Some Google Results Have Pictures: But No Longer!

Have you noticed that some Google search results have a picture alongside them?

Well not for much longer! Google is currently removing this feature, as of June 25^th 2014.

So how were people getting their picture in search results? Was it some sort of hack?

No, it was all perfectly legit! It was a feature of Google Authorship, whereby you can link up any content you write on the web to your Google+ profile. Once linked, when your content popped up in Google search results, it displayed your profile picture, name and the number of Google+ Circles you were in.

After this latest change from Google, Authorship will now add your name to search results, but no picture!

Authorship was set up a few years ago with the goal of allowing writers to claim their content and allow search engine users to find more content written by the same author. It also established credibility and legitimacy of content for websites and authors; don’t you feel more reassured when you see the person's picture next to their article?

Why are they removing it now?

Seemingly, to improve the visuals of the search results page. John Mueller, senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google took to Google+ to say this on the subject:

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.)

It’s still a bit of a head-scratcher though. Generally things become more visual rather than less, and these author pictures generated a lot of clicks, so why remove them?

Was it an unfair advantage to mere writers of content?

Or was it bugging a Google design team somewhere, who wanted to standardise the look of search result pages?

As mentioned earlier, Google loves mobile, so it’s possible this change was put into effect simply because pictures are taking up too much real estate on mobile Google searches.

And what does Google Authorship even mean anyway? It doesn’t indicate that you’re a published author or you have a lot of fans. It just highlights that you write for web, and created a Google+ profile. Maybe Google is looking at another way to indicate the quality of search results, rather than giving pictures to writers who signed up for Google+!

Did Little Pictures on Google Really Make a Difference?

Sadly, yes.

Search results with images and authorship information are called Rich Snippets, and these special little snowflakes were raking in the clicks.

Think about it. When every search result is identical except for one near the top with a bright picture of the writer, where will your eye be drawn? Yup, you got it.

Source: MozBlog

Catalyst Search Marketing ran an experiment in 2012 to test the power of rich snippets. They set up a food blog and promoted it in all the usual ways (social media promotion, SEO tags, linking), but saw limited results in Google. It was only when the Google Authorship started showing up in the results that things really got moving. Google Analytics showed that clicks to the site increased by 150%. That’s HUGE.

And once the rich snippets started appearing, they started popping up more and more, further boosting web visits.

Now this is what we would expect. If you see a picture alongside a search result in Google, it looks like a trusted page, it looks more professional, and it catches your eye because it looks different to all the other search results. However, Google has steadfastly said that Google Authorship does not markedly improve click-through rate (CTR).

John Mueller, the Google Webmaster trends analyst we mentioned earlier, explicitly stated: 

"Our experiments indicate that click-through behavior on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one."

But if the experiment by Catalyst Search Marketing is to be believed… then there is no way the click-through behaviour could be similar once the Authorship profile picture is removed.

Google, we will wait with bated breath. 

Eagerly re-checking our statistics...

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