Google Stops Displaying Authors’ Names In Its Search Engine Results
Google has made an announcement that it will be putting to an end the feature that enabled its search engine users see the names of the writers to the articles they were searching for. This feature started back in 2011, was meant to enable authors claim their materials and gaining more followers by exhibiting the authors’ work in the search results.
The feature also had an Author Rank feature which effectively enabled users filter out useless information by selecting which article to read based on the authors’ reputation for offering useful information.
As cited by in a Google+ post by John Mueller, a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, after a three-year run, Google has concluded that this feature was no longer worthy to users as it has hoped it would have. It even appears that the feature is causing a distraction to users.
Mueller said, “We have received many feedbacks from each kind of user and webmaster and have updated, tweaked and perfected recognition and display of authorship information. Unfortunately, we have also seen that this feature is not quite useful to our readers as we had hoped. With this in mind, we have decided to make the difficult decision of halting authorship display in search results.”
Mueller further said that the removal of the writer information did not create an increase in clicks nor reduce the adds or traffic to websites so there should be no effects on Google+ posts from friends. In the last few months, Google has been gradually moving in this direction.
