Google gives, and Google takes away.
Even so, it came as a surprise when John Mueller announced Google is dropping authorship photos from most search results.
This one hits particularly hard, as I'm known as the guy who optimized his Google author photo. Along with many other SEOs, I constantly advise webmasters to connect their content writers with Google authorship. Up until now, would-be authors clamored to verify authorship, both for the potential of increased click-through rates, and also for greater brand visibility by introducing real people into search results.
Update: As of June 29th, the MozCast feature graph shows traditional authorship snippets dropping to 0% of search results across all data centers. Previously, Google displayed authorship photos in 22% of all searches.
How are author photos changing?
The announcement means author photos in most Google search results are going away. John Mueller indicated the change will roll out globally over the next few days.
Up until now, if you verified your authorship through Google+, and Google choose to display it, you might have seen your author photo displayed in Google search results. This included both your author photo and your Google circle count.
Going forward, Google plans to only display the author's name in the search snippet, dropping the photo and the circle count.
Google News adds a different twist.
In this case, Google's plans show them adding a small author photo next to Google News snippets, in addition to a larger news photo snippet.
At this time, we're not sure how authorship in Google News will display in mobile results.
Why did Google drop author photos?
In his announcement, John Mueller said they were working to clean up the visual design of search results, and also to create a "better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices."
This makes sense in the way Google has embraced mobile-first design. Those photos take up a lot of real estate on small screens.
On the other hand, it also leaves many webmasters scratching their heads as most seemed to enjoy the author photos and most of the web is moving towards a more visual experience.
John Mueller indicated that testing shows that "click-through behavior" with the new results is about the same, but we don't know exactly what that means. One of the reasons authors like the photos in search results was the belief that a good photo could result in more clicks (although this was never a certainty).
Will the new SERPs result in the same amount of clicks for authorship results? For now, it's hard to say.
Critics argue that the one thing that will actually become more visible as a result of this change will be Google's ads at the top and sides of the page.
What isn't changing?
Despite this very drastic visual change in Google search results, several things are not changing:
1. Authorship is still here
As Mark Traphagen eloquently pointed out on Google+, the loss of photos does not mean Google authorship itself is going anywhere.
"Google Authorship continues. Qualifying authors will still get a byline on search results, so Google hasn't abandoned it."
2. Authors' names still appear in search results
In the new system, authors still get their name displayed in search results, which presumably clicks through to their Google+ profile. Will this be enough to sway searchers into clicking a link? Time will tell.
3. Your rankings don't change
Authorship does not influence rankings for most search results. (exceptions for certain results like In-depth articles) Sometimes the photo led to more clicks for some people, but the new change should not alter the order of results.
4. You must still verify authorship for enhanced snippets
Google isn't changing the guidelines for establishing authorship. This can be accomplished either through email verification or linking your content to your Google+ profile, and adding a link back to your website from your Google+ contributor section.
Tracking your authorship CTR
If you have authorship set up, you can easily track changes to your click-through rate using Google Webmaster Tools. Navigate to Labs > Author Stats to see how many time your author information has appeared in search results, along with total number of clicks and average position.
In the example above, search results associated with my authorship receive around 50,000 impressions a day, with an average of 1831 clicks, for an overall CTR of 3.6%.
If you track your CTR immediately before and after the Google authorship change (by adjusting the dates in Webmaster Tools) you might notice any changes caused by the shakeup.
Keep in mind that CTR is highly determined by rank, or average position. Small fluctuations in rank can mean a large difference in the number of clicks each URL receives.
Is Google Authorship still worth it?
For many, scoring photos in search results was the only incentive people had to verify authorship. Whether or not it increased click-through rates, it was an ego boost, and it was great to show clients. With the photos gone, it's likely fewer people will work to get verified.
Even with the photos gone, there is still ample reason to verify authorship, and I highly recommend you continue to do so.
- Even though a byline is much less visible than a photo, across the hundreds or thousands of search impressions you receive each day, those bylines can make a measurable difference in your traffic, and may improve your online visibility.
- Google continues to work on promoting authoritative authors in search results, and authorship is one of the better ways for Google to establish "identity" on the web. Google continues to make statements explaining how important identity in content is, as explained by Matt Cutts both publicly and in this rarely seen interview.
Facing the future
If Google begins to incorporate more "Author Rank" signals into its search algorithm, establishing yourself as a trusted authority now could pay off big down the road. Disappearing author photos today may someday be replaced by actual higher rankings for credible authors, but there are no guarantees.
At this point, it's hard to say exactly where the future of authorship lies, especially given the unknown future of Google+ itself.
Personally, I will be sad to see author photos disappear. Let's hope for something better down the road.
More from across the web:
Google Removes Author Photos From Search: Why And What Does It Mean?
As you mentioned, this was often the single thing that would convince clients it was worth it to:
So... Google has thrown out a large incentive for writers who aren't online marketers to be active on G+ at all, which I find interesting. It does make you wonder how far they'll let it fade to the background on their other services.
Personally I think this idea that Google+ is a waste of time or not something worth investing in is rather silly.
Google controls more traffic than anyone, and if their main social and sharing push is Google+ then I'm going to work my tail off to get my presence there as solid as it can be. I know my website will benefit from this long-term.
Social Media is the target of Google this time as it is evident from many changes made in the way the social media content and profiles are being treated by Google. G+ being a product of Google, had to bring something new to webmasters' desks. I am not sure if this is the final thing that G has planned for authorship snippets. I would rather like to wait and watch what is the real plan.
As mentioned in the post by Mr. Mueller : "in the Our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one", there is no reason to doubt that there would be any drastic changes in the ranking due to this change.
Yes, there will be drop in the traffic by few numbers but I would like to believe that those would only be the one's who are just attracted by a writer's influence on the web and not exactly from the content he is clicking on. This will filter the traffic further more and let you take only your organic share of traffic for the content.
At the end all boils down to the same thing: "Content and title are kings"
Thanks for sharing this with us Cyrus!
Greg, I don't necessary disagree that it's worth investing in G+ as a channel, but plenty of other people don't see the benefits quite as clearly, and Authorship was an easy carrot to dangle in front of clients to get them to go for it. Google is likely aware of that, and since they've chosen to kill that carrot, it makes me wonder how dedicated they are to G+ in the medium/long term.
That's the thing, I believe authorship was worth it when photos displayed, at least for many. I doubt simply displaying the author byline will go as far as driving clicks as the pictures once did.
The result? Back to fighting for SERP real estate with 'classic' snippet optimization
ROFL. Nice Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference, Cyrus.
+1
Hoping someone would notice that!
Yea... noticed and spent all day with "So long and thanks for all the fish" running through my head while trying to figure out where I left my towel.
https://screencast.com/t/NSZeb0s31Kd
(Used the above graphic in a Hummingbird blog in April)
It is an interesting move, but I wouldn't rush to judgment. Authorship still gives you extra screen real estate (albeit far less), but because of this, you should expect your competitors will be less aggressive in using it as well. You should always think about algo changes in light of not just how it will affect you, but how it will affect your competitors. If only 10% of the benefit remains, but 100% of your competitors bow out, it might actually be a net plus in a few months. The best time to get in the market is when everyone is getting out.
I agree Russ, for the vast majority of sites this change will have little real impact. Things tend to even out.
For users like myself that aggressively pursued authorship, was good at it, and optimized my snippet for increased CTR, the effect will likely be much more pronounced.
Also, as someone who's actively worked on improving my theoretical author rank, I hope this is someday baked into the algorithm as an actual signal.
I agree with Russ. G+ images may have been removed, but in no way does it imply that G+ has lost its glory. It was clearly a ploy to get users on Google's Social network at the start. Now that people are on it (notwithstanding the level of engagement Google+ offers) if we discount the authorship credits, there will be little else for users to connect on the platform.
In my opinion, it does not make sense for Google to completely do away with authorship. To what extent Google authorship may impact content and its author is something we have to wait and watch. In any case, no one ever quantified how it impacted authors and content thus far!
Cyrus, this may have already been mentioned in the comments, but perhaps the authorship photos were drawing more attention to the organic results and away from the paid results -- thereby hurting Google's AdWords revenue?
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist....
I think it's a valid theory. One thing is for certain, I don't think this change will cost Google any money. They would never come out and state publicly if this was the reason, but it might be a good time to invest in Google stock.
"John Mueller said they were working to clean up the visual design of search results" lol really..? Like you said Samuel, it's about the money. I set up authorship on one of my clients a while back, their pay per clicks went down and their organic clicks went up. Since authorship has been removed, their organic clicks have dropped noticeably. My organic clicks have also dropped which is quite annoying since I am not running any PPC campaigns on my website. Not sure how this change will be helping the 'user experience' apart from getting rid of the crappy "authors"
I set up authorship on one of my clients a while back, their pay per clicks went down and their organic clicks went up. Since authorship has been removed, their organic clicks have dropped noticeably.
I see great source material for a YouMoz post!
This is the most logical reason... Imagine if users became used to clicking on trusted authors. What would happen to PPC revenue? Don't be fooled by all the hogwash..... there is one agenda at Google.
On a lighter note... the typical web master, nerdy, geeky type is not usually photogenic.... :) I'm no oil painting by the way.
I was thinking the same thing. If Google wants users to focus on the paid ads first, author photos may have been a distraction.
Great writeup, Cyrus. You provided succinct answers to a lot of the questions that have been circling around my brain since learning of the change.
I'm not happy to see authorship photos go. It means wasted time for my clients. At least it gave them a little boost for awhile.
I wonder if they decided to remove the photos because it potentially gave an unfair advantage to people who were in the know. Google wants to serve users the best results. If the user clicks on a search result because it's the only one with a picture and is disappointed with the content, that creates a bad experience for the user. Maybe this is an attempt by Google to level the playing field.
Like you, I'm curious if Google will come up with an alternative in the near future. That little grey byline in search results will probably be ignored by typical users.
There goes a tasty mini-chapter included in most of my site audits.
Ha! Mine too! Seriously though, I'm disappointed.
Are they trying to make us hate Google Plus?
Don't we hate it already?
if we didn't it's making us....
I actually caught your first post on changing your photo to help with click through's. I also updated and edit my photo to see if it would work and it did. I went with a better looking photo and I also cropped it into a circle so it stood out. Just that alone gave me a 15% increase in click through rates, it caught people's attention. My name is Lesley and I am a guy, I always wanted to try using a woman's photo to see if it would change the click through rate.
I really almost suspect that Google found that people are more likely to click better looking people's articles and disregarded actual content quality in making their click choice. So removing the images is a way to level the playing field.
15% is awesome. Let us know if you see a similar decrease when the photos disappear.
I share Rand's view that he mentioned in this tweet: https://twitter.com/randfish/status/481948721031024641
Thats what gets me the most, as Rand said either they lied about the increase in the CTR or they are lying now. It does not make sense to me that the CTR would be the same....
I suspect they mean CTR is the same for Google, not for us
Personally, I think they perhaps lost some AdWords revenue as a result of attractive author images drawing the kind of visitors that normally prefer shiny, glowing elements in a page and would normally click on AdWords ads if the author images didn't exist. Hence, the decision.
Thanks Cyrus for the informative post. Updates from Google always brings a shock! Can't rely on Authorship as its future seems doubtful. We, internet marketers has come up with plan B and C as it's very hard to make understand client about this updates in real.
I sure am going to miss seeing the profile photo in the SERPs. Look forward to seeing the results over the next few weeks and see how this change will affect the click-through rate. Great post as always, Cyrus.
Maybe this is just paving the way for Authorship Animated GIFs. A guy can hope.
Hi Cyrus, thank you for an interesting overview. It really disappeared everywhere.
Personaly when I saw an author picture in some topic i was searching fore, i was more likely ready to clic on it just because i already knew the person's articles and i trusted that the content will be for sure very relevant.
We are kind of victims of Google, lets wait what are they gonna prepare next time.
Author photos looks good in search results. But if Authorship is not changing then I think bloggers and site owner has not need to be tense.
Its an interesting move any way from Google. Me too believe the authorship remains even though they are not showing the photos..
Personally I was never bothered if my little face turned up in the SERPs or not for my content. I was more interested in seeing how far I could get with colour formats and shapes in my image profile before Google flagged it as a company identity.
I think it had a great ability to add a disruptive (but positive) element into SERPs, so even if you were for example 3rd for a search query the users eye would unwittingly be drawn to the shape.
Sad to see it go.
Thanks for the update! This is good to know. Maybe they'll bring business page publisher photos now. Although that would fall under same (provided) excuse for removing author photos.
Thanks for sharing this Cyrus.
Such a shame that all these pretty people won't have their photo in the search results anymore, haha jokes.
What I find interesting about this are the "News" results. Personally, I like what they've done/doing with the News section and I believe a major reason to continue to use Google Authorship. In addition, the search results will still have a byline,..as long as you set up Google Authorship.
I've done a few searches and found quite a few blogs showing up in the News section...not just "News Websites" like CNN, USA Today, etc. Thus, if your blog posts gets deemed "news worthy" then you get an image, a photo, and a byline to show up...sweet! This is even more reason to make sure your Google Authorship is set up.
#FAIL
Thanks for the comprehensive recap on this topic, Cyrus.
I'd never thought of the impact the fairly large authorship photos have on mobile SERPs and how much of the screen they occupy. Surely the byline only will be better for mobile users and less of a "pop out/distraction" if you will.
I know Google will take some time to roll this out completely, but I'm still seeing plenty of authorship photos in SERPs, I'm not certain we're actually going to see the end of these photos. Maybe this is the very, baby beginning of some sort of "author rank"? Only the elite, influential people in their industry keep the photo?
Even if that's not what happens initially, I would bet on photos coming back to SERPs in some regard. That's just my two cents.
This definitely creates more doubt about the future of Google+. Agree it tidies up G+ for mobile, but it certainly makes for search results that are less personal, social, and in my opinion, relevant.
Google authorship - NOooooooooooooo!
Update - well it's officially extinct:
https://searchengineland.com/goodbye-google-authorship-201975
I have always puss he the Google author photos as a great way to invite more visitors to a site, why not minimize the photos or remove them from the mobile platforms? Interesting change. Thanks for the article.
That was a great journey so far with Google authorship. Let's see what happen in couple of week if it rolls out. May be I'll lose some click on every searches.
HI, Cyrus,
I have a question If any author have great authorship and most of the post getting traffic from search engine so it would help him website better ranking in Google.
Oh! It's so sad...... :( , Hope Google will provide us back ..or may be Google will ask for money to display this :P . this is Google Old strategy!
great post Google is never going to stop itself it is regularly changing its algo. to make businesses down and then earn from them.
I think this was a real turning point for me and a lot of other SEOs when it came to giving Google the benefit of the doubt in terms of benevolence. I understand that Google has to test changes to the SERPs in live environments but this just seemed like a very haphazard experiment which was poorly implemented from the start with no real underlying objective. The notion that it may have reduced the CTR of adverts was always going to be the final nail in the coffin...
edited.
Thanks for the translation of this post! If you don't already have a translation agreement with us on file, please contact [email protected] for some paperwork to fill out.
I guess Authorship is in its research phases and might have failed. My guess is that what google was looking into was the increase in actual human interaction through real images of publishers thus creating trust for the users, having a number of followers was another factor. Google was correlating the use of these images in the increase of the clicks which was looking a good thing at first, but as time passed by and more n more publishers began doing the same stuff as a result almost stagnating the organic traffic and as mentioned above only taking more mobile space. I think in the coming future google authorship will still remain and in order to let google plus have its special place in social media, it will be one of the seo ranking factors and also part of the seo ranking. I am not sure about now but may be google will factor the number of google plus followers of that authors as well along with all the other factors, since this strategy would let the authors be more engaged on their social media website, may be more than facebook and twitter :D
Well its just a hunch, lets see how things progress ;)
LMAO. Google is like the pied piper. Or the holder of the hoop through which all the dogs jump -- making fools of us all, while they get rich.
For B2B the publisher snippet is relevant. What's happening to that?
I blog to business owners over 50. I teach them how to keep up with internet changes that affect their brick and mortar businesses when it comes to internet exposure. I simply loved authorship and found that most of my blog followers had no clue about the hows and whys of Google Authorship. Hate to see it go. But that's just apart of the ever-changing Internet. Businessfive-O.com Helping 50+ business owners survive in an ever-change business online space. Cassandra Segoviano
My client web traffic was dropped to 90% on the same date i.e, 28th June 2014, but it was not related to authorship. Can anybody help?
That would be a good question for our Q&A section at https://moz.com/community/q
Google is really on running shoes to get the UX bettter for smartphone users as discussed at SMX in AMA session with Matt Cutts.
I didn't know about this at all!!! I was wondering and searching why in search result my pic is not showing!!!
Totally agree with @Scott - "Google still has a long way to go to make it spam-proof before it rolls it out."
I don't believe that this change is simply to clean the SERP. I bet that Google can see that the Authorship photo is losing them ad clicks, and that is the real reason for them to remove it.
Why should they endorse and proclaim higher CTR for authorship photos, and later state that the CTR remains the same? It doesn't make any sense.
I saw this happing to my search results a month ago and thought I did something wrong... Glad I didn't!!! One thing I did notice is that some of my articles in Google+ still had have my avatar showing.... is this going to be a "one-way street" for google?
Joe
Thanks for the info on Author Stats on GWT. I printed out mine to see if there is a drop in traffic as it's not noticeable yet (about 2 weeks later). I also agree that there will be less incentive to set up authorship without the photo and Google+ circles.
So right image displays the author on google search results may show up again?
It's very sad news for Google Authorship images will not visible on Google search results, even i will also miss my profile on Google.
Great Article @Cyrus....!!! I read it and got useful info so thanks for sharing this.
What a shame. Another reason to ask clients to use Google+ has just disappeared.
Is it just me or do Google seem to roll back their new toys more quickly these days?
Google+ is still important for many niches. I wouldn't be telling clients to totally abondon it just yet...
I guess in away I am thankful. To many people misuse it for my liking :)
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I'd typically click on those author photo links because I knew it was a short blog post that usually made a good point quickly. This will take some getting used to.
I'm sure they'll come up with something new to encourage us to use g+. Anyhow even until now, authorship was not the main reason for using it, at least imo.
By taking full advantage of g+ you can:
1- Rank better in SERP (if someone +1 one of ur posts and that someone is seaching google logged in, your results might be better:
2- Also, if you build a strong community in g+ I think u can really benefit from the +post ads.
Anyways, when is google dropping authorship for good?
Hi Cyrus. That was a good insight of yours.
And I think Author photos is still available. Which i observed .
Via personalized search
https://i.imgur.com/FDoXUj5.pngRes
Resources :
Remote Staffing Solution and Other IT Services Cebu
As Cyrus mentioned, there are still authorship photos at the moment, but it has been announced they will go away. The first graph shows a 10% decline overnight in the number of authorship photos that were displayed.
It's great to know the reason why Author photos in the search results will be diminished for the valid reason of making a great user experience for mobile users. No questions asked.
[link removed]
So that leaves no doubt that Google is more focused towards the search as compared to social side of the web. Mostly bloggers were using Google+ because of authorship and specially their photos that made their content look more personal to readers but with no photos as after this release, it will be a challenging situation. There will be a real flux in terms of CTR as if we compare it with the traffic we were getting in the past.
"Authorship does not influence rankings for most search results"
I thought this was a BIG deciding factor for google these days??? Help
Nope. Just influences CTR. Overtime, authorship will help... but Google still has a long way to go to make it spam-proof before it rolls it out.
affff With google it's complicated. All the time changing rules. It's like in football (soccer) - referee in middle of the game would change the offside rules :D
Google can do what ever they want?
Aah thanks for the update. There's going to be quite a few sad people from this change haha
It's interesting that author rank is held out in this conversation as some kind of consolation prize after so many of us went to great lengths to disprove the notion of author rank being active in anyway in the search algorithm now or in the near future.
I really liked the author photo's. I could scroll super-quick through search result see the face of someone I trust and follow and click away. For me it was a huge time saver since i didn't have to squint at text to see who wrote the piece. With Author Photo I didn't even bother reading the description, just the title.
My Account Google + have more than 500 followers, but the search results only display the text link, not be show avatar :(
it made me really sad not to mention It's hardly going to boost Google plus I assume they did it as the CTR was more than Google's ads.
I think it will effect the various industries differently, I would rather click on a link with Google authorship vs one without. Provided a sense of security and trust.
Actually photos add credibility but not just that it also adds power to the user, the more pleasing your image to the eye is the better a user will like you. It would seem that this is just a way of Google in leveling the playing field. Akin to the idea that video killed the radio star, this approach is more of a psychological one, along with the amount of followers which could be misconstrued as the bigger it is the better you but we all know that likes can be bought anywhere. This is still somewhat sad though, I'm already used with the authorship images. :(
I think this time is over from google ...
So frustrating and so much time spent developing authorship now all down the tubes. This is sort of like when LinkedIn announced they were dropping product and services listings on company pages. What a waste! And in this case, I really think they got rid of a great thing. Search trends aside, having a picture next to search results really humanized the listings. Too bad...
It gets back to money. It's not about better results. Its about more people clicking on Ads, clicking whatever it is Google can make money from.
Mark Traphagen maybe right. But it seems that Google did this to optimize the SERPS for mobile devices. Google is really on running shoes to get the UX bettter for smartphone users as discussed at SMX in AMA session with Matt Cutts.
The authorship image was the ONLY reason I, and clients, used Google+.
With regards to: "John Mueller said they were working to clean up the visual design of search results", I think it's a redundant statement when results are filled with video images or HUGE YouTube clickbait for any song title/artist search.
Good news: You can sign up for GoogleMinus.
This little author photo change may not affect ranking algo, but may also imply an important change to its algo that is on the way, who knows but Google?
"(Our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one.)"
This is really annoying. I thought author's photo along with the search result attracts the users effectively.
Great explanation Cyrus, I'm sad to see the author photos go :(
Funny, Google last week started to show my author again after not showing it for a month, and now they have decided to not show any author picture again :s I wonder how this will affect my CTR
That was a great journey so far with Google authorship. Let's see what happen in couple of week if it rolls out. May be I'll lose some click on every searches.
But John Muller said,our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one.
Here I'm not agree with him, anyway :|
First Guest posts and now Author photos...
They are all going to the Google graveyard where you will find things like; keyword referrals and the like https://media.tumblr.com/69d24c991c32e471a7758010eb440e98/tumblr_inline_mk2w6li5GS1qz4rgp.png ;)