Back in mid-December, the newly launched MozCast Feature Graph showed a significant short-term drop in the number of tracked searches displaying authorship mark-up. Here's a 30-day view of the data (from November 22, 2013 to December 21):
The graph shows the percentage of queries that displayed authorship mark-up (to any degree) on page 1 of Google (note: the Y-axis has been constrained to the range of the data). This data ranges from a peak of 23.71% on Nov. 24 to a low of 20.03% on Dec. 19, a relative drop of 15.5%.
Was it foretold at Pubcon?
If you follow the search industry closely, that 15% may sound familiar. Back in October, Matt Cutts took the stage at Pubcon and suggested that a 10-15% reduction in authorship seemed to improve search quality. Many took this as a sign that Google had reduced the amount of authorship mark-up appearing in SERPs or would reduce it soon.
The graph above is a bit cherry-picked, in terms of the timeframe. So, let's expand it to 60 days, including Matt's announcement at Pubcon (which happened on Oct. 23):
Interestingly, authorship actually climbed a bit after Matt's announcement, before eventually dropping. There was a 9.6% relative drop from Oct. 23 to Dec. 19. These numbers all line up pretty well with Matt's predicted 10-15% range, and he confirmed around Dec. 19 that the authorship change had rolled out. Since Dec. 19, authorship presence in our data set has ranged from 19.8% to 20.3%. There has been no substantial recovery.
Did authorship counts drop?
When you think about a reduction in authorship, there are actually two very different possible interpretations. You could see what the graphs above show – that, overall, less searches displayed authorship mark-up. These graphs only indicate whether queries had authorship mark-up or didn't, in all-or-none fashion.
The other possible interpretation is that, within the searches that displayed authorship mark-up, fewer results would get that mark-up. So, let's compare the peak date of Nov. 24 to the 60-day low of Dec. 19. The following table breaks down the searches with authorship by the count of results that displayed authorship mark-up (as a percentage of the total searches with authorship):
The vast majority of SERPs, before and after the shake-up, displayed one result with authorship mark-up. There aren't really any major differences until you get down to 5/page, and at that point the number of data points is so small that it's difficult to say the difference is meaningful. The mean number of results displaying authorship mark-up on Nov. 24 was 1.326, which fell slightly to 1.305 on Dec. 19.
There was a slight shift toward searches where only one result showed mark-up, but the general proportions remained roughly the same in our data set. If you're curious, the query that broke the 10/10 mark was "best android phones" (although I'm currently only seeing 8 results with mark-up for that search).
Which searches lost mark-up?
Between Nov. 23 and Dec. 19, 628 searches lost authorship mark-up in our data set. For reference, here's a set of 20 relatively high-volume queries from that list of 628:
- vpn
- bruce springsteen
- tractor supply
- nectar
- astrology
- fisher price
- pilates
- gadgets
- linksys
- ie8
- acne
- hernia
- multiple sclerosis
- malaria
- copd
- crohn's disease
- tattoo designs
- command and conquer
- web design
- fashion bug
It's also worth noting that many of these queries have a news component and probably a QDF (Query Deserves Freshness) aspect to them, so the day-to-day presence of authorship mark-up can vary with the actual results returned. This calculation is almost certainly done in real-time and can be highly dynamic. Google doesn't have a list of domains that either get authorship mark-up or don't – they're making a decision on the fly based on the interaction of the query, page, and domain.
What can you do about it?
It's important to realize that, while losing authorship mark-up for some of your search terms may be upsetting, this is not a penalty in the traditional sense. Google has lowered the volume, so to speak – they seem to feel that authorship was too prominent and that the quality bar may have been set a little too low.
So, if you lost mark-up, does that mean your site is necessarily low quality? No, at least not in the sense you or I understand the word. It's more likely that Google was awarding authorship mark-up simply based on on-page tags or superficial factors and wasn't looking at how those factors were supported by other ranking signals. So, you may need a bit more corroborating evidence (a solid link profile, social mentions, etc.) to get your authorship to be recognized.
Ultimately, authorship mark-up is a nice-to-have, but don't bet the farm on it. Google+ is only 2-1/2 years old, and Google is just beginning to understand how to measure authorship and individual authority (what some people call "AuthorRank", although that implies a specific metric that may or may not exist yet). Improving your individual authority and building your social profiles makes sense for many reasons, but getting hung up on the micro-details of authorship mark-up and watching it appear and disappear day-by-day is probably only going to drive you crazy.
Hi Pete.
Sincerely, the drop of authorship snippets (albeit not of rel="author" understanding from Google, as in the case of rich snippets that aren't shown in SERPs) is something due, if we:
The first point is easy to understand: many people use the rel="author" wrong, implementing it in institutional pages, listings and products' description pages, which something forbidden in the rel="author" guidelines.
The second point is more controversial. In fact, Google seems it wants to show the authorship as a sort of "recognition" to authors, who are relevant and authoritative in their niche(s). This is surely correct, but it can be a discrimination toward new authors, who - even though are not still as popular, hence their authority not yet really established - indeed are potential "Pulitzer"'s winners.
Personally, I think that this stricter use of authorship in the SERPs is just the visible part of a possibly deeper change.
Matt Cutts once told (I'm sorry if I use always this example) that what Google wants to show to the public whenever Danny Sullivan (or a known MD) has intervened in a content for which he is publicly considered an authority (i.e.: Search Marketing), even if he's intervention is not as main author of a content but as a commenter (i.e.: when he comments a post here in Moz).
That may mean that Google could not show the authorship of the main author of the post, if he is not still popular or authoritative, but indeed show the photo of Danny, in order to make the post more visible in the SERPs.
Let's say, if a post is relevant to the query used, and have a discreet amount of external signals, but his author is relatively unknown or authoritative in the sum of all his posts/article, Google probably won't show his authorship. But, if to his post someone like Danny Sullivan has left a comment, then - probably - his photo will be shown.
Google could also use others signals for determining the importance and relevance of something like a comment: thumbs up could be one.
But, well, I am talking using all "if" and "potentially", but I tend to trust my gut :-)
Great points.
Your 1st point is 100% valid and 2nd is partially.
Showing commenter in the snippet isn’t easy in many cases, ie if commenter doesn’t use gmail account, if we use facebook comments in the post, (confused about disqus comments too).
Showing commenter snippet is little bit annoying because the concept for authorship tag is to display the authority of author of article instead of commenter. (Not sure about it please correct me if I am wrong).
It's a bit hard to tell how they determined the new cut-off, but my general sense from Matt's statements is that they essentially found they were showing authorship too often and people were starting not to trust it. I'm not sure how this was measured - likely, with something like the CTR on the links that had authorship. When they tested removing authorship from 10-15% of these queries or listings, the searcher's trust level went back up.
Now, it stands to reason that the 10-15% they cut were from the bottom of the "quality" barrel, but that's speculation and we don't know how they're measuring quality. Overall, though, I agree that they're trying to make "authorship" more than just a visual tag you can slap up on any site. They want it to be a trust marker.
I definitely saw the shake up in my client's niche industry. Authorship was appearing all over the competition sites on pages that did not meet the Google Authorship guidelines. Just as we were getting pressure to start using Authorship in the same way, Google thankfully made this change, making it somewhat valuable again for those implementing it according to the guidelines.
Very interesting point about comments lending to the authorship displaying in SERPs. It would make sense though, especially if you look at it as an endorsement of sorts. This authoritative engagement might be a good way for these new "Pulitzer-worthy" authors to gain some traction. I guess it all come back to the quality of the content.
Relevancy is an interesting point, Gianluca. I've posted two articles on my company's high DA website and both articles ranked well with my Google authorship, but since the update, only one of them shows my picture, the other one shows my name only.
The article that comes up with the full G+ authorship image+name is very relevant to SEO and my G+ activities, while the second article is more about web design, usability and crawling. It seems like Google chose to show my full G+ profile for the article, which is highly relevant to my Google profile.
Thanks for yet another great post, Dr. Pete!
One tip to restore Google+ Authorship that may or may not work (I have yet to see). On some of my personal sites, I used to have Authorship in the SERPs, but it disappeared even though Google's rich-snippets testing tool said everything was OK.
I use Yoast SEO for Wordpress, and I think I may have found the reason. There are boxes that people can check to configure it so that rel=author does NOT appear on pages / posts / media (as desired). All boxes are left unchecked by default, meaning that all pages, posts, and media have rel=author. And that violates Google's guidelines. I checked the boxes for pages and media so that ONLY posts now have rel=author.
Perhaps Google will now restore my authorship for the posts. We'll see!
Yoast (if you happen to see this), perhaps you should change this setting so that people have to CHOOSE to have rel=author on pages and media?
Oh, one other note. After I made this change, I saw that one of my site's Google+ page logo was shown in the SERPs in the rich-snippets testing tool as authorship would typically be shown: [meta title] [Google+ page logo] [by --website name--] [meta description]. Has anyone else seen this after using rel=publisher?
Update: I informed Yoast on Twitter, and he recommended that I file a bug report on their site. Which I just did.
Cheers for the tip Samuel, I wonder why Yoast have set to do this by default.
Will have to see how Google respond now I have changed it.
You're welcome -- and good luck to you too!
Hi Samuel. Thank you for the tip. Your advice allowed me to change my current default settings. For those wondering, here's where to go to change the default settings:
Or you can wait until Joost de Valk changes the default settings. Either way should work. I decided to change it now because I can be impatient every once in a while.
Thanks for giving everyone the specifics! :)
Thanks John and Samuel! I stumbled into post looking for a few answers, and you two answered one I was looking for. You saved me from a headache :)
You're welcome!
Wow, awesome find Samuel! I use the Yoast plugin on several of my sites. I haven't noticed a drop in rich snippets, however I definitely will take a look and make sure I'm not violating Google Authorship guidelines by including markup on all pages. Thanks again!
Thank you so much for the compliment! When I saw it, it was something small -- but then I realized that it was potentially very valuable to countless Wordpress SEO users!
There are guidelines for Authorship?
My later YouMoz on the topic here cites Google here.
"I checked the boxes for pages and media so that ONLY posts now have rel=author."
Where do I go in Yoast to change that too?
You can see a visual guide in my YouMoz post here.
I think folks should worry a little less about whether their photo shows up in search results, and a little more about the basics, like writing above a 1st grade level and, I dunno, building sites that search engines can crawl without going into electronic seizures.
Great read Dr P.
One thing I noticed around a similar time, is that a number of sites I've been tracking lost video snippets - specifically where they had previously managed to get a video snippet without actually having video on the page (the details in the video sitemap just seemed to be accepted irrespective of whether data matched the referenced page).
Is there any chance that this refresh of the video index could have happened concurrently with the authorship update? Do you have any details on whether there was a drop/shift in video snippets across the board?
Many thanks from your friend,
(Not a Dr) P.
We have seen a solid drop in queries showing video snippets, but over a longer time period. In late November, they were running around 18% in our data set. Since then, they've gradually declined to about 15.5%, although that number fluctuates daily (between about 15-16% recently).
It's possible there's a similar philosophy in play - Google may be seeing that having rich snippets appear too often is blinding searchers or lowering their trust level in those snippets. Those snippets could also be competing with advertising and other elements. Video's a bit tougher, because Google is testing new elements, link song carousels that link to videos, so they may just be experimenting with formats.
Interestingly, I was actually looking into this yesterday as I noticed that one of my blogs appeared to lose the authorship image in the SERP's.
One thing I did notice is that some of my other content (one my other blog and guest contributions on other sites) weren't affected. I think a possible reason for this is that I blog on a couple of different subjects. I've written quite a lot of stuff on SEO/marketing etc and the authorship on this content doesn't seem to be affected, so I'm guessing Google is recognizing that I'm more of an authority figure in regards to that niche/subject.
The blog I noticed the authorship problem with was my fitness-related blog. I haven't really written too much on this topic aside from a few posts on my own site (and the odd guest post), so I'm guessing Google has noticed I'm not so much of an authority figure within that niche (yet!).
I could be entirely wrong on this but it does make logical sense I think. For example, if I suddenly started a blog about cars, there's no evidence that I know anything about that subject so why should Google assume so? Just because I've written a lot about SEO/marketing doesn't mean that I'll be knowledgeable about every other subject I choose to write about.
I do suspect they've been fine-tuning it to be more page-specific and maybe even tied to relevance. An author isn't just going to always get rich snippets or not get them - over time, they'll refine it to factor in the content itself. So, not having authorship mark-up doesn't mean Google hates you - it just may mean the individual piece of content isn't strong enough.
Hey Pete,
Drawing on one of your last points that you make in passing, it would be interesting to see which results gained authorship, and how they compare to the terms that lost authorship.
From that you could get some insight into what Google is looking for in a piece of content in order to warrant displaying Authorship in SERPs.
It gets really tricky, because there are QDF factors in play, so sometimes a query loses authorship just because the actual URLs change (and some change frequently). It might be possible to pull a list of winners and losers and pair them by volume to try to compare apples to apples. I'd have to dig into that one.
I just updated few post yesterday on my blog, and then check back in Google with keywords, Authorship lost!! Is it depend on query to query? Even, I also published one post 2 day back but author snippet not showing in Google. However, all others pages including home pages working fine in SERP with authorship.
I am confuse what is the factor behind this criteria. If authorship lost cause of low quality of blog, then why other blog post including homepage showing my authorship in Google? Sir, I want your take on this.
Thank you Dr.Pete for this. So can I conclude that if the Authorship image is not showing in SERPS but can be clearly seen in the structured Data testing tool, it is because that the content is low quality??
No unfortunately not, there is nothing so simple in SEO. There could be many factors ie content is good but author is not quite prominent (authoritative). Content is good but violating the authorship guidelines.
Thank you for your input Dilshad. I got your point, let's analyze this scenario.
If someone is new and not authoritative yet, will Google wait and keeps an eye on the improvement of that author?
Another thing is, if someone is new and he manage to write on a prominent blog with a high quality content but still his face is not coming to the SERPs. then ?
It's tricky - I think what Google found (and see my comment to Gianluca) was that they were showing authorship too often and this was harming the impact of authorship mark-up. In other words, it was too common, so people didn't trust it. Presumably, the sites and queries that lost authorship were deemed to be less trustworthy somehow, but we don't know what criteria they used. It's also likely that they're refining this to a page/URL level. So, it may be that your site is fine, your mark-up is fine, but that individual page just doesn't have enough authority yet. I wouldn't take it as a black mark against you, just a sign that, if you raise the quality bar, you might see authorship mark-up return.
Thank you Dr.Pete for your valuable response. I read all your comments and I conclude that Google has to define what is the actual Quality standard they has set for the Authorship. Whether it is the social sharing, particularly +1s or any other metrics.
I think we've become too accustomed to author information appearing in search. Personally I believe when Google first piloted authorship they were returning the snippet for users who were implementing the elements correctly (and in some cases incorrectly, I'm sure we've all come across snippets where an unacceptable image is appearing) in hopes that other users would see the benefits and adopt authorship too.
Unfortunately when we became aware that click-through rate increased because of the author snippet some users began abusing the rich snippet markup, placing the tag on pages they shouldn't, for example home page, category pages, author archives etc. Some users were creating personal profiles for their business and placing the rel="author" tag on their business site, for example, product pages or pages that listed services offered. The search results page became bloated and I agree with you the snippet was too common and no longer trustworthy.
I think Google gave us a heads up that they were going to start looking a little closer for things like tag placement when they released this post. Some users took the cue and made changes but unfortunately others who weren't using the tag appropriately because the snippet had been appearing they felt they didn't need to concern themselves with making any changes.
Google piloted authorship to help the search user find great content, I think we've or rather some have forgotten this, even if Google can tick off all the quality elements and authorship is implemented correctly they may not show the snippet if they don't feel it's useful to the searcher.
Hey Grace,
Thank you so much for getting in with your detailed and concise comment.
I agree with you that most of the people used it in a wrong manner earlier and it clearly killed the Authorship concept. If Google is acting like a strict cop here, then I'm sure they won't manipulate the things like Dr. Pete and Mr.Gianluca highlighted above.
Hope that if someone works hard to build the authority in it's niche, google will award him the Authorship prominently.
So visually, authorship is declining but how about the affect of actually using the markup on your website and verifying the connection with G+?
What I mean is, does this actually affect the ranking of a website? Does the removal of the display picture in the SERPs correlate with a drop in rankings? I'm seeing on a view verticals I check that the display picture might be missing but there's still snippets in the SERPs linking back to the website owners G+.
Riddle me that, Petey!
First of all, I don't think that authorrank (because you are talking about that) is still implement yet, even though there are signs - and maybe this cleanse of the authorships' photos is one - that Google wants to go to the direction of what the AgentRank patent said.
So... SERP visibility of a rel="author" or schemas does not mean Google doesn't see and understand and use that information for a better comprehension of the web document those mark-ups are present.
Hence, if they have even a very little weight in the ranking pot, I think they will have it even if Google decides to not deliver them as rich snippets.
Said that, I consider that rel="author" (or the "by-line" authorship attribution) still is not a ranking factor.
My best evidence is that this wasn't tied to rankings - rich snippets were probably just removed. I looked at short-term ranking flux for the queries that lost authorship snippets vs. the ones that retained it, and the difference was well within the margin of error. In other words, the queries that lost authorship didn't seem to have any more a rankings shake-up than the ones that kept authorship.
Great article. Thanks for the information. One reader commented about the Yoast plugin and sure enough, those settings are left unchecked by default.
A snazzy profile picture appearing next to your search result also gave you a competitive edge when it came to clicks. People would zero in on your cute little face and respect the authority.
What would happen if the search results page was littered with little profile thumbs? That would level the playing field I suppose. As the graph illustrates and with the increasing popularity of Authorship, that would soon be the case.
Oh well... back to writing remarkable content I guess.
Yup, I'm the one who mentioned Yoast. I edited my comment above, so I'll repeat it here for further reference. :) This could affect untold numbers of Wordpress SEO users.
Update: I informed Yoast on Twitter, and he recommended that I file a bug report on their site. Which I just did.
Nice work. Thanks for the follow up with Yoast!
Thanks -- and you're very welcome!
Any post that leads to badgering Joost on Twitter is a victory, IMO ;)
Good call! :)
I got hit with 2 WP sites and 1 blog site. The 2 WP sites have good articles that are pretty in depth. The blog site is more of a image showcasing blog, so I could see that getting hit.
I have read 100s of posts and articles on this subject and it seems that their is no real solution to getting your image back other than to let Google do it's thing. I haven't seen people who lost theirs get their back in any logical or systematic way. Nothing reproducible, that someone could follow and have the same results on a consistent basis.
One thing I have noticed recently, that I hadn't seen before is there is a Google+ Connect in some of the SERPs. It's off to the right where there normally is advertising.
Try googling dc rainmaker and you will see, at least I saw that he has a Google+ Connect box on the right hand side. I don't know if this is a paid function of Goggle, but it certainly stands out and I am sure gets him a much bigger audience.
Great post, Pete.
I'd just like to jump in and say the following for the benefit of SEOs who've lost authorship... It's still worth checking that it isn't the case that a) your authorship code hasn't dropped out of your site's/page's code, or b) you haven't done something silly accidentally (e.g. assigned two authors to one page). Both happened to me pre-update, and in both instances I lost authorship. So what I'm trying to say is: if you've lost authorship in December, don't just assume it's because you've been hit by the update - my advice would be to check your site's code on affected pages and check using the preview tool.
In germany I see a bit more "local one" snippets in SERPs and less "local Pack" - some results were local Packs have been are now local once - pure chance??
Very interesting factor about feedbac loading to the authorship showing in SERPs. It would appear sensible though, especially if you look at it as an approval of types. This authoritative ngagement might be a good way for these new "Pulitzer-worthy" authors to gain some traction. I think it all come returning to the high company's material.
Thanks a lot for sharing
Now a days, Google itself creating spammer in an online markets.... Chaa ..... !!!
We already know that a lot of sites coming up on page 1 shouldn't be there, but simply because you're signed-in to Google they are.
Long-term Author Rank will hurt them because it's an inborn bias toward those that have accepted Google and this favoritism will hurt them when more relevant content springs up faster than they can react to it.
They've realized this and their making the correction, because frankly, Google was getting a little gray-hat on itself.
Some nice analysis Dr Pete there - My authorship got whacked in the update and have been trying to find patterns in why. I think you are right, Google is using some superficial signals that we don't have a full understanding of it yet. In my case, it looks like site authority is an issue as an established author's post on my site also got hit, but didn't on other more established sites. My authorship still shows in SERPs for some site's I have written for. However, my authorship also got hit for an established site when authors on the same site did not indicating that author trust is also a factor. I wrote an article about it on my blog https://www.colindocherty.co.uk/blog/google-authorship-picture-disappeared
Interesting update, and an important topic to follow in the coming months!
It's not clear what the criteria is for displaying the mark-up in SERPs, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were now restricted to appear only for sites that Google deems high quality... Or, as Gianluca suggested, for authors that Google knows better.
Anyway, I strongly recommend following Google's current instructions at https://plus.google.com/authorship
Is anybody out there a master at this Google+ authorship? I have one site that, for the life of me, I can't get the authorship markup to appear in the Google SERP. I've had no problem with my other 14 sites that I manage... but one in particular is being stubborn. Anybody up for a challenge to help?
I have schema.org and authorship on my web pages. In the past the schema.org would produce a 5 star review snippet for my pages in the search results, but then all of the sudden Google started showing my Google Plus picture instead of the review snippet. Dude I was pissed.
My CTR was through the roof when the 5 star snippet appeared in the search results, and then it fell to crap when my Google Plus picture started showing. Not that I'm ugly or anything, but just because of the fact that the schema.org reviews produce much more effective results than having a Google Plus pic show up.
Anyone else have this problem?
Do you think I should remove the Authorship?
This particular page I am referring to has been #1 or #2 on Google for competitive terms and phrases for 2 years now, so I am nervous about making any changes, but on the same token I want my CTR back. Also since my CTR fell my ranking also fell down to #4 in Google.
Is there any way to tell Google the markup that I prefer to show in the serp?
So on another note lets assume that I am screwed and can't do anything about getting my review to show back up. Well now what can I do? That's about where I am at now, unless you all tell me otherwise. What I have now been doing is experimenting with my Google Plus picture. I have tried everything from changing my outfit to changing the background color. I finally did figure out how to improve my CTR slightly.
Using a nice BLUE background, and wearing an Armani suit with a sick red tie, has created a magical improvement. Statistically red and blue will generate more clicks, so that is what made me pic those two colors, and surprisingly it worked.
Therefore right now things are sufficient, but still nowhere near how successful the results were when I had my review snippet showing. Thankfully this problem doesn't exist with search ads with adwords. Woo hoo to that!
Do any of you geniuses have insight on this matter? If yes then hit me up or reply to my comment.
Here is the page that I am referring to. To trigger this page to come up in the search results of Google so that you can see exactly what it looks like simply Google "credit card relief programs". Just look for NoMoreCreditCards.com.
The weird thing about this scenario is that I have another page that has a different design and content, but I think it has identical markup with the Google Plus Authorship and schema.org and this page is showing with the star reviews, so is this just luck or is there a particular denominator that would cause the review snippet to show? Here is the other page. To trigger this page simply Google 2014 Credit Card Hardship Programs. It's a new page so its barely on page one, but it is, so you will see it and with the stars.
I would be so thankful if you guys can help me to solve this trivia.
My opinion, you've been lucky that Google was showing review rich snippets in the past because you're not following the guidelines. If you want them to reappear you're going to have to make some changes or you may find you'll lose rich snippets altogether, across the board.
Hi Dr. Pete! This is such a worth reading and sharing post. I will definitely share this to my friend who has lost Google authorship for his blog but noticed that there is no drop in search traffic. I guess this is because he has a low quality site. I believe that this post of yours will really help him. Thanks for sharing.
Authorship is now again in action and must required for content publisher.
Great post. Authorship is very interesting and undoubtedly a big part of the future of search. As long as google relies on links to rate sites people will try to game the system. Authorship is one way it can reduce its reliance on links so makes lots of sense for it to use it in future.
What then becomes more valuable? A backlink from an authority site or a increase in "authorrank" for writing for that authority source?
Perhaps this is a clue https://justinbriggs.org/how-does-google-authorship-impact-ctrIf
If the SERP is studded with authorship snippets and images, then none will stand out any more to create the pull detected by eyetrack.
If the authorship snippet is (now) supposed to single out one or a couple of authorities on a subject matching the search query, then having too many of them on a page would work against this purpose.
how to remove authorship from full website and keep just only for blog?? can you explain in short we have to keep verify with authorship or not ?
Dr. Pete, thanks for sharing such great information and a breakdown of Authorship for all of us to look into ourselves and track. We did notice a lot of Authorship images being removed from the rankings (not just our sites but our competitors as well) in December and had no idea why. This clearly outlines the reasoning, from your standpoint at least.
I know the images are nice and all to see in the SERPs and the client's get a kick out of it, but honestly, does that really matter moving forward? Isn't more about creating the connection between your blog(s) and your G+ pages? There are still so many websites and blogs out there who have not implemented G+ Authorship, so is Google trying to even the playing field by removing the images from the SERPs?
Working hard to keep up with Google's constant shifts. Thanks for the information, again! - Patrick
any special tips for authorship we have to put it for about us page or for main root domain? should we have to still keep authorship or we have to remove it ?
Thanks for writing the post Pete. Now, could you please shed any light on the issue how Google is screening authors now? Who are going to be showcased only? The prominent figures or folks just having decent social presence and followers? Thanks!
Hi Peter,
Great article! I recently lost my rich snippet Google+ fed profile picture image from the left of my results, which I'm putting down to this. Working on getting it back with some of the things you mentioned.
Thanks,
John Alexander Rowley
def feel sorry for authors who claim authorship for 100s of website, yes 100s!!!
I have noticed quite a significant decrease in the appearance over authorship over the past month or so here in the UK. But I guess this falls in line with what Grace is saying here on the 2nd Jan. "Google is currently experimenting with the display of author information"
Great post!
I was wondering why some mark-ups was disappearing from Google searches.
I have lost some of my mark-ups, on a website. So it is going to be interesting, to see if the click percent from Google drops.
Wait, Google have rolled something back? That's not the Google way - normally they roll something out with the attitude that if you don't like it you can't do a single thing about it. Google+ seems to be one and YouTube the other, I thought Google had this mission of removing the veil of anonymity from the internet?
I lost my authorship for two pages only, but all other searches are working fine. Thanks Dr. Peter J. Meyers for this great study. Its not about low quality sites, but Google wants to awarded only top authors.
Great report sir.
“It’s not about low quality sites, but Google wants to awarded only top authors”. May be what you are saying is true but take your case, you only lose two pages rich snippet not for others why so? That’s mean you are not an authority only on two post if others are working fine.
One more changes what I noticed yesterday. If I update any older post, then my authorship gone from the page(Google SERP), but still showing on home page. I don't know what the logic behind this?
This is very anonymous situation!
Does anyone check that?
Thanks great post, glad you cleared it up also enjoyed the stats. I would of thought more numbers would be been affected.
My main concern with the reduction is that I hope it's not only going to be the large business's etc. getting snippets, what I mean is I would hope a blogger who is really passionate (for example) about their site but may be lacking in some links etc. still gets the same opportunities as a large company which. I've seen a slight trend towards with other search results at the moment.
As you mentioned Google + is still new and time will tell.
Thanks again for the post
that explaines a lot I saw in searches the last weeks. Thanks for the post.
I have also lost Google authorship markup for my own blog. but there is no drop in search traffic. it means my site is low quality. i will try to improve its genuineness and useful for my visitors
Thanks for giving useful information at right time Dr. Peter
I've also lost it on my blog but I think this is more to due with the fact I haven't published a new post in about 6 months, I have a few small circle on Google + and no real activity on the site. Google likes freshness.
Great post. I am always interested in seeing how Google Authorship has and will play out. I think the key is exactly what you stated in your last line - "Improving your individual authority and building your social profiles makes sense for many reasons, but getting hung up on the micro-details of authorship mark-up and watching it appear and disappear day-by-day is probably only going to drive you crazy."
Thanks for the head's up Pete. Very useful knowing the categorical breakdown too!
Thanks Pete! Another awesome and informative post.
Do you expect searches showing Google Authorship to progressively drop - this algorithm change being one installment of many, or do you think that Google has done a one-time modification?
I expect that they will fine-tune this regularly and it could change a lot over the next year. I don't think it's going to be cut in half or anything like that, but I'd expect this number to fluctuate. The whole "authorship" concept is still relatively new, at least in the algorithmic sense.
Great post, Dr. Pete. As always, you managed to stir up a really interesting conversation in the comments. It's like 10 posts in one!
I'm guessing they figured out what's the difference between authorship & personal branding.
I know in what stuff I would invest in :)
Strongly recommending our clients to invest in mark-up and not to focus on the authorship mark-up.
In the end. That's just the easiest mark-up and almost everyone has it by now (internationally - Belgium is different - kinda slow). Invest in the other ones! Remember hummingbird?
I, for one, am glad that the number of authors displayed is getting reduced. It was getting to a point where it was a bit distracting of my search experiences in Google. It was like all of a sudden EVERYONE thinks of him/herself as a trusted resource and played Google to make it look as if it was true.
Unless an author REALLY deserves it, there is no need to get lots of people's faces in my SERPs.
I've seen a lot of abuse of the authorship markup in the last couple months with webmasters implementing it in places that it shouldn't be (e.g. homepages of company websites). It's good to see Google has begun the crackdown on this type of usage.
Will be interesting to see how the use of authorship evolves in the future.
this is amazing....
Dr. Pete, thanks for putting some supporting data behind the recent chatter. As I read through the post, I was wondering how removing authorship mark-up, but not the listings themselves, would improve search quality, but I think Gianluca hit it on the head. Hopefully this represents a higher standard required to earn the enhanced display, and a move towards a more authentic authorship profile.
Yeah, I think it may be less about overall search quality, in a broad sense, than the trust people put in the actual authorship snippets. They may have seen that showing authorship mark-up 10-15% less often increased CTRs on those listings significantly, for example.
Well, the comfort webmasters would get is that losing Authorship mark up did not signify Google's penalty nor having low quality sites.
From this information, its simply implies Google is still adjusting its strategies to peg the standard of measuring Google Authorship.
We should all keep tabs of the guidelines that would eventually follow the changes.
Even if they don't have a clear matrix for measuring individual authority, they are making steps in that direction. So if until now social media activity was important for the traffic you brought to your site, but not actually counted for, in time it will be more important that's clear. We need to work more on our social media persona, in the long run.
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SEO Newbie. :)
That's not SEO. That's spam. :)
Who will do a spam? :)
You might want to rethink your link building strategy. Here's a good resource for you: https://inbound.org/articles/all/votes?query=link%20building
Start at the top and read until you can't read anymore.
You're the first person who I've seen Mozpoints in arrears..... You are the last person I want managing my SEO if your pulling stuff like this.
That user just created a Moz account today, and that was his first comment. See the profile. :/
That's a profile that probably will live just today; just give the Seattle guys to wake up :)
The account is banned now. Since there's been so much discussion on this, I thought I'd leave the comment itself up if no one objects (because if I delete the comment, all replies are also deleted).
I think it'd be nice to leave as a tombstone and a warning. "Don't mess with Roger!" :)
Haha, their SEO services page is actually quite funny....if you're looking for "effectual web promotion, web advertising, and SEO services to best fit your unique requirements." then they're the place to go!
I need to look into effectual web promotion.... sounds fancy :)
Always funny when a comment spammer actually fails to create a link.
Surprised no one has commented on the rel=follow in the link.
If it had been a properly formed link, our spam filter would have caught it and it would never have been published.