Google Authorship-RIP

It was recently announced by Google that it will no longer show the names of authors in its search results.

When Google Authorship first launched in 2011 it was meant to help writers generate a following for their articles. The Authorship program required linking a website to a Google+ account. However, it has been scaled down slowly since late 2013.

The reasons for its demise has been given. One of the issues with it is that accurate implementation of the real=author markup needed for the service was misunderstood by most website administrators. It was found that out of a sample of 500 authors from 150 different major media websites, about 70 percent of writers made absolutely no attempt to link their google authorship account with the articles they were publishing.

In this video, Andrew Radics and Ian Hopkinson discuss the demise of the Google Authorship markup.