Google has dropped authorship profile photos and Google+ circle counts from SERPs
And the announcement by John Mueller of Google shocked the entire online marketers community and SEO fraternity, equally.
Is it really a good decision taken by Google? What are the reasons behind this big decision? And what should be your action plan now? Let’s dig the matter a bit more… to find a concrete solution.
Authorship Profile Photos
Displaying authorship profile photos alongside own content in Google SERPs was like an honor for online content creators.
Few years back when Google started displaying images of the content creators in the search engine results; webmasters and bloggers were in a frenzy to implement the new feature. Connecting your online content to your Google+ Profile and again from your Google+ Profile Page to your web-pages or website (or blog) is definitely a herculean task. At least for non-techie bloggers.
But still everybody invested (may be wasted) their precious time to implement the authorship mark-up to display their images and names alongside their online content in Google search results. Mainly because of 3 reasons – To increase CTR, better branding and to increase trust factor.
Why Did Google Drop Author Images
Somehow, I was not so happy when Google started displaying profile photos of content authors in the search results few years back. But the way Google started giving importance to authorship mark-up, Google+ Profile, and even to author rank; nobody spared.
1. Visual Distraction
Just imagine, how the search results will look – Displaying 10 smart author photos in a column corresponding to their content, on the left side of the SERP.
And out of the 10, almost 6 to 7 are always good looking (and probably) sexy girls. Wouldn’t your eyes go to the images first, instead of the headlines? Wouldn’t you be clicking the headlines (URLs) by just looking at the authors’ photos (many a times)?
Yes, our brain processes images much faster than texts. And many a times, subconsciously, searchers were clicking headlines in the search results just by looking at the author profile photos. It was a clear distraction affecting Google’s search quality.
2. Poor Mobile Experience
Author images were occupying precious real estate in mobile search, due to the small screen of various mobile instruments (smart phones & tablets).
The mobile search results were getting more and more cluttered & visual in nature. By removing the author profile photos, mobile search will be more contextual, and probably more natural. So, it’s an attempt by Google to make the search experience seamless and natural across all types of devices. It couldn’t be achieved by simply dropping the author images in the mobile search (and not in the desktop search).
3. Fake Author Images
Yes, this is also a big reason for Google to drop this feature. Displaying fake photos, promoting female authors, and even displaying fake female author photos were a common practice to win more CTR.
Lots of webmasters and bloggers were displaying their young time photos instead of their current ones to get more CTR in search results. And even, many a times, content written by male authors were being attributed to female authors; only to display an attractive female photo in the Google search to get more clicks. This was mostly practiced by big multi-authors websites and blogs. It was really a disturbing trend growing day by day. And Google was unable to handle this spammy activity despite their strict rules for claiming online content authorship using authorship mark-up.
Your Action Plan
Don’t think Google is dropping authorship mark-up or the importance of authorship (undeclared author rank) as a ranking signal while ranking online content.
Google has just dropped the authorship profile images and Google Plus circle counts from the SERPs. And it’s still displaying a clickable author name attached to the Google+ Profile Page. Content authorship and author rank will definitely play a big role in the future.
So, you shouldn’t stop claiming your content authorship for your existing, as well as newly created sites and blogs.
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