In the past month, there have been some changes involving Google Authorship that might have you questioning if using the feature is worth your time and effort anymore. Don’t toss out your hopes and dreams of being a quality content creator just yet; there is still good reason to continue with your authorship. But first, you should understand what has changed and why.
Where Did My Author Photo Go?
On June 25, John Mueller, an analyst at Google, announced that the search engine was doing work to “clean up” the visuals of search results. The major part of this effort was to change the way authorship appeared in the search results. Before this update, posts and articles from those utilizing authorship appeared like this in the search results:
In this snippet you’ll notice that next to this blog post, my Google Plus profile picture, byline, and circles information appeared. Now that the update has occurred, when you search for the same article, you will see this:
You still see my byline, but now my photo and Google Plus circles information have been removed. Google has made this update in the name of user experience, citing that the change helps to clean up the design of search results and helps to better serve up results on both mobile devices and desktops. However, as there usually are with Google changes, there are some “conspiracy theories” on why Google has removed the photos, including that they were removed because they distract from the paid advertisements (losing Google money).
Why Continue to Utilize Google Authorship?
The biggest (and most obvious) reason to continue with authorship is that it’s still here – it still exists. Regardless of the discontinuation of displaying photos or circles information in the search results, authorship is alive and kicking.
If using authorship, your name will still appear in the search results with your article. Your byline still creates a visual that shows the reader that perhaps your article has more credibility than others in the search results that don’t have bylines. It supports the overall goal of instilling trust in your work to search users.
Most importantly, you can still continue to “earn credit” as a consistent and quality content creator. You can continue to build your presence and reputation through authorship. In building that presence and reputation, it is imperative that you continue to produce high quality, compelling, and value-add content to your followers, site visitors, and to searchers. Doing so will further cement your identity as a quality source of information, a source of relevant and useful information for user’s search queries, and someone whose articles are worthy of showing in the results.