Google News is on with an update, rather an unfavorable update. Google News search operator will no longer allow users to search for articles from specific authors in Google News. Many might be unknown of the fact that there has been an elimination of the “author:” search operator in Google News, which was an important option used by searchers to find article specific to one author.
Search Engine Roundtable saw Barry Schwartz reporting this morning that when he typed in the author’s firstname lastname command at Google News search, there were no results shown for the same. This was because Google has disabled it on purpose. This was finally confirmed, when a Google employee named Erik detailed an explanation in the Google News help forum, which is as below:
The author: search operator is no longer available. For author-specific Google News content, I would recommend use of the Authorship capabilities in Google News, introduced last month. Integration with Google+ circles means easier following and engagement between authors and readers.
If one has not yet recognized Google’s efforts to place an emphasis on authorship, then this would be an update to refresh one’s thoughts over the matter. Relatedly, last week Google had announced the addition of authorship clicks and impressions to Webmaster Tools.
The attempts, thus are well-worked and accordingly the search engine giant is eliminating every other possibility by which the users can filter content author-wise.
A wandering question that might be lingering in the thoughts of many, what is authorship markup? Authorship markup is actually not only a way for authors to gain visibility in search, but a way for Google to gain visibility for its Google Profiles, which are essentially the center of the Google+ user experience. Google’s version of the Facebook Wall, if you will.
WebProNews noted that earlier this year, Google’s Othar Hansson said in a video, “It’s obviously early days, so we hope to use this information and any information as a ranking signal at Google. In this case, we want to get information on credibility of authors from all kinds of sources, and eventually use it in ranking. We’re only experimenting with that now. Who knows where it will go?”
The video of the same can be viewed below:
{iframe width=”620″ height=”390″ align=”top”}http://www.youtube.com/embed/FgFb6Y-UJUI{/iframe}
But it was noted in early August.
However, it is suggested that those who have not already implemented authorship markup, it might be a good time to start considering it.
Google has attempted to confuse its users to a great extent with its inputs and outputs. But the users are intelligent enough to consume it. This time again it has routed for the same and there is a possibility that the users this time might take some time to get inhabited too.