Flaky Google Authorship - worth the time investment?

[RDesignista]

Google Authorship - flakier than a bucket of Popeye's crispy chicken.

So I'm trying to get Google Authorship to work for one of my articles. When I test it using the Google Rich Snippet Tool, it shows up as working. Then I see it in Google search results and it doesn't work. Meanwhile, a bunch of other articles work, while a bunch don't. Oddly enough, they all share the same template, which means Google Authorship is randomly working.

Google Authorship is pretty useful. No doubt adding a picture to your article in search results boosts traffic. And I see it can be expanded for other things too- ratings, recipe thumbnails, e-commerce.

But Google Authorship doesn't seem stable. And from doing a search, a lot of other bloggers agree. And even worse - you can only test it as often as it gets index updated, meaning a very slow testing process.

So is it me, or is Google Authorship just no worth the time investment? That is, until Google develops it more and makes it predictable?

[TheGAME1264]

I never bothered with it myself, just because I never thought it was a good idea to begin with. Photos can easily be faked, and if you've ever had a picture of yourself stolen and used for other purposes (as I have...I've seen fake Facebook profiles with a 12-year-old picture of me floating around), then you'll never support this.

From what I've seen of rich snippets, it takes a while for them to start showing up properly in general. So it may just be a matter of time. Google does things at its pace, and there really isn't much you can do about it.

[RDesignista]

GAME,

I've yet to see any fake, odd photos.

The thing with Google Authorship is that it's quite hard to set up. This is coming from a guy that works with websites for a living. That alone will weed out the non-tech guys. Facebook and Twitter - loads of fake profiles, because any Joe Schmo can just set up an account and add a profile picture.

Google Authorship is not free from getting abused, but I've yet to see an obviously fake account. Or an account that's pushing some infomercial stuff. It actually seems like the only ones I see with the image are those who are pushing good blog content.

So, the difficulty of it is a double-edged sword - it's supposed to be easy, but it's not and it's awfully difficult. Then again, this awful process also keeps spammers and Beavis & Butthead type people out.

Just wished it wasn't so fickle.

[TheGAME1264]

I haven't seen them yet, either...but I also haven't seen many people taking advantage of this yet. Like I said, my comment was based on my experiences with fake profiles and photographs on Facebook....having seen that first hand, I know it wouldn't take much for this to get abused. Set up fake profile, create a few splogs or other low-quality content sites, report the "spammer", destroy someone's reputation unfairly. I'm sure Google has to have taken this into consideration, but it's also something they can't do a thing about.

That's why I don't have a picture on my G+ profile and haven't put a pic of any sort online in about the last 10 years, nor am I going to.

[Andrew Yurlov]

How about putting a picture on this forum?