Hey! Remember your old friend Google Authorship? That nifty little snippet that appeared alongside your post and in the SERPs, proudly announcing that you are the author of a specific article or blog post?
Well, sadly, Google Authorship is no longer “a thing.” (Womp, womp.) Google recently made the decision to stop using this feature because they believe that authorship information isn’t useful to users and can even distract from the actual search results. Although Google Authorship is no longer, Author Rank can play a role in elevating a post’s position in the SERPs.
Misty Watercolor Google Authorship Memories
First rolled out in 2011, the aim of Google Authorship was to help boost author visibility and create community around like-minded searchers. With an author photo and short-n’-sweet author byline, Google Authorship served as a way to not only link multiple pieces of that author’s content together, but to build trust and authority for an author and help them to climb the ladder of SERP rankings. In addition to using rel=”author” and rel=”me” tags, Google + accounts were used to create Google Authorship profiles, further enhancing the community aspect of this tool.
The Last Days of Google Authorship
Starting late last year, only some Google Authorship snippets showed an author photo. By June of 2014, all author photos were phased out of Google Authorship and just a brief byline remained. According to Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, photos were removed due to Google attempting to create a better, more seamless user experience for both mobile and desktop devices. Given the scant amount of screen space on mobile, author photos did not seem to make a great deal of sense. The move away from author photos was also due to Google’s discovery that viewers were no more or no less likely to click on a post that had an author photo than one that didn’t have a photo to accompany it.
Little did we know it, but the end was nigh. Fast forward to September 2014, when Google Authorship officially became kaput.
Where Did It All Go Wrong?
Google pulled the plug on its grand experiment with Mueller citing lack of author adoption and that Google Authorship was not providing those searching for content with any additional value. A great many authors weren’t implementing Google Authorship. And among those that were using the tool, not all of them were doing it right. Some folks had a difficult time mastering adding the applicable tags. Similarly, Google found that people were no more or less likely to click on a SERP result with or without a Google Authorship attribution assigned to it.
As with Google’s mandate for quality…. If something is just not providing measurable value to users, it’s not going to stick around.
So Now What?
Now that we’ve sung our final requiem for Google Authorship, what’s next? For starters, bloggers and authors should stay on the alert for the next development from the Google Webmaster Tools team that may help to increase their visibility.
In the meantime, here are a few things you can do:
- Don’t panic. In a recent Google + post, John Mueller mentioned that Google saw no drop in traffic for sites when Authorship was removed. Additionally, the removal of Google Authorship does not diminish the social value. According to Mueller, “search users will still see Google+ posts from friends and pages when they’re relevant to the query.”
- Remove your Google Authorship markup. If you have any rel-“author” or rel=”me” tags in your code, you may want to remove them. Google will not penalize you for keeping those tags if you don’t feel like deleting them (just in case Google Authorship makes a comeback – like flared jeans!).
- Keep blogging. Keep promoting your posts and growing your audience using social media. Google Authorship may be six feet under, but that doesn’t mean that you should abandon common sense, blogging best-practices. Keep expanding your circles on social media and spreading the word about your blog. Keep engaging your audience in comments and looking at their comments to see what posts are most meaningful to them.
The way Google is evolving and rewarding quality content that is straight-up meaningful and zeroes in on what its audience is searching for, you can’t go wrong with being attentive to your readership and blogging about the things that matter most to them and to you.
