How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90% • Hacker News Board

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#21

Post by axx » Thu, May 30, 2013, 2:52 PM UTC

alternize wrote: post #13

pdx wrote: post #2

I wonder if your Google+ Profile picture was your JitBit Name + Logo, you would have done better. I think it is your face that is the problem. Not because it's ugly, but because it's obviously a face, which is out of context when searching for "macro recorder". We naturally gloss over things that don't sync with what we expect.

i agree. i have even misread "Marco" instead of "Macro" in the title. with the face next to the content, and me looking for a technical tool and not a person, i'd have skipped to #2 as well.

I was like "Recorder is his last name? I bet he has a lot of fun with that!"

100% the same with me!

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#22

Post by arkitaip » Thu, May 30, 2013, 2:56 PM UTC

joeblau wrote: post #8

That is pretty fascinating. It seems like Facebook, who I use because this was their early marketing strategy, is teaching us to ignore data that has peoples faces associated with it. I wonder if there is broader research being done on this?

This is fairly well researched wrt banners. Basically once users associate visual elements with noise, the will start to automatically filter them to the point of not being conscious about their existence.

In a even broader scope, Jakob Nielsen has shared lots of data from his eye tracking usability studies that show just how little attention users pay to online content [1][2].

[1] http://www.nngroup.com/topic/advertising/

[2] http://www.nngroup.com/topic/eyetracking/all/

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#23

Post by jsdalton » Thu, May 30, 2013, 2:57 PM UTC

pfortuny wrote: post #5

The photo is a tell-tale to me. Each time I see one on the first search results, they get filtered out by my brain (they are either 'news' or 'youtube'). But this is just my reaction.

Even though I know what the photo is for, subconsciously it makes me think "Oh, this is going to lead me to some guys Google+ profile page."

I imagine I've skipped over a ton of search results that are just like the one in the article for just that reason.

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#24

Post by themckman » Thu, May 30, 2013, 2:59 PM UTC

This happened with the Puppet type reference search result. Still feel weird clicking it with the guy's picture next to it. Makes it feel like it's his page when I want to believe it belongs Puppet.

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#25

Post by bhartzer » Thu, May 30, 2013, 3:01 PM UTC

I have several issues with what Alex is saying:

:

- "Most people were clicking the #2 result." Huh?!? How do you possibly know that people are clicking the 2nd result? You don't. Unless you have access to Wikipedia's analytics, you have NO WAY in knowing. So what you're saying could be true--but could not be true. It's your interpretation, not fact.

- I'm seeing paid ads for "macro recorder", thus you're the first after the paid ads. "macro record" is a bad example of this. A true test would be to unverify for at least a week and see if you have more or less clicks. That is if you end up staying the #1 result. I bet that your rankings would change if you un-verified your site's authorship.

- I still see no proof that your traffic went down based on Google Authorship (your photo appearing). So, what you're saying is that you had 90 percent more traffic before you verified authorship? Putting your photo there caused a loss in traffic? I'm not seeing enough proof of that (you're not showing any analytics data).

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#26

Post by kanamekun » Thu, May 30, 2013, 3:01 PM UTC

The quality of the photo can make a huge impact on clickthroughs. Cyrus Shepard of (seo)Moz saw a 35% increase in click-through rates after a/b testing his profile photo: http://moz.com/blog/google-author-photos

He also mentioned that, "Bounce rate dropped while time-on-site and page views increased. It's as if having an authoritative photo in the search results raised users' trust in my site and expectations of authority."

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#27

Post by kanamekun » Thu, May 30, 2013, 3:03 PM UTC

spindritf wrote: post #10

pdx wrote: post #2

I wonder if your Google+ Profile picture was your JitBit Name + Logo, you would have done better. I think it is your face that is the problem. Not because it's ugly, but because it's obviously a face, which is out of context when searching for "macro recorder". We naturally gloss over things that don't sync with what we expect.

I believe Google will only show a "recognizable headshot,"[1] not any image you give them. So you cannot use a logo. [1] https://plus.google.com/authorship

This is 100% right. A quick confirmation: "John Mu of Google has confirmed that you must have a headshot of yours in order to see your Google Plus avatar in Google’s rich snippet."

source: http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/log...

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#28

Post by tokenadult » Thu, May 30, 2013, 3:09 PM UTC

This is one of the reasons I asked my Facebook friends to A/B test two photographs I have used as profile photos before setting my Google+ photo. I should probably be a lot more rigorous about this, but at the very least a photograph should be compared to other available photographs for what it says about your online persona.

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#29

Post by pvilchez » Thu, May 30, 2013, 3:17 PM UTC

jsdalton wrote: post #23

pfortuny wrote: post #5

The photo is a tell-tale to me. Each time I see one on the first search results, they get filtered out by my brain (they are either 'news' or 'youtube'). But this is just my reaction.

Even though I know what the photo is for, subconsciously it makes me think "Oh, this is going to lead me to some guys Google+ profile page." I imagine I've skipped over a ton of search results that are just like the one in the article for just that reason.

This is exactly what I think every time I see it. And sometimes it does take me to a g+ page, so I've trained myself to just avoid it.

Re: How Google Authorship decreased our traffic by 90%

#30

Post by tonyedgecombe » Thu, May 30, 2013, 3:18 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #7

doomslice wrote: post #3

My brain went through a few things when I saw that result screenshot: 1. I thought it was giving results for a guy named Marco. 2. After realizing it was Macro, I thought the #1 result was a blog or review. 3. I then focused on the 2nd result because it looked less cluttered.

Good observation. So basically, the fact that Google authorship did this is a good thing for people who search Google, because until now his title could "trick" people into clicking on his site (because it was more SEO optimized or for whatever reason), but the "real" result was always the Wikipedia one - because I suppose most people don't have a purchase intent when searching for that, but an intent to find out mor…

I think if you are searching for "macro recorder" then you know what it is and are looking for a solution rather than a description.