Google Authorship has been on the decline since December 2013. It started with Google reducing the amount of author photos showing in SERPs to all author photos being eliminated from global search this past June.

So what exactly led to Google Authorship’s demise? According to Google, there are three main contributors:

1. A disconnect between desktop to mobile search user experience

One of the first contributing factors to the removal of Google Authorship was to create a consistent user experience between desktop and mobile searches. Since there is less screen space on a mobile phone and less bandwidth, Google authorship was not very compatible for mobile searches. Having a mobile compatible website is essential with half of the US population having a smart phone and ultimately surfing the web. With Google Authorship not being fully compatible with mobile searches, it eliminated a huge portion of the population seeing author photos in SERPs.

2. It did not create a significant difference in click behavior

Google Authorship began with a bold and strategic purpose:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.” – Eric Schmidt in The New Digital Age

Logically it makes complete sense. Ninety-two percent of users tend to click through on the first page of results, primarily the top 3 results. Unfortunately, the reality of Google Authorship is that there was no significant difference between click behavior for results that had photos versus those that did not.

3. Lukewarm participation

Google Authorship never picked up the full traction that was anticipated due to authors not fully understanding how to participate. Realizing this, Google began in 2012 to auto attribute authorship. Unfortunately, this created several hiccups along the way like Truman Capote being attributed with authorship 28 years after his death.

Search Engine Land did some research and out of the 500 authors across 150 different major media sites, only 30% were connecting their authorship to the content they were publishing. Fifty of the 150 sites researched did not have Google Authorship set up at all.

So is Google Authorship really done? As far as this approach goes, yes. If you still see some Authorship photos lingering, it seems they will continue to show through on Google+ if the author is in your Google network.

To learn more about Google Authorship, check out Search Engine Land’s It’s Over: The Rise & Fall Of Google Authorship For Search Results article.