In a surprising move, Google is dropping profile photos and Google+ circle counts from its search listings, as the search giant appears to be dialling back on its social media strategy.
The stated aim is to create a more consistent look across devices and create a simpler, “less-cluttered” design.
The move, announced by John Mueller, a webmaster trends analyst at Google, said that the “click-through behaviour on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one.”
Mueller also suggested that the clickthrough rate on the new layout is “similar” to SERPs that included author photos.
“We’ve been doing lots of work to clean up the visual design of our search results,” Mueller wrote in a post on Google+, “in particular creating a better mobile experience and a more consistent design across devices.
“As a part of this, we’re simplifying the way authorship is shown in mobile and desktop search results, removing the profile photo and circle count. (Our experiments indicate that click-through behaviour on this new less-cluttered design is similar to the previous one.)”
This new design for authorship in the search results is rolling out to both desktop and mobile results.
For many publishers, the authorship features are a key reason to be on Google+, as it was thought a presence on the internet giants social network boost visibility on its search results and the number of clicks.
Google+ currently has over a billion registered users, and almost 350m monthly active putting it between Facebook and Twitter in size, but doubts remain over how engaged these users really are, they are simply using Google’s other services (such as Gmail and YouTube) which are integrated into the social network.
The service was notably absent from its recent Google’s I/O keynote, where the company lays out its plans for the next year to developers from around the world.
https://plus.google.com/+JohnMueller/posts/PDkPdPtjL6j