With the end of August came the end of Google Author links formally appearing in search results. The announcement was made on Google Plus, from a member of the Webmaster tools team.
For those not familiar with the concept, an author profile would be created on Google +, with specific links to sites that the author was contributing to. If those sites listed corresponding author tags within their metadata, Google would then list the author with the search result when that particular page appeared in the results. Originally, it would include the G+ photo of the author, a link to their profile, and some information about their network and circles.
A number of SEO professionals were embracing, and some even gaming, this process, as good author rankings were a factor in search results. Google seemed to be enjoying the extra use of their under-performing social network, so at first it appeared to be a win for both sides. However, as we’ve long seen, Google likes to take a less predictable path when altering search rules and results, and wound up scuttling much of this program. In fact, with search being such an important part of their business, their data was suggesting that including authorship information on the results page was actually distracting users from the results they were searching for.
Today, author rank can still have an impact on search results, though it is less much visible than it once was. Meta data is still quite important to your website and how it is read, classified, and ranked within the google search engine. From the G+ post:
Going forward, we’re strongly committed to continuing and expanding our support of structured markup (such as schema.org). This markup helps all search engines better understand the content and context of pages on the web, and we’ll continue to use it to show rich snippets in search results.
It’s also worth mentioning that Search users will still see Google+ posts from friends and pages when they’re relevant to the query — both in the main results, and on the right-hand side. Today’s authorship change doesn’t impact these social features.”
If you’re looking to improve inbound performance and drive better organic search results, feel free to click the learn more button on the right and we’ll be happy to discuss your current site, and how to best stay on top of the ever changing world of search.