GOOGLE NO LONGER OFFERS AUTHORSHIP
Let me start by explaining what Google Authorship means. Google defines Authorship as follows:
“Google is piloting the display of author information in search results to help users discover great content…If you want your authorship information to appear in search results for the content you create, you'll need a Google+ Profile with a good, recognizable headshot as your profile photo.”
Life as a blogger is difficult enough. As an individual, content written must contain new and meaningful insights in order to end up with much of chance that people can find and then read your blog post.
Abuse of Google Authorship
However SEO companies are now abusing Google authorship to insert pictures on company websites that are not truly blogs. This only makes it that much more difficult for honest bloggers to reach a wider audience.
Google attempted to do bloggers a favour by allowing them to display small pictures of themselves in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Check out the image below of how a blogger can attract more attention to their posts by verifying authorship with Google.
Notice, how in the above example there is legitimate usage of Google’s authorship since it actually displays the picture of the individual who created the blog post. Unfortunately, many SEO companies quickly found a method to abuse this practice in order to increase conversions when people find their company’s pages in Google. Now company websites (particularly those in the SEO industry) instead of blogs, end up with pictures in the SERPs. Take a look at this snapshot:
Above you can notice the clear abuse of Google authorship. The websites are clearly designed for a company and are not individuals’ blogs. Furthermore, the first one does not even use a real image. Perhaps that part is OK, but it is still clearly against the spirit of personalising the results. Further, each website clearly abuses Google’s new authorship techniques to the detriment of honest bloggers, such as us.
Obviously, Google cannot enjoy the fact that companies are employing this practice and is likely to come up with a better way of detecting such in future algorithm updates. However, in the short run, these companies are clearly abusing a feature Google intended to improve search results. What can fellow bloggers do in the meantime, rather than just wait around?
Report Authorship Abuse
I suggest reporting instance such as these. Google actually setup a form specifically to report abuse of rich snippets, such as authorship. Google may not manually remove a site, but typically a person does manually review information sent and will at a minimum use the details to improve the algorithmic detection of such abuses in the future.
Please let me know your thoughts on this in the comments below. Share examples you noticed of other such instances. As a fellow blogger, I view it as my duty to help others in the same plight combat this abuse. Help me combat this practice by providing any guidance, suggestions, examples, and feedback below.