I'm wondering whether anyone has any insight through their own testing as to why Google is happy to display authorship for some sites but not others?
I've little doubt that Google authorship was to thank for a decent wedge of traffic in a crowded SERP where I had the standout face. In fact, I was more than standout, I was the only face.
All has been fine for the 4 months or so that my site has been up and running until last week where doing a few SERP checks I realised that Google was no longer displaying me as an author across any of the results. Ranking wise all was still pretty good although I had dropped from #1 on quite an important keyword and have since been bouncing between #2 and #3.
So was this to do with the particular niche I'm in? Was Google playing catch up with me having removed all my competitors profile pictures before I even arrived on the scene and levelling the field? Well I thought that might be the case but a quick check of my competition in the Rich Snippets tool shows that they simply have not made the Google+ connection. The reason I was the lone face all along is purely because I was the only one to have set up authorship in the first place.
I'm stumped. What did I do wrong? What do we think is the criteria for showing up as an author? I'm not so sure. I have read that Google doesn't like B&W profile pictures and that can have a bearing on whether you show up or not. It's an interesting theory which I've actually just set up a test for on another site although wouldn't be applicable to the site of my concern.
Anyone else deemed to ugly for Google? Did you manage to get a makeover?