Google Announces the End of Author Photos in Search

[Murray]

We've been doing lots of work to clean up the visual design of our search results, in particular creating a better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices. As a part of this, we're simplifying the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results, removing the profile photo and circle count. (Our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one.)

https://plus.google.com/+JohnMueller/posts/PDkPdPtjL6j

http://moz.com/blog/bye-bye-author-pics

I think that is a shame

 

[Edwin]

Makes sense in a way, since it was easy to get material tagged as an "individual" author but hard to get it tagged as a company. It's fine to have a prominent picture if you're trying to cultivate a "persona" online (e.g. if you earn your living as a self-employed blogger, author, expert, etc). However, if you imagine the case of somebody working for a larger organisation (perhaps as part of a blog/PR/comms team) the company probably doesn't really want that employee's face plastered next to the company's search results.

After all, the company has presumably already paid in full for the content to be created (in the form of the salary and benefits paid to the employees responsible for creating it) so it shouldn't have to "brand" certain employees as well into the bargain.

The move is likely to please larger organisations which usually also happen to be more significant Google advertisers.

 

[PanzerWagon]

Probably costing them ad clicks. No other reason seen as though when it launched they cited increased CTR as a benefit of joining Google+. Now seemingly it has no effect.

However, if you imagine the case of somebody working for a larger organisation (perhaps as part of a blog/PR/comms team) the company probably doesn't really want that employee's face plastered next to the company's search results.

The simple answer would be just not implement authorship if they didn't want staff faces next to content.

A lot of brands got on board with Google+ so I think you're wrong on that one about them being pleased for it.

They are either indifferent (i.e. never bothered with it anyway) or annoyed that they've invested time and money into Google+ as a platform due to the benefits offered by Google, now only to be told they are scrapping it and the click through rate won't change. Despite citing increased CTR as a benefit when it launched.

 

[Blossom]

The simple answer would be just not implement authorship if they didn't want staff faces next to content.

But then you're at a disadvantage for CTR.

They are either indifferent (i.e. never bothered with it anyway) or annoyed that they've invested time and money into Google+ as a platform due to the benefits offered by Google, now only to be told they are scrapping it and the click through rate won't change. Despite citing increased CTR as a benefit when it launched.

For most companies, the biggest benefit of G+ is still personalised search.