My g+ picture stopped showing up on my rankings. What do I do?

[KempRugeLawGroup]

How do I get my g+ picture to start showing up again? It just stopped showing up, and I'm not sure how to get it to come back.

Thanks,

Ruben

[FedeEinhorn]

Unfortunately you can't. Google announced a reduction on authorship snippets in search results a while ago, most likely to stop the abuse of authorship. Instead, they now only display the snippet once the author gains certain "level", or better said "trusted authors".

There's no fix you can do, however, you can regain your authorship by creating great content, publishing articles and interacting socially.

You can read more about the reduction on the authorship snippets here: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-authorship-dropping-17840.html

Hope that helps!

[ajfried]

I totally agree with Federico about creating great content. That would be exactly what I would have suggested as well.

There is the possibility that something got messed up on the back end too if you believe you are already making great content. Are you positive that the markup is still on the site?

[KempRugeLawGroup]

No, I'm not positive about the markup. The thing is, I don't ever recall adding any markup to get the picture to show. I believe I just linked it with a WP plugin or something. I know that sounds incredibly vague, but it's always just "been there."

How do I go about checking that?

In terms of great content, I'd say relative to my competitors that still have there picture showing, yes. In terms of the overall web, no. But, one of our competitors doesn't even have a blog, and I can't find anything he's written. He does have about 100 more people in his g+ circles than I do, but that's the only thing I could find.

Thanks,

Ruben

[KempRugeLawGroup]

Thanks Federico. I vaguely recall hearing about the reduction, but since we weren't hit with it until now, I guess I thought I was fine. Apparently, not, but I will get back at it. I appreciate the link to as well!

Best,

Ruben

[FedeEinhorn]

Mind sharing the URL of any of your articles to see if the markup is there?

[ajfried]

It is possible you used a plugin. I checked the structure data markup tool and it looks like its working. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kempruge.com%2Fa-floridians-guide-to-a-car-accident-in-pennsylvania%2F

One thing I noticed is that in the Google+ profile you did not add there that you are a contributor to the blog. You might want to add that in.

Other than that, it is entirely possible that your profile has been one of the authorship's removed.

[DarinPirkey]

"AgentRank is coming by end of 2014/beginning of 2015.  Google is testing this and was forced to reduce the amount of authorship they show in the SERPs.  High Quality, Shared Content will be the only posts that have authorship show up going forward."

That's my conspiracy theory... carry on.