Google Authorship update. As you were...

Google Authorship update. As you were...
#googleauthorship  

Originally shared by Mark Traphagen

Second Class Google Authorship Is Gone!

BREAKING! It appears that Google has ended the practice it began last December of demoting some Authorship rich snippet results in Google Search to what I called "second class authorship." Second class result got only a byline under the title of the result, but no author photo.

Now we are back to the way things were before December, at least in this regard. As it was then, the only time a byline-only Authorship result will show is if the author already has a photo result on the same search result page.

I checked on this because a number of people told me that their second class authorship got converted back to first class today. I've checked about 40 different queries that show authorship results and have yet to find a second class result.

What we haven't determined yet is if this also signals a relaxing of the reduction of authorship snippets overall that Google instituted in December. Stay tuned!