Did you notice a decline in organic search traffic to your blog? If so, you’re not alone. I started seeing unusual stats in Google Analytics around Dec. 11th. It appeared as though social referrals outnumbered organic search visits for the first time.
Wow, I thought. This means we’re really connecting with our fans!
While it’s true that this blog is finally building some loyal readers (you ROCK!), there’s more to this story than meets the eye. As usual, analytic data only gives you part of the picture. You get to see what happened on your site, but figuring out why requires a bit of detective work.
I found my answer through a friend on Google Plus; she shared an article about what’s known as the Authorshipocalypse. It seems the Google Guardians took sweeping action to combat authorship spam on Dec. 9th. Now they can’t remove code from your site, but they can choose to ignore the markup and deny your rich snippet (the little picture next to your name in search results). The weird thing is that they’re not passing judgment against individual authors. They’re actually targeting domains based on reputation, which ends up hurting us writers indirectly. So your picture wasn’t really removed because you posted crappy blog posts. The image disappeared because Google feels the people you’re writing for aren’t cool enough to sit at the Established Author’s table.
Doesn’t Google Reward Writers for Quality Content?
Well, they say they do.
When Google rolled out Authorship and introduced the concept of AuthorRank, I cheered them on. As a writer, I love being able to build trust with readers and grow my personal brand in the process. In fact, I joined Google Plus for the sole purpose of advancing my writing career. I’ve seen the impact of the rich snippet on click through rates (CTRs), and that little thumbnail undoubtedly helped our company gain ground in this competitive online printing market.
I’m glad I joined G+ because I’ve met tons of amazing people on the site, but I definitely feel cheated. I never thought I’d be looked down upon for things that are totally beyond my control, namely every other site on earth’s link profile. I’ve been very selective about who I write for in the past, but I guess we’ll all have to be super careful in the future. I’m talking review OpenSiteExplorer before agreeing to guest post careful.
Of course Google claims the December penalties reinforce their commitment to serving up the best quality content to users. That must be why I got the following results for a search about calendars:
Before anyone asks, the image clearly shows I’m not logged in to Google Plus (that’s an incognito window). There’s no personalization impacting the results whatsoever.
By now you’re probably thinking, ok, so the writer uses a cartoon avatar instead of a real picture. What about the article, though? Surely this must be a well written, useful post!
Not even close.
Feel free to check the article out for yourself here. Spoiler alert: Before you get to the 100 words or so of poorly written copy, you’ll have to scroll down to avoid the giant Zip Extractor ad. From there you can scroll through way too many big images that take forever to load without so much as a brief description as to why you’d want to see them from this highly credible author. Oh, don’t forget to click on the Fiverr ad, another obvious indicator of a credible design resource site.
All right, one piece of thin content doesn’t necessarily mean we’re dealing with an amateur. Our animated friend must have other signals that indicate elite status. Perhaps the G+ profile page will reveal Google’s rationale:
Hmmm…13 people have “him” in their circles, and “he” hasn’t posted anything other than his own links in all of 3 posts. The last post says “shared publicly May 15, 2013,” which means the elusive author doesn’t even bother to spray links on the site anymore. But if you visit the Design Bolts G+ business page, you’ll see zero engagement…aside from 1 avid fan who happens to use the same irritating avi identified as “Zee Que” in the rich snippet!
Good call, Google. This profile serves as a shining example of your mission to rid the web of rubbish.
What to Do if Your Site Got Hit
I wish I had answers for you.
I’ve been preaching the Gospel of Authorship since Oct. 2012. I hope one day Google will be able to make legitimate decisions about specific writers; conclusions that reflect our individual reputations as opposed to the number of backlinks pointing to domains where our content exists.
Until then, we have no choice but to keep writing. And prove Google’s negative perceptions about our employers wrong with every keystroke.