As a Google products user we often see various projects and changes start as an idea, mature to implementation, scramble to use it and then watch it die. Over the years there have been a few that we have seen, like Google Currents, now another project is falling by the way side, Google Authorship. It is one that you may have loved and seen often in search returns. It was the little addition to an article or post that linked across to the author and their G+ account. I personally liked having it. But alas, things change.
(img: Crestmediainc)
The head shot aspect of the Google Authorship has been gone for a while and the only remaining aspect was a small tag for the author. As of today, that is no longer listed either. The announcement was made on G+ earlier today by John Muller from the Webmaster Tools team. Apparently it didn’t have a big of an impact as they thought it would. As Muller states, ” 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.”
While Google Authorship is dead, Search will still poll G+ and return results from friends and pages that relevant to the query. So for all you blog owners out there, I suppose you can disable any Authorship plug-ins and modifications you have made to comply and participate in the Google Authorship program.
Source: John Muller G+ via 9to5Google
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