Yesterday Google once again, rocked the SEO world with its announcement that all author images would be removed from search results. To those not in the SEO world this might seem like a minor aesthetic change, but, to anyone well versed in online marketing knows the value of the author image. This change can have a devastating effect on many sites cutting their CTR down exponentially leaving them with only a small fraction of their previous traffic.
If you had an author pic associated with your Google links, then you had a distinct advantage. Having a picture associated with an article automatically conveys a certain sense of authority. Not only did this get you a boost in search ranks, but it also got you more clicks than people who didn't have author pics for their links.
Without these pics, marketers and developers may quickly find their hit counts going down. For people who rely on Adsense or other sorts of monetization, this could be devastating. So what do you do if you've lost your author pic in Google searches and know that it's adversely affecting you? You're going to have find other ways to focus your SEO efforts.
Studies have shown that users are drawn to pictures and search results that contain pictures find that their CTR increases at an astounding rate. In some cases the change is over 150%, and even in the lowest range a change of 30% is very impressive. This means that ads, even if they occupy the top three search spots, would be far less valuable.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the change, the fact remains that one well kept SEO secret is now a thing of the past forcing marketers to find traffic elsewhere.
The official reason given me the internet giant was that the change was simply due to their new policy dubbed 'Mobile First'. The vision behind this new thought process comes from the belief that mobile users will surpass desktop users this year, and the companies aim is to create one unified site that caters to all platforms. That, coupled with a recent study that showed users preferred no images in their searches was the stated reason.
If you had an author pic associated with your Google links, then you had a distinct advantage. Having a picture associated with an article automatically conveys a certain sense of authority. Not only did this get you a boost in search ranks, but it also got you more clicks than people who didn't have author pics for their links.
Without these pics, marketers and developers may quickly find their hit counts going down. For people who rely on Adsense or other sorts of monetization, this could be devastating. So what do you do if you've lost your author pic in Google searches and know that it's adversely affecting you? You're going to have find other ways to focus your SEO efforts.
Studies have shown that users are drawn to pictures and search results that contain pictures find that their CTR increases at an astounding rate. In some cases the change is over 150%, and even in the lowest range a change of 30% is very impressive. This means that ads, even if they occupy the top three search spots, would be far less valuable.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the change, the fact remains that one well kept SEO secret is now a thing of the past forcing marketers to find traffic elsewhere.
The official reason given me the internet giant was that the change was simply due to their new policy dubbed 'Mobile First'. The vision behind this new thought process comes from the belief that mobile users will surpass desktop users this year, and the companies aim is to create one unified site that caters to all platforms. That, coupled with a recent study that showed users preferred no images in their searches was the stated reason.
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