Do we need to remove Google Authorship from the blog?

[ross254sidney]

http://www.virante.org/blog/2013/12/19/authorshippocalypse-google-authorship-penguin-finally-appeared/

Search Engine Land reported that Google confirms that Authorship results in search are being intentionally reduced.

It appears that the Matt Cutts-promised reductions to the amount of Google Authorship results being shown in Google Search has begun.

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Do we need to remove a Google Authorship tag from the blog? Because it hurts the ranking?

[lveembergen]

Dear Varun,

Matt Cutts is not saying it will harm all websites - only that 'saying that the ability to have and use rich snippets may be taken away for low quality sites in the coming months.'*

So you have to make the decision if you think the article / website is of low quality. If you post high quality content, it shouldn't harm your website but it even will lift your website because it becomes harder to have your authors displayed in the SERPs.

• reference article: http://searchengineland.com/confirmed-google-reduces-authorship-rich-snippets-in-search-results-180313

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Varun,

Oh NO please don't remove your authorship. It could become a sign within the eyes of Google to identify the credibility of authors in the future. Also Google is only showing less authorship results in the search engine result pages but that doesn't mean they will put less weight on them.

[simon_realbuzz]

Definitely retain authorship for the blog. Having it in place will not have any negative impact but could have a positive impact. What Google are clearly aiming to do is to try an ensure that only authors that it views as deserving of authorship will have the rich snippets appearing in search. Essentially what they are saying is having authorship implemented is no guarantee of your authorship appearing in SERPs - rather those authors with 'authority' will be more likely to have enhanced appearance in SERPs.

[Dr-Pete]

Generally agree with everyone (well, everyone so far ) - there's no need to remove authorship in general. Google isn't penalizing sites with authorship - they're just showing authorship thumbnails less often, as they found they were overdoing it (at least in the eyes of users).

The only exception I'd give is to be careful about applying authorship tags to every page on a site - home page, search results, product pages, etc. Some CMSs go crazy, unfortunately. This is technically against Google authorship guidelines. Again, most likely, they'll just ignore your authorship mark-up (it's not a penalty situation), but if you want that mark-up to appear in SERPs, then use it appropriately.