Google Plus Authorship Update - Author Photos Removed From Search Results

3 replies
Google recently made an update to its authorship program. The author photos and circle count from Search Result Pages has now gone away. More about it here:

Google Plus Authorship Update- No More Author Photos In Search Results

This does raise a few questions on how serious Google might be regarding Google Plus. Having these photos show up in SERPs not only enhanced CTRs, but was also a way for Google to get more people to take to Google Plus. Besides, I personally liked the personal touch that these author photos introduced in the SERPs.

What's your take on this?
#author #authorship #google #google plus #google+ #photos #removed #results #search #update
  • Profile picture of the author usamawahid11
    Bad step, introducing author pics was a great step and to be honest after enabling authorship on my blog my traffic from google increased slightly. Authorship made Google Search attractive and now it's back to its original look Author names are still there in search results, I'm not sure why Google left author names, if they wanted to remove authorship then they should have removed it completely.
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  • Profile picture of the author Johnny33
    This definitely wasn't awesome. But I think that Authorship will still have quite a bit of value even without the author photos. Google says they don't use author authority as a ranking signal at the moment, but I think it will eventually. So although the benefits aren’t overwhelming, they're worth the minimal effort, and it’s almost certain that more value will accrue to Google Authorship in the future. A company I work with did a post looking at the value of Google Authorship now that photos are gone. Is Google Authorship Pointless Without Photos | Future Hosting Give it a look if you like.
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  • Profile picture of the author master reseller
    A photo increases trust factor instantly, whether on a website or search engine listing. So who knows what Google is thinking by getting rid of the author photos, except maybe how it would make the results load faster on a page.
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