GOOGLE AUTHORSHIP – Where the heck is my picture?
I have been seeing a whole bunch of people here on WA and elsewhere in some of the Google+ communities complaining and crying over the loss of their Rich Snippet images. First off I would like to say I am not one of these people. I was never able to get mine to work in the first place, nor do I care too much because my content is being ranked on Pages 1-5 of the search engines and I am getting traffic. You do not need a Rich Snippet image in order to do well in the SERPs.
GOOGLE SAID THIS WOULD HAPPEN
What is happening to the rest of you is NOT a Google glitch. Google said back in October that they were going to cut up to 15% of all Rich Snippet Authorship Images. The reason for this was so Google could tighten up the requirements for becoming a high quality author. This basically means that if you cannot write quality content providing the information that those who search Google want and need, you will lose that class of authorship.
In part of his hour-long speech at Pubcon back in October, Matt Cutts of Google said, "We want to make sure that the people who we show as authors are high quality authors. And so we’re looking at the process of possibly tightening that up. It turns out if we reduce the amount of authorship we are showing by just about 10 or 15 percent, we’re radically able to improve the quality of the authors that we show. Which is another nice signal for those searchers and users who are typing into Google and say, “Ah, I see this picture, I see this person is an author. This is something I can trust. This is content that I really want to see.” So it’s not just going to be about the markup; it’s going to be about the quality of the author."
CLASS OF AUTHORSHIP?
Yes! There are now three classes of Authorship.
FIRST CLASS: Full Authorship Snippet
If your webpage or post has the image, the byline, and (Optional) the number of Google+ Circles, you will fall into this class of Authorship.
SECOND CLASS: Byline But No Photo
If your webpage or post has no image but you are still getting the byline under your link text in search results and the (Optional) number of Google+ Circles, you fall into this class of Authorship.
THIRD CLASS: No Authorship Rich Snippet At All
If your webpage or post has no image, no byline and no (Optional) number of Google+ Circles, you fall into this class of Authorship.
DO THESE CLASSES OF AUTHORSHIP CHANGE SERPs?
No it does not change how well your pages and posts will rank in the search results. As I said at the beginning of this post about my lack of ever having an Authorship Image, “You do not need a Rich Snippet image in order to do well in the SERPs.”
This boils down to what Kyle and many of us have been saying to those who have asked, IT’S ALL ABOUT WRITING QUALITY CONTENT! Quality content is, and for the foreseeable future will be, KING! As long as you write quality content and write it often you will move up in rankings. Plus the more quality content you write the higher your authority goes and over time you may see your Authorship Class increase as well.
So stop worrying about your image not showing up on all of your pages and posts. It’s not the end of the world and if you do right by what Google says you should do, in time you may get your photo back. But do you need a photo to rank high and get traffic, absolutely not!
Below is a link to an article I read on Google+ about the 15% cut in Authorship if you should want to read it for yourself and proof that this reduction in images is not a glitch and was planned by Google.
Recent Comments
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That's the spirit John! I could care less if I have a picture or not. Being on page 1 is more important to me. I look forward to seeing you there too!
I am a slow writer...........but I have 5 pages of content. Will add 1 every other day next week.
I would space them out a little more than one every other day. You want to try and keep a consistent schedule when it comes to posting content on your website so Google can keep sending their spiders to crawl your site. If you post all of your content and then stop because you have no more to post, Google will eventually stop crawling your site on a regular basis and you always want Google to crawl your site on a regular basis. This is why Kyle says that we should have a posting schedule and we should stick to it.
Thanks for the info. I set up google + a while ago, but just finished setting up Google analytics Friday. Thanks to the video training I finally got it. As far as I know the picture does show up in search.
You're welcome Helen and if your picture is showing up then you are one of the lucky ones, if you happen to be one of those people who care about it.
Thanks for posting this. My picture shows for my actual website but not for my individual posts. Probably doesn't ultimately matter but I found it curious.
You're welcome Rick. Yes Google will post the picture for some listings. There have been people on some of the Google+ communities stating that not all of their pages and posts are missing images so it would seem that Google is looking at each individual website, webpage and webpost and making their determination based on each one. So you may see a picture for one webpage and not another or you could be in the 1st Class of Authorship for one webpage and in a 2nd or 3rd Class for another. Google can drive you crazy...if you should really care about it, which at this point I do not.
Thanks. I was glad to see it for my website because I'm close to 100 posts so the overall site is ranking nicely. I would like to see it on my individual posts as the pictures do draw the eyes (and I've been told I have a friendly face...:). Oh well, I shall continue to dance the Google dance...once I figure out if they're line dancing, ballroom dancing, or some kind of virtual ballet.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I did not realize there were 3 classes of authorship.
Congratulations on doing so well with your content. :)
You're welcome Jenna and thank you.
I didn't realize at first that there were 3 classes either until I saw Kyle's WA Review got bumped down to 2nd Class. Ever since posting my WA Review and Kyle giving me a glowing review on it I have always been 1 page behind his review. Then one day a couple of weeks ago I did some tweaking that bumped my ranking up in search. So when I was checking to see how much closer I had gotten to Kyle I noticed his picture was gone but his byline was still showing. Then when I read the article that I supplied the link to above, I read that there are now 3 classes of authorship.
So at least I now know that even if my picture and byline doesn't show up I still have Google Authorship.
Nice to know it is possible to please Google but how long before they change the requirements again...In my view it's best to do the best you can to please your intended audience.
Yes Ken you should always do the best you can to please your intended (targeted) audience. By doing that you will also please Google because that is what they want. Just write great content that's informative and helpful to your readers and Google will be happy with that. Kyle says that all the time to just focus on writing great content and write it often.
As for when will Google change the requirement again? The only people who know that answer is Google, unfortunately.
Thanks for that - always great to get up to date info when it comes to google authorship! Have a great New Year!
Ken
You're welcome Ken! - Google is always changing and updating their algorithms so it's always good to keep an eye on them. Fortunately they haven't changed their stance on content being important because if they did we would all be up the creek without a paddle. :)
You have a Happy New Year too!
Content will always be King, if not then what else? This is the one saving grace like death and taxes (although not the positve intent I wanted - HA)....
I've just read about the news too a few hours ago. I've long put the rich snippet thing behind already. I'm ranking too on page 1-5, although those keywords that I'm ranking for only get 100+ searches a month. :P
That's still better than the minimum requirement of 50 that we are taught. At first I was frustrated that my image wasn't showing up but when my content was getting higher and higher SERP, I basically didn't care anymore that I wasn't getting my image.
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I found that your public authorship here on your WA must match your G+ account. Also since Danny and i have different G+ accounts when I was logged in as myself I did not see my pictures. When I logged in as Danny I saw my pictures but not his. Hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions. Lettie
Yes this is true but it still didn't work for me. But like I said in my post, I really don't care anymore because being on Page 1 is more important to me then having my picture show up. And just because my picture is not showing up doesn't mean that I do not have Authorship. I'm just in the 3rd Class of Authorship. - But thank you for your offer just the same. :)
Your welcome. So true, we have had page 1 # 1 and that is so important in this business. Take care.
Me too! We can't improve on Pg.1 #1 and now that I have been tweaking my title and description meta tags, I'm starting to see some of my other pages climbing up too. - Have a Happy New Year Lettie.