The End of Google Authorship: What It Means

What is Google Authorship?

Google Authorship is the name Google gave to the practice of adding a publisher’s Google+ image and “By” line in their search results.

Why is Google Stopping It?

Google found that the extra information in search results was not particularly useful to their users and caused a distraction to the search experience. I am sure this decision was also due to the fact that it did not increase their advertising revenue because of increased engagement.

What Does It Mean For You?

The good news is that it is one less thing you have to worry about! You used to have to add extra markup to your posts or a new plugin to automatically add this markup (rel=author). Now you don’t have to do anything extra to appease Google.

You can still use “rich snippets”, which is code to add additional information that displays in Google search results.

For more information, read this very short notice from Google: Read Here