Comments on: Team Portent Bids Farewell to Authorship

By: Andrew Park

Andrew Park — Thu, 18 Sep 2014 19:07:32 +0000

Authorship going away is unfortunate, but it doesn’t seem like G+ is going anywhere. While G+ is never going to be Facebook, it’s an important way to tie together Google account services, and Google will continue to make strategic acquisitions. With streaming video being as popular as it is now, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hangouts become more prominent, especially if Twitch and YouTube continue to struggle with their copyrighted content issues.

By: Alexander

Alexander — Sat, 13 Sep 2014 17:51:43 +0000

If you carefully think about it this had to happen. Google Authorship has been abused to the max. It was possible to create a fake account with a fake picture and imitate a famous person. My favorite incident was “Matt Cutts” selling bulk tweets. That is not a great user experience :/

There was just too much freedom. And there were just not enough people using it looking beyond tech.

Also: Even though most forget… Google wants and needs to make money. Photos get a lot of attention and AdWords didn’t have photos :D

Greetings from Austria,

Alexander

By: Joshua Rodriguez

Joshua Rodriguez — Mon, 08 Sep 2014 02:15:56 +0000

I have to agree with Marianne Sweeney the most. First off, I’m kind of happy to see G+ go. After all, I don’t think I ever met anyone that enjoyed updating it…so as with Marianne, and in my opinion most others, mine wasn’t updated much. So good ridden.

As far as was it effective for marketers?

You know, Google did say they were using + as a ranking signal, but even as an author, with authorship on USNews & World Report, I honestly didn’t see any benefit in it. Obviously I write for some pretty popular publications…If this is said to be used as a ranking symbol, why no jump in rankings? Am I already perfect already? Although I’d like to think so, I highly doubt it! After all, if that was the case, I’d be ranking for anything and everything…right?

As far as my predictions for the future…

As I mentioned above, I agree most with Marianne Sweeney. Especially because this…

“Google is a for-profit company. I believe that they initiated the enthusiasm for Authorship to build participants for their social network.”

As with what Madelaine Kellman said…

“This was my biggest argument for a brand to actually use Google+.”

I think that was the main reason for authorship…to get marketers and business owners to recommend others to G+.

All of that being said, G+ is nothing if it can’t turn a profit. I think what’ we’re seeing is the slow, agonizing death of Google+. The simple fact is that social is a very saturated market. People love Facebook, people love Twitter, and most people don’t care to learn about G+ because their needs are already met. So in a sense, Google is trying to make a vampire out of a dead corpse with +. Maybe they’ll keep it around for another 2 or 3 years to try and make a miracle happen, but in the end, I think + is soon going to be a thing of the past.

By: Sarah Mitchell

Sarah Mitchell — Sat, 06 Sep 2014 12:33:57 +0000

I agree with Madelaine Kellman. If Google has killed authorship, is there really any reason to keep cajoling my clients they need to be on G+ in the first place? It’s been an awful lot like pushing mud up a hill to convince them. No amount of early adopter benefits and increased authority reasoning has helped much.

While I find it to be a good channel for me with the creative community, many of my clients in the B2B space are finding it difficult to build networks.

By: Doc Sheldon

Doc Sheldon — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 18:28:54 +0000

I have always suspected that Google’s main motivation for authorship was, in the first phase, creating the connections between authors and their work, for the Knowledge Base. In the second phase, I think they were mostly checking the findings of their algos, to see how reliable their own process was. I suspect that they’ve come to the conclusion that the results their algos provide are sufficiently accurate that they no longer need our input to establish those connections, so as Marianne says, they’re reducing their processing load accordingly.