What is Google Authorship?

Google Authorship is a program for brands, and individuals behind the brand, to establish thought-leadership in search engine result pages. The idea is to visually attribute content to an author and brand by adding the creators Google Plus profile picture to the search listing. [endclip]Google would also give the author kudos in the form of Author Rank based on the relevancy of the content and the level of trust it gives to the brand. It is speculated that Google uses Author Rank as a ranking factor that offers more visibilty in search results to highly ranked authors.

This has recently changed. Google Authorship historically allowed content creators to have their Google Plus profile featured with their listing in organic search results. This gave the listing more impact than others as it was more visually engaging. The reasoning behind this was long-cited evidence on eye-tracking studies and that it was also generally agreed to satisfy our social need to put a face to a name, an identity behind the brand, and therefore helped to drive clicks, branding and credibility.

This was changed when Google announced on Google Plus that they had come to a decision to "clean up the visual design of our search results" and "simplify the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results". Basically this means that authors no longer have the profile picture featured visually in search results with their content.

There's been a lot of speculation and hearsay as to why Google did this really. With cynics suggesting it was making organic search results more prominenet than paid ads, taking clicks away from Google AdWords. Others think that it could be fewer thought-leaders are actually using Google Plus. In other words, Google didn't want to highlight the skeptical performance of its social platform.

Google removed Authorship photos, so should I still be doing it?

For the foreseeable future, the same strategies and SEO principles that underpin historically successful campaigns still remain the same. You’ll be rewarded for focusing on the basics. Content is still king, and frequent high-quality blog posts still help optimise your website in search engine results. Trust and relevancy are still a key factor in Google's ranking algorithm, so it's impotant to be active with your social media marketing and to attract the right traffic to your website.

Google Authorship does still have benefits:

• Author images are gone, but the name still appears next to search results.
• Author stats data is still available in Google Webmaster Tools, which shows impressions, clicks, CTR and ranking positions for articles.
• Author Rank - this may be used a ranking factor for Google at some point in future. Author Rank relates to the idea that quality content published by trusted authors will organically be more visible in search results. The way Google attributes an Author Rank is through information about the author learnt from the Authorship program.

Although it is a loss to have Google Authorship photo's removed,  if you want to stay ahead of the curve, the program does still have benefits that make it worthwhile participaiting in. Particularly for SEO. We had previously posted on How to Add Google Authorship when the profile picture was still a feature, but the blog is still relevant today on the mechanics of setting Authorship up.

If you want to dicuss Google Authorship or SEO in more detail give Ben a call on 01323 735 800.