** UPDATE ** So What Actually Happened to Google Authorship?
Not enough people were using Authorship for Google to use it as valid indicator in search. The primary reason seems to be low adoption by content creators.
Google has officially ended its authorship bylines from displayuing within the search results. Additionally, Google will cease tracking content written by authors as tied by the author’s G+ profile.
Google may choose to re-active authorship in the future once it re-purposes authorships use within the G+ social platform.
NOTE – It’s also worth mentioning that Search users will still see Google+ posts from friends and pages when they’re relevant to the query — both in the main results, and on the right-hand side. Today’s authorship change doesn’t impact these social features.
The Google Authorship official page now displays the following message:
Great Read – Confessions of a Recovering Google Authorship Addict