Google to remove authorship images from search results

admin

Administrator
Staff member
Yesterday on the SEO news websites is was announced that Google is removing the authorship images and circle count from the search listings.

More on this:

Google's John Mueller announced on Google+ today that Google will cease showing author profile images and Google+ circle counts in desktop and mobile search results. This global change will roll out over the next few days.

"We've been doing lots of work to clean up the visual design of our search results, in particular creating a better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices," he wrote. "As a part of this, we're simplifying the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results, removing the profile photo and circle count."

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2352147/Google-to-Remove-Author-Images-from-Search-Results


Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-...ping-profile-image-google-circle-count-195163

I guess it`s time to say goodbye to my own author image, shame I liked it. It did certainly attract more clicked to my web pages, as my listing stood out from the crowd.

From what I understand, it was giving authorship users an unfair advantage from the rest of the listing as the had better CTR`s.

Google why add it in the first page if your going to remove it 2 years later?


Bye bye me :(

sitebee-authorship.png
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
Look on the up side. People are now going to miss you. :p

Wonder how long it's going to take for Google to offer this for paid subscription?
 

weilrich

New member
It looks like Google continues to prune its failing products (i.e. Google+). Their brand is based on the desire that most people have to use a simple, uncluttered search engine that loads quickly. Graphic images load more slowly than text and I'll bet there were some heated discussions about removing the authorship pics. Google is heavily invested in the global Internet and that includes those parts of the world in which a 300 baud modem is the best available connection through a land telephone line. Little things like the load time of authorship pics could impact the load time of pages delivered across those low-bandwidth connections.
 

Peter

Member
I'm glad they removed them. As a searcher I don't want to see people's faces in the SERP. I think it's too much manipulation of the search result that webmasters shouldn't have control over and it's unfair for people that are not good looking. How authors look like is rarely relevant, at least not to the searches I do.
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
I'm different. I like photos of people. Or avatars. They say something more in little space. For example at Gigarank the Avatar usually speaks to me as well. Not that I think that those without Avatars don't matter, but if someone has an Avatar, it adds more information about the person.
 

Peter

Member
Genesis said:
I'm different. I like photos of people. Or avatars. They say something more in little space.
It's not that I don't like photos and avatars. It's just that I think they are not relevant to what I'm searching for but yet they influence my likelihood of clicking certain links. It's easy to be biased towards certain people. There are also a lot of content that is not written by one author, like on forums and wikis. Not showing any photos at all makes it more fair to all website in my opinion and it helps the searcher from being affected by the faces that they see.
 

Genesis

Administrator
Staff member
I think you and I are looking with different eyes. What I see when I'm looking at one like DJB's is how neat it is laid out. It takes some SEO skill to get it that way. So if I'm into SEO or Web development and looking for anything in that line that would grab my attention. I'd like to find out more about his business. And not unfairly so as it's how it was done, rather than the photo itself that worked for me. It's the whole package that counts. What is wonderful about the Internet however is that someone will probably find a way to work around it - with a creative solution as an alternative for the photos. I'm waiting to see with interest what form that is going to take.
 

ogah

New member
test your website with google structured data testing tool.

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

and they will say "Your authorship setup is finished. Congratulations! However, please note that Google will only show your author portrait in search results when we think it will be useful to the user."