In our previous post, we have discussed about the cessation of photo profile and circle counts on its Authorship feature. Today, we will learn a little history of Google Authorship.
Introduced in 2011, Google Authorship was one of the big hits for SEO and online marketers. Within three years since its official announcement, there were many changes in how Authorship appeared in search results. However, each change was seen as Google’s continued support for improving the project.
During Google Authorship’s premiere time, almost everyone could get their profile pictures in search by setting up Authorship markup on their content and linking to that content from their Google+ profile. However, as time goes on, Google became choosier about showing the rich snippet, and other quality criteria seemed to come into play. Still, it was not too difficult to earn the author snippet.
Here is a video from 2011 with Matt Cutts and Othar Hansson explaining the mechanism of Authorship markup and its potential for Google at that time:
It was clear that Authorship as a search feature was a privilege, not a right. Thus, no matter as much as Google seemed to want people to adopt Authorship markup, they were determined to police the quality of what was shown in search associated with that markup. But none of that prepared us for what has happened now: the complete removal of author photos from global search.
What Now?
All marketers now are bidding their time and waiting for Google’s next move. Getting high ranking in Google search will always be an advantage for every business. However, with a lot of surprising news from Google and its rapid algorithm updates, business owners need to remember that they can’t easily take a shortcut on their way to the top. They have to start creating content that helps people, not crawlers. This way, having a good content marketing strategy is the best way to stay ahead on this game.