To me, Google Authorship was a bait and switch. Bloggers, webmasters and site owners were encouraged to sync up their Google+ profile to their website. And, of course, you would do it, right? You get your picture in the Google SERPs. No brainer, right? Well, it was a good deal for a while.
Like many things that Google does, it was done in a self-serving fashion. This certainly helped them to build their social network. And, once they felt that the got some juice of of it, they pulled the rug out from under site owners. Suprise, surprise.
Google Authorship was good for site owners for a variety of reasons:
- It allowed bloggers to build their authority within a category or niche.
- It allowed authorship to stand-out in SERPs.
- It was easier to organize content – if needed – from a certain author.
- You could use it to push traffic to your Google+ presence.
- You could use Google Webmaster Tools to see how your content was performing on other sites.
- You could become famous!
Anyway, (sigh) the party is over. What do you do about it? Abandon the authorship dream? Hardly, the fact is – authorship may be gone. But, it is not dead. What – you say? “But, I can’t see my mug in SERPs!” Of course, you can’t. But, that doesn’t mean it is dead.
I happen to believe that authorship is still and will remain a significant ranking factor in the Google algorithm. This period of seeing in search results just gives you a lense into how Google looks at authorship. Now – more than ever – it is increasingly important to build your “author rank”. Write authority content. Continue to try to get your content in highly reputable places. The groundwork was put down during this phase of Google Authorship. But, “authorship” itself is not dead!
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