Google is dropping authorship photos from most search results.
Up until now, if you verified your authorship through Google+, and Google choose to display it, you might have seen your author photo displayed in Google search results. This included both your author photo and your Google circle count.
Going forward, Google plans to only display the author’s name in the search snippet, dropping the photo and the circle count.
Google News
- In this case, Google’s plans show them adding a small author photo next to Google News snippets, in addition to a larger news photo snippet. We’re not sure how authorship in Google News will display in mobile results.
- Critics argue that the one thing that will actually become more visible as a result of this change will be Google’s ads at the top and sides of the page.
Despite this very visual change in Google search results, several things are not changing:
- “Google Authorship continues. Qualifying authors will still get a byline on search results, so Google hasn’t abandoned it.”
- Authors’ names still appear in search results Your rankings don’t change You must still verify authorship for enhanced snippets
If Google begins to incorporate more “Author Rank” signals into its search algorithm, establishing yourself as a trusted authority now could pay off big down the road. At this point, it’s hard to say exactly where the future of authorship lies, especially given the unknown future of Google+ itself.