Should I still use Google Authorship?

Last year Google gave us Google Authorship – but now they take away profile pictures in SERP. How does this affect my site and should I still use Google Authorship in the future? Here is an analysis of the change and how this can affect SEO for websites.

Why was Google Authorship introduced?

First we have to remember why Google Authorship was introduced back then.

One of the reasons was to give more users to Google+ – Googles own social platform. That did work – really many people has a profile on Google+ although not all are active users. But even though a user is not an active user, most of them will then have a Google profile and will be logged into Google while they use Googles products. This gives Google a lot of great informations about all users.

Second Google want to prevent so much spam from being showed in SERP. It is not so easy to creat spam content using Google Authorship, so in this way Authorship will be a way that Google can recognize sites that are probably not spam.

Third Google wants people to take ownership of there content, which is also possible with Authorship. This makes it easier for Google to recognize original content.

Fourth Google wants to recognize the best content for the visitors, i.e. content written by authors with highest authority. When people use authorship, Google can calculate an authorrank for search keyword for each author and in this way show the best content.

All these four reasons are still relevant and will always be relevant because it gives the visitors the best content – and this is Googles primary goal.

Why was the profile photo introduced in SERP?

The profile photo has really been one of the most popular thing about authorship. Especially because many people think that when the profile photo is showed in SERP, then people will easier recognize the site because the photo is more eye catchy. And I am sure that this profile picture itself affect CTR.

But Google is not directly interested in this. Why should it be because the site use Google Authorship that the visitor should visit this site? No instead Google will show the most relevant pages for the users in the top of the SERP – and this includes information from author rank.

So since the profile photo might get more focus on the sites with photo instead of the first site on SERP – this gives the visitor a site that Google did not necessary think was number 1. This is a primary reason why profile photo is not relevant for the end user. And if something is not relevant for the end user – only for the website owner – Google remove it.

Another reason can also be that the profile photo was more recognized by the end user, than ads in SERP.

Author rank still exist

But remember that Author rank probably still exist. Author rank is the factor that is calculated from a authors authority towards a certain topic. Google get this information from how much of the same content you create, how many social users that share and comment your comments, how many +1 your site gets etc. And this author rank still exists, even though Google has removed profile photos from SERP.

So it is important to still keep working with getting a high author rank towards a certain topic, if you want to rank high in Google. Because Google still uses authorship – it is just not so visible for the end user.

Will it affect my rank in Google?

No, the rank in Google will probably be the same. If you before were number 1 in Google towards a certain search keyword, you will still be. The reason for this is that the ranking is not affected and author rank still exist.

Will it affect my CTR?

Perhaps. Now where a profile picture is not showed any more in SERP, the site will maybe not be recognized as easy in SERP and this will lead to a lower CTR.

Some people has written about cases where their CTR was increased with up to 150% because of Google Authorship – and some of this might be decreased again. But just remember that this increase in CTR could not just be because of the profile photo – author rank would also increase your CTR because you get a higher rank.

Should I still use Google Authorship on my websites?

Certainly. Google Authorship and author rank still exist as it has always done – but it is just not so visible to the end user. Perhaps you can expect to lose some visitors because of a lower CTR, but the rank in Google will probably not be affected.

How can I track my Authorship CTR?

You can always see how many time Google Authorship has been showed in SERP and what the CTR is in these cases. This is showed in Google Webmastertools under Labs -> Author stats.

It would be interesting to see in the future if people saw a decrease in this Authorship CTR and how big this decrease is.