: What causes a profile picture to disappear from author information in Google SERPs? Does anyone know what causes the exclusion of a profile picture in the authorship information in the Google
Does anyone know what causes the exclusion of a profile picture in the authorship information in the Google SERPs?
For some reason, my profile picture has disappeared from the author information in the Google SERPs. The 'by author name - in xxx Google+ Circles' is still showing, but without a head-shot. I'm having this issue for all websites I post content on.
For some of these websites I claimed authorship using the rel="author" attribute, for some of them I did so through email verification. For others I verified authorship by adding ?rel=author to the Google+ URL.
Just to be clear, authorship information is set up correctly for all these sites. I tested the ones that were verified with author markup with the rich snippet testing tool.
Also, as mentioned before, the author name is still showing up in the search results and the articles are showing up in the author statistics in Google Webmasters Tools. Everything was still working perfectly a while ago, and I didn't change anything before this issue started.
I've searched for a fix, and did find others that have the same issue as of recent, although no solutions yet.
Troubleshooting steps I've taken:
Replaced profile picture with a more clear headshot on Google+
Replaced <a href="https://plus.google.com/9999999999/" rel="author">Google+</a> with vanity link: <a href="https://plus.google.com/+ExampleVanityLink" rel="author">Google+</a>
I have also read somewhere that disappearing author pics could be caused by a lack of activity on Google+. I've however seen profile pictures from other authors appear in SERPs that were way less active on the networking site than I am.
More posts by @Moriarity557
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As it appears, this is caused by the way Google is changing the way it shows author info. On his Google+ page, Google’s John Mueller says: “we're simplifying the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results, removing the profile photo and circle count.”
It is a common action taken by Google at the end of last year (December 2013). Others are reporting the same issue, so I think you just need to wait for Google changes.
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