• About Us
  • Contributors
  • Guides
  • Speaking Engagements
  • Write for The SEM Post
  • Submit a tip or contact us!
  • Newsletters

The SEM Post

Latest News About SEO, SEM, PPC & Search Engines

  • Google
  • SEO
  • Mobile
  • Local
  • Bing
  • Pay Per Click
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • State of the Industry
You are here: Home / Google / Google No Longer Using Authorship in Search Results

Google No Longer Using Authorship in Search Results

August 29, 2014 at 4:02 am PST By Jennifer Slegg

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS

google authorshipWe have seen the signs of the death of authorship for sometime.  We saw a dramatic reduction in the amount of results showing authorship in Google.  Then came the removal of authorship author photos in the search results.  And now Google has announced that authorship in the search results is no longer being utilized.

John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, made the announcement via a personal Google+ post.

I’ve been involved since we first started testing authorship markup and displaying it in search results. We’ve gotten lots of useful feedback from all kinds of webmasters and users, and we’ve tweaked, updated, and honed recognition and displaying of authorship information. Unfortunately, we’ve also observed that this information isn’t as useful to our users as we’d hoped, and can even distract from those results. With this in mind, we’ve made the difficult decision to stop showing authorship in search results.

(If you’re curious — in our tests, removing authorship generally does not seem to reduce traffic to sites. Nor does it increase clicks on ads. We make these kinds of changes to improve our users’ experience.)

In fact, Google has already removed the authorship schema checker from Google Webmaster Tools.

Authorship, while beneficial for those who implemented it, was definitely difficult for non-tech savvy webmasters to implement.  Even with the schema checker, many stumbled on the correct implementation.  However, I am certain many people started their attempt to implement authorship by signing up for a Google+ account.

Of course, it also raises the issue of what this means for Google+.  It is no secret that many people have a default Google+ account based on their Google account, and many people had Google+ accounts for the sole purpose of authorship.  Google+ has been undergoing its own changing as well – there were rumors that Google was planning to split the photos aspect of Google+ from the service.  They dropped the requirement of a Google+ account from using Hangouts on Air.  And earlier this week, Google+ began offering the option to import any Google+ videos into YouTube.

They are keeping the social signals aspect of Google+, meaning searches will continue to display relevant Google+ posts from those you follow.  So from an SEO perspective, it is still valuable to post on Google+ and build up your followers.  However, this could also end up changing in the future.

If you are currently using authorship schema markup, you don’t need to rush out and remove all the code – while there is no authorship benefit to having it, leaving it on your site will not hurt your site at all.  But Google will no longer process the data or make any use of rel=author data according to Mueller.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
  • WhatsApp
  • Evernote
  • SMS
The following two tabs change content below.
  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.
My Twitter profileMy Facebook profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Latest posts by Jennifer Slegg (see all)

  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update - October 19, 2021
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update - April 23, 2021
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met - October 16, 2020
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters - October 6, 2020
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google - July 8, 2020

Filed Under: Google Tagged With: Authorship, Google

Sign up for our newsletter


Founder & Editor

Jennifer Slegg (2051)

Sign up for our daily news recap & weekly newsletter.


Follow us online

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • Linkedin
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Latest News

Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update

Google has released a new version of the Google quality rater guidelines, a year after the last … [Read More...]

Recent Posts

  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines: The Low Quality 2021 Update
  • Rethinking Affiliate Sites With Google’s Product Review Update
  • New Google Quality Rater Guidelines, Update Adds Emphasis on Needs Met
  • Google Updates Experiment Statistics for Quality Raters
  • Analyzing “How Google Search Works” Changes from Google
  • Google Quality Rater Guidelines Update: New Introduction, Rater Bias & Political Affiliations
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines: Reputation for News Sites; Video Content Updates; Quality for Information Sites
  • Google Makes Major Changes to NoFollow, Adds Sponsored & UGC Tags
  • Google Updates Quality Rater Guidelines Targeting E-A-T, Page Quality & Interstitials
  • Google Local Service Ads Display Pricing Estimates for Specific Locations

Categories

  • Affiliate Marketing
  • Amazon
  • Apple
  • Bing
  • Branding
  • Browsers
  • Chrome
  • Content Marketing
  • Design
  • Domains
  • DuckDuckGo
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Firefox
  • Foursquare
  • Google
    • Analytics
    • Google RankBrain
    • Quality Rater's Guidelines
  • History of Search
  • Industry Spotlight
  • Instagram
  • Internet Explorer
  • Links
  • Local
  • Mobile
  • Native Advertising
  • Other Search Engines
  • Pay Per Click
  • Pinterest
  • Publishers
  • Security
  • SEO
  • Snapchat
  • Social Media
  • State of the Industry
  • The SEM Post
  • Tools
  • Twitter
  • Uncategorized
  • User Experience
  • Video Marketing
  • Week in Review
  • Whitepapers
  • Wordpress
  • Yahoo
  • Yelp
  • YouTube
July 2022
MTWTFSS
« Oct  
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2022 · News Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in