through rates or having much of a value for webmasters.
Is Google Plus Gone Too?
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McCue believes Google Plus might be going away next. Google Plus has always had ties to Google Authorship and offered more of an opportunity to showcase your expertise and get found more readily in search, McCue explains.
“Google Plus is not a bad niche place to build a loyal community, but will it be next on the chopping block,” says McCue. “There are plenty of marketing and savvy business owners who call Google+ a ghost town. A big part of its draw, its promise, was that Google Plus was tied to Google Authorship, thereby improving your social rank in search results, if you were producing good content.”
A Future Without Authorship
Mueller’s June 2014 announcement includes a link to Google Support, but now when you get to the page after clicking on the link Mueller provides, it says “authorship markup is no longer supported in web search.” Google suggests using instead. Snippets are “the few lines of text that appear under every search result (and) are designed to give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query,” Google Support explains. Read the rest of the support answer for step by step instructions on creating rich snippets to replace your authorship.
Image courtesy of k rupp
What will happen to search results and search rankings without Authorship? Traphagen writes about three possible outcomes in his Stone Temple Consulting post. One factor is Author Reputation. What if you are extremely well known for publishing a certain type of content but your name and photo is gone from results? Because of Authorship removal, many authors’ results are showing up on page two or three instead of page one. Also, many people may be wanting to connect a face to a name in order to remember your content, but now without author photos, this might be difficult. Traphagen says there also does appear to be some kind of Authorship reputation score that benefits the highest-reputation authors. Read his post for more information on this. Traphagen says two more related factors that might come out of no Authorship are content quality and site reputation.
Here’s Shepard’s recommendations for making sure your SEO strategy remains strong despite the Authorship loss.
“The smart strategy follows the data, which suggest that more traditional click-through rate optimization techniques and strategies could now be more effective,” Shepard says. “This means strong titles, meta descriptions, rich snippets (those that remain), brand building and traditional ranking signals.”
The features many posts from those in the search community and content creators. For years, thought leaders and owner Traphagen discussed Google Author Rank’s search ranking factor and most recently the end of Google Authorship. Read through all the posts for much more on this topic!
Thanks for reading this extensive post. Understanding Authorship and all the changes Google has made is a complicated process. We will update you as more details continue to become available on the future of search results without Google Authorship. In the meantime, share your experience with us!
Did you have Authorship? Did it ever affect your search ranking? Are you suffering from Google Authorship removal of your photos or videos? Let us know by commenting below or discussing with us on social media.