
How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90% - scholia
http://www.jitbit.com/news/183-how-google-authorship-decreased-our-traffic-by-90/
======
Matt_Cutts
Authorship had nothing to do with this site's drop. The site has been affected
by our Penguin webspam algorithm and that accounts for the drop. See
<http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/penguin-2-0-rolled-out-today/> for details of
the recent Penguin launch, or
[http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-s...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-
step-to-reward-high-quality.html) for more information about Penguin in
general.

~~~
mattmanser
Still #1 when I search and that's not even what he's talking about.

He's claiming that having a G+ picture inserted next to search results is
resulting in a much lower CTR than they previously had.

Which I think is plausible as it detracts from the search experience, I often
skip those results as the text isn't lined up so I can't scan it properly.
Wish you could turn them off, it's really off putting. I also wonder what the
CTRs of pretty people are like compared to munters. I still don't get why
Google added it.

~~~
anoncow
Authorship ties Google+ to search. Can I have my photo next to my search
result if I don't have a Google account?

~~~
Matt_Cutts
Authorship markup launched before Google+ was even available to the outside
world: [http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google-launches-authorship-
ma...](http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google-launches-authorship-markup-what-
does-it-mean-for-seo/)

~~~
scholia
Which is true but it's irrelevant to the current situation. Which is that lots
of us (see below) have come to associate the mugshots with G+ posts, which are
usually mediocre, so we don't even look at them.

What people perceive governs how they behave, and your explanation won't
change that.

~~~
walshemj
Well the FTS100 and Global 500 Publisher I used to work for where very
interested in using authorship and publisher markup up to stop crappy sites
ripping our content off.

Farmers weekly where the most keen and you can see the result in the serps -
though Matt why are you picking a pic from the Telegraph to go with thier
articles?

------
crazygringo
Not surprised at all. Any time I ever see a social photo next to a search
result, I automatically assume it's a social media post or page and won't even
bother to look at it, if I'm looking for anything else.

Why on earth would anyone want a face associated with a program, website, or
anything that's not a social media account?

But, very good to know the statistical result.

~~~
agrona
>Why on earth would anyone want a face associated with a program, website, or
anything that's not a social media account?

A coworker runs one of those aggregate-amazon-affiliate-link sites (think
<http://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/>) for camping and outdoorsy things. He saw a
noticeable increase in traffic by associating his wife's picture in his search
results. He's of the opinion that a pretty face helps sell things.

~~~
mkhaytman
I've watched that website launch and develop with some interest. Without
disclosing any particulars, does the site do well for him? I imagined he was
raking in the dough, but if he's still your co-worker I guess that's not the
case?

~~~
agrona
To be clear, my coworker doesn't run thisiswhyimbroke, but a site with a
similar layout.

It's a little extra money in his pocket, but not something profitable or
rewarding enough to do full time. (He also has a few other attempts that don't
do as well as the camping one, and with the camping one the income is pretty
seasonal).

------
pdx
I wonder if your Google+ Profile picture was your JitBit Name + Logo, you
would have done better.

I think it is your face that is the problem. Not because it's ugly, but
because it's obviously a face, which is out of context when searching for
"macro recorder". We naturally gloss over things that don't sync with what we
expect.

~~~
spindritf
I believe Google will only show a "recognizable headshot,"[1] not any image
you give them. So you cannot use a logo.

[1] <https://plus.google.com/authorship>

~~~
kanamekun
This is 100% right. A quick confirmation: "John Mu of Google has confirmed
that you must have a headshot of yours in order to see your Google Plus avatar
in Google’s rich snippet."

source: [http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-
media/log...](http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/logo-
as-google-plus-profile-picture/)

~~~
flaktrak
In fact I have mug shotted my posts before and if you switch the picture to a
picture of something other than a face Google seems to penalize you.

Was an interesting experiment and one that I would like to take further.

------
pfortuny
The photo is a tell-tale to me. Each time I see one on the first search
results, they get filtered out by my brain (they are either 'news' or
'youtube').

But this is just my reaction.

~~~
jsdalton
Even though I _know_ what the photo is for, subconsciously it makes me think
"Oh, this is going to lead me to some guys Google+ profile page."

I imagine I've skipped over a ton of search results that are just like the one
in the article for just that reason.

~~~
pvilchez
This is exactly what I think every time I see it. And sometimes it does take
me to a g+ page, so I've trained myself to just avoid it.

~~~
scholia
Same here...

------
gfodor
The author's takeaways are pure speculation as to causation, but he presents
them as if they are facts. I could claim that people just don't like the color
of his photo, and I would have as much evidence to support this has he has for
his other claims re: authorship placement. And he doesn't mention that since
he is not doing a split test (since it's not possible) _and_ he's not
measuring confidence intervals that his "A/B test" may be meaningless.

His intuition makes sense, and his conclusions are probably correct in this
specific case, but this is shoddy analysis and shouldn't be presented in a
generalized manner as he's done here.

------
mhoad
As someone who for the past several years has done very high end legitimate
SEO consulting to fortune 500 style companies (i.e. not the spammy mess than
the HN crowd would usually associate with SEO), I am more than happy to go on
the record and say that for what it's worth, this is the exception and not the
rule.

As a few others here have pointed out, slapping Google Authorship markup all
over your site is probably not a good idea unless you run a pure news / blog
style site.

One other point to note though as well is that I am very familiar with that
message in GWT telling you that traffic dropped by a crazy percentage
overnight. Given everything going on in the SEO space at the moment, I am not
entirely convinced just yet that you don't have a case of correlation rather
than causation at the moment.

------
massarog
My question is, why did you add authorship sitewide? Authorship should be
established only on jitbit.com/news/ where your blog is, NOT on your entire
website. For example, if I search jitbit in google, your authorship photo is
appearing for your domain, not good.

~~~
nhebb
If you hadn't mentioned this, I wouldn't even know that Authorship could be
associated with just a directory. I bet a lot of people, including the OP,
fall into that category. If the OP just associated it with his onsite blog
(/news/), then essentially the only purpose of Google Authorship would be
promote his company blog, not his overall site. So he would be G+ blogging to
promote his blog to promote his products. Sounds a bit convoluted to me.

------
kanamekun
The quality of the photo can make a huge impact on clickthroughs. Cyrus
Shepard of (seo)Moz saw a 35% increase in click-through rates after a/b
testing his profile photo: <http://moz.com/blog/google-author-photos>

He also mentioned that, "Bounce rate dropped while time-on-site and page views
increased. It's as if having an authoritative photo in the search results
raised users' trust in my site and expectations of authority."

------
doomslice
My brain went through a few things when I saw that result screenshot:

1\. I thought it was giving results for a guy named Marco.

2\. After realizing it was Macro, I thought the #1 result was a blog or
review.

3\. I then focused on the 2nd result because it looked less cluttered.

~~~
mtgx
Good observation. So basically, the fact that Google authorship did this is a
_good_ thing for people who search Google, because until now his title could
"trick" people into clicking on his site (because it was more SEO optimized or
for whatever reason), but the "real" result was always the Wikipedia one -
because I suppose most people don't have a purchase intent when searching for
that, but an intent to find out more information about it.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I think if you are searching for "macro recorder" then you know what it is and
are looking for a solution rather than a description.

------
danso
Interesting...you think of all the A/B metrics that Google tests, this would
be among one of the most obvious standouts. The percentage of users who click
on lower-ranked results is reportedly a big factor in the decision of how
results are laid out and paginated (e.g. if the 12th result in Google SERP had
a relatively similar amount of "usefulness" as the 10th, it's likely that
Google would have the search pages show 12 results)...you'd think a
statistical drop in first-result clicks would trigger an analytics alarm.

~~~
jonahx
+1. You have to think many sites besides the OP's experience a similar effect.
This, combined with Google's collective UX wisdom and the not-at-all
unintuitive nature of the result, makes it pretty shocking that they have not
put a stop to this. Maybe they are getting some value from the uptick in
people maintaining G+ accounts, so it's being swept under the rug?

~~~
ben336
You're assuming this is generally true. All we know is that it seems to be
true for this one guys site/picture. Google has access to ALL of the data for
this feature. They're in a much better position to make an informed decision
on its value.

------
VikingCoder
Dear Google, please stop content skimmers.

Dear Google, thanks for trying to address content skimmers - but now we may
have another problem...

~~~
gagan2020
Firstly, google became a verb and now replacing Dear God... ;)

------
specialp
Google is basically twisting everyone's arms to join G+. Here is the Google
progression of things:

1\. Hey we support all open protocols all you need to do is use our FREE
service that is superior to all others.

2\. OK now you need to unify your profile with Google+

3\. Either kill the product entirely or drop the open standard support because
the open standard does not support some awesome feature they made.

4.You are stuck in a proprietary world

~~~
Matt_Cutts
You may want to defend this (incorrect) blog post with that world view, but
Google launched authorship markup before Google+: [http://www.seoinc.com/seo-
blog/google-launches-authorship-ma...](http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google-
launches-authorship-markup-what-does-it-mean-for-seo/)

~~~
weinzierl
Assuming your ordinary niche blogger (no celebrity, no New York Times author,
no one with a dedicated Wikipedia page): Is there a way to have a photo next
to his or her search result if he or she doesn't have a Google account?

~~~
tjohns
Generally speaking, the mechanism used for attribution is not specific to
Google accounts. It's just a rel="me" or rel="author" hyperlink somewhere in
your articles, and you can list multiple source of profile data. (Which is
generally a good idea for semantic web purposes. Take a look at the social
links on my website for an example.)

The Microformats Wiki has more details on how these work:
<http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-me> <http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-
author>

That said, I believe Google Search only knows how to extract author bios from
the Google Profile database. Personally, I don't think this is different than
having to creating a Webmaster Tools account if you want to view your website
data -- it provides an authoritative, user-editable source of biographical
data for the system to use.

(If this was scraped from across the web for everyone, I could imagine some
folks getting upset if the wrong information is picked up. Case in point: I
remember a while back when somebody's Wikipedia article listed them as dead,
and that information was automatically pulled into the Knowledge Graph. Oops.)

That said, I'm not on any of the teams involved in creating this, so take all
this with a grain of salt.

------
mladenkovacevic
If someone was looking for macro-recorder, they probably just wanted a
download link.

His authorship link makes it look like a review of some macro recorder
software. I would actually consider an authorship link that's being triggered
by a product page a bug that needs to be corrected ASAP.

EDIT: Strangely enough his authorship image is still triggered by a search for
"macro-recorder". Did he reactivate it?

Now imagine if Google allowed him to tag his page with a "Software Download"
tag.. and enabled him to attach a appstore like icon next to the search result
instead of his face. Would that drive more clicks?

------
bmac27
When you're assessing the viability of microdata or any SEO strategy for that
matter, you have to consider the context and whether or not it works for the
market that you're in.

I don't see this as an indictment of Google Authorship at all; rather this is
an example of a situation where user intention is misaligned with what a
webmaster is showing. If I'm looking for content (particularly the originator
of said content), having the author's name and face is exactly what I'm
looking for. When you're searching for car parts or baby strollers or
software, that same name/face is going to throw you off.

------
FollowSteph3
For a lot of people the face gives credibility. It makes you think it's a more
legit article because somehow google took the time to associate an image with
the article which it would never with spam content.

And it's too bad they don't accept company logos, I think that would really
help. It downplays company we pages versus articles.

------
_k
I would love to hear more on this. Are others seeing this problem as well and
what photo are they using ?

My first thought when seeing the photo was ok, this is a guy giving his
opinion on the topic, I'm not interested in opinion, I want the facts. Can
companies act like an author on G+ ?

------
darylfritz
Thoughtbot performed the same experiment; their results seemed favourable:
[http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/51068089232/google-
authors...](http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/51068089232/google-authorship-
on-giant-robots)

------
themckman
This happened with the Puppet type reference search result. Still feel weird
clicking it with the guy's picture next to it. Makes it feel like it's his
page when I want to believe it belongs Puppet.

------
Kiro
It's funny how clueless most SEO experts really are.

~~~
MrBlue
Exactly! Stop taking SEOmoz as gospel.

------
tokenadult
This is one of the reasons I asked my Facebook friends to A/B test two
photographs I have used as profile photos before setting my Google+ photo. I
should probably be a lot more rigorous about this, but at the very least a
photograph should be compared to other available photographs for what it says
about your online persona.

------
TomGullen
> most people are clicking #2

Maybe a little nit picky but that's a bit of an assumption especially in the
context of the article.

I guess it shows the importance of having more diverse results, you want other
results appearing that strongly link to you positively (our official
twitter/fb/software reviews for example)

------
stefanve
My own experience is that I would skip it but not because it is an possible
ad. Especially if I'm looking for a product I will look at the ads, sometimes
the ads are better than the actual result.

But there is a problem with the SERP, and that is that the result under the
ads (if any) is sometimes a related sub search.

So if i'm looking for some thing scientificy it will show me some sub search
of Google scientific results. Or if I'm searching form some thing that has
been in the news recently it will show me some Google news results. Now unless
I'm looking for papers or news I will skip over it. Since it shows your face
next to the link it looks like an news sub search result or indeed a blog
result.

------
b1daly
This article made me realize that I am unconsciously filtering out things that
look like G+ posts. In part because my expectation of it being high quality
content is low, and because the experience of switching to the G+ app on my
phone is slow.

------
joeblau
That is pretty fascinating. It seems like Facebook, who I use because this was
their early marketing strategy, is teaching us to ignore data that has peoples
faces associated with it. I wonder if there is broader research being done on
this?

~~~
arkitaip
This is fairly well researched wrt banners. Basically once users associate
visual elements with noise, the will start to automatically filter them to the
point of not being conscious about their existence.

In a even broader scope, Jakob Nielsen has shared lots of data from his eye
tracking usability studies that show just how little attention users pay to
online content [1][2].

[1] <http://www.nngroup.com/topic/advertising/>

[2] <http://www.nngroup.com/topic/eyetracking/all/>

------
dkroy
I know this isn't suppose to be funny, but I couldn't help but laugh at how
you presented this. I completely lost it where you had written "My Stupid
Face" with an arrow pointed towards your google result.

------
EGreg
Why don't you change your icon to the icon of your program or something users
associate with what they need? A face says "social" - which is great for your
personal Google+ account but not great for your company. At least try it -- if
everyone is like me it should increase the clicks.

------
erikb
I am more likely to click a link with a "stupid" face in front of it, because
it looks more qualitative to me. More I simply don't know about this topic or
SEO. But maybe because most people know as much as me, I guess that most
people will react the same way.

------
onemorepassword
So basically people are learning that the first Google result, especially if
visually "enhanced", is usually irrelevant advertising?

That would concur with my personal experience, and is pretty much the same as
what happened to standard size display ads.

------
6d0debc071
On seeing what it did, my first thought was that the result with his picture
next to it was one of those horrible promoted pages/adverts. I'm used to just
skimming over the first results that look different to the rest with Google.

------
npsimons
That sucks; sorry to hear it happened to you. But I can tell you why I will
usually scan search results (or C-s) for Wikipedia over other results:
Wikipedia won't jerk me around. What I mean by that is that (currently)
Wikipedia doesn't require JS, flash or any other BS; WP pages load quickly,
and are often informative, not some wink-wink-nudge-nudge advertising that may
or may not tell you about the product without requiring an email address. Oh,
and WP doesn't (currently) have advertising.

That being said, I've been noticing that results returned in Google, even for
technical posts (eg, Emacs howtos) have more and more been including headshots
from the writer. It's the same posts I would have trusted before, it just
seems weird to actually have a face to go along with the post.

~~~
205guy
I think you meant: it just seems weird to actually have a face to go along
with the search results.

And when I think about it, that's the whole issue: I'm beginning to think that
images (of authors or webmasters or product logos) don't belong on the serarch
results page--ever. I can't see a case where it helps the average person who
is searching because the photo is always once removed from the actual content.

If I search for a "thingamabob" how does the photo of somebody who wrote about
thingamabob help me choose a result? If I'm searching for a company, even the
company logo doesn't help because I may not know it ahead of time. Or if I'm
looking for a blog, how would I know the face of the blogger ahead of time? I
just can't see that many searches where the author's face is relevant to
choosing the content you want to see.

Then there is the issue of Google putting the photo in the hottest part of the
user's heat-map eye-scan of the search results page. If you put an irrelevant
item where the user is looking for immediate relevancy, that result will get
skipped (just as the OP postulated and so many commenters are confirming here
on HN).

Finally, you have to wonder what Google was really thinking. If images do have
an impact on click-through rate, then the images will get SEO'd and become
useless. There is a comment on this thread that confirms that putting a
woman's picture for the authorhip increased hits. Great, soon every website
will appear to be written by a hot babe showing skin (or hot guy depending on
the target audience), or if logos are allowed, all competitors will have a
logo that looks like the #1 in the field.

Google is killing the golden goose.

------
iconicmind
I wonder if niche also plays a part in this - perhaps for certain search
queries it is best to have a face associated with the result. Thakns for this
post though, it's some food for thought.

------
aerolite
Really, people will most likely skip the #1 search result? Please, teach me
web marketing.

------
humanspecies
The WWW desperately needs a free and open search engine that everyone can hold
accountable. The WWW is much too valuable to hand over to a company with
blatant conflicts of interest in their search results.

~~~
kcbanner
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