29 ms·

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 mu

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 13y ago
Authorship ties Google+ to search. Can I have my photo next to my search result if I don't have a Google account?
- k3n 13y ago
  Doubt it, G+ is the passport for Google's services going forward I'm afraid...
- Matt_Cutts 13y ago
  Authorship markup launched before Google+ was even available to the outside world: http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google-launches-authorship-markup-what-does-it-mean-for-seo/ http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google-launches-authorship-ma...
  - malekov 13y ago
    Can you put your photo on the results without a Google Plus profile?
  - weinzierl 13y ago
    Authorship markup for sure, but the question was "Can I have my photo next to my search result if I don't have a Google account?". To put it another way: Are there author pages that google uses as source for an image in the SERP that are not G+ profile pages?
    - bhartzer 13y ago
      >> Can I have my photo next to my search result Yes, you can. You can use Schema.org markup for organization logos (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/05/using-schemaorg-markup-for-organization.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/05/using-sch...). You could probably use your photo as an organization logo of yourself.
  - scholia 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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?
- weinzierl 13y ago
  "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." http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986 http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38...
Matt_Cutts 13y ago
I'm traveling, so it will be a while before I can check with the team, but the initial message that kicked off his investigation referred to clicks to his site, which I believe can include overall traffic to his site. I'll double-check when I'm back from traveling though. I was also responding to the overall headline of his site ("How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%") because there are other reasons for the decline in traffic to his site. The headline is definitely overstating things; the article itself concludes "Turns out, it's not that simple. Some pages moved down, but some have improved drastically." And on the graph he shows, the worst CTR decrease is -57% while the best CTR increase is 329%. So I think the headline of this article ("How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%") remains inaccurate.
- mattmanser 13y ago
  The article is admittedly bad and rather annoyingly he doesn't seem to show the actual results for the page he was talking about. Rather ironically at the moment it seems to be one of the best indicators that the article is farm spam and should be ignored. Apart from when I see your handsome face or Scott Hanselman's of course! Personally, I dislike the feature and wish I could turn it off for my search results, it adds negative value for me and I keep meaning to set up a script to disable it but my quick experiments in the dev console screwed with the page layout. Could you tell us how much a picture improves or alternatively adversely affects the CTR? And which pictures are winners and which are losers? Or perhaps it has no effect? Stats!
  - jitbit 13y ago
    >>he doesn't seem to show the actual results for the page he was talking about (post author here) I did post the screenshot of the results page, it includes my page, not hiding anything
    - mattmanser 13y ago
      You might miss this now as it's late, but the screen shot of your traffic results doesn't include the page '/macro-recorder' in the section titled 'It's not that simple'. That's the page you were talking about in the paragraphs above in the article, that's the page that's still number 1 in google when I search and still has your screenshot next to it when I search for 'macro recorder'. It's the crux of your argument and it's completely missing, it's the only relevant page, everything else is almost completely irrelevant. I'm not at all disbelieving you, but I'm also honestly saying you don't really seem to understand the scientific method if you think what you published is good enough to support what you've claimed. It's a half finished investigation, the facts are completely inconclusive. And that's what undermines a lot of SEO experts opinion still today. Speculation without fact. Your post at the moment is plausible but without the most important serious fact. What traffic were you getting before the picture appeared for that one page, and what traffic were you getting after the picture was added. Can you confirm that you didn't change the meta description or title at all? Everything else is a distraction to the most basic scientific method and that is what makes the article bad, you've conflated a bunch of different 'symptoms' with one hypothesis.

anoncow 13y ago

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

k3n 13y ago
Doubt it, G+ is the passport for Google's services going forward I'm afraid...
Matt_Cutts 13y ago
Authorship markup launched before Google+ was even available to the outside world: http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google-launches-authorship-markup-what-does-it-mean-for-seo/ http://www.seoinc.com/seo-blog/google-launches-authorship-ma...
- malekov 13y ago
  Can you put your photo on the results without a Google Plus profile?
- weinzierl 13y ago
  Authorship markup for sure, but the question was "Can I have my photo next to my search result if I don't have a Google account?". To put it another way: Are there author pages that google uses as source for an image in the SERP that are not G+ profile pages?
  - bhartzer 13y ago
    >> Can I have my photo next to my search result Yes, you can. You can use Schema.org markup for organization logos (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/05/using-schemaorg-markup-for-organization.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/05/using-sch...). You could probably use your photo as an organization logo of yourself.
- scholia 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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?
weinzierl 13y ago
"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." http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986 http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38...

Matt_Cutts 13y ago

I'm traveling, so it will be a while before I can check with the team, but the initial message that kicked off his investigation referred to clicks to his site, which I believe can include overall traffic to his site. I'll double-check when I'm back from traveling though. I was also responding to the overall headline of his site ("How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%") because there are other reasons for the decline in traffic to his site. The headline is definitely overstating things; the article itself concludes "Turns out, it's not that simple. Some pages moved down, but some have improved drastically." And on the graph he shows, the worst CTR decrease is -57% while the best CTR increase is 329%. So I think the headline of this article ("How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%") remains inaccurate.

mattmanser 13y ago
The article is admittedly bad and rather annoyingly he doesn't seem to show the actual results for the page he was talking about. Rather ironically at the moment it seems to be one of the best indicators that the article is farm spam and should be ignored. Apart from when I see your handsome face or Scott Hanselman's of course! Personally, I dislike the feature and wish I could turn it off for my search results, it adds negative value for me and I keep meaning to set up a script to disable it but my quick experiments in the dev console screwed with the page layout. Could you tell us how much a picture improves or alternatively adversely affects the CTR? And which pictures are winners and which are losers? Or perhaps it has no effect? Stats!
- jitbit 13y ago
  >>he doesn't seem to show the actual results for the page he was talking about (post author here) I did post the screenshot of the results page, it includes my page, not hiding anything
  - mattmanser 13y ago
    You might miss this now as it's late, but the screen shot of your traffic results doesn't include the page '/macro-recorder' in the section titled 'It's not that simple'. That's the page you were talking about in the paragraphs above in the article, that's the page that's still number 1 in google when I search and still has your screenshot next to it when I search for 'macro recorder'. It's the crux of your argument and it's completely missing, it's the only relevant page, everything else is almost completely irrelevant. I'm not at all disbelieving you, but I'm also honestly saying you don't really seem to understand the scientific method if you think what you published is good enough to support what you've claimed. It's a half finished investigation, the facts are completely inconclusive. And that's what undermines a lot of SEO experts opinion still today. Speculation without fact. Your post at the moment is plausible but without the most important serious fact. What traffic were you getting before the picture appeared for that one page, and what traffic were you getting after the picture was added. Can you confirm that you didn't change the meta description or title at all? Everything else is a distraction to the most basic scientific method and that is what makes the article bad, you've conflated a bunch of different 'symptoms' with one hypothesis.