Google announced its dropped support for authorship and that posts about Author Rank will no longer be active.

The announcement on Thursday is posted on the official authorship support page of the company. Google said its web search will no longer support the authorship mark-up.

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This authorship mark-up was launched earlier in 2011. It allowed users to claim their works and gain popularity..

Google launched the Author Rank feature to help users sort out inadequate information.

Apparently, this feature never gained popularity and the numbers of users has been falling.

Google claims the Author Rank feature distracts from search queries. The feature was never useful when it came to searching, said John Muller, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst.

In addition, it diverts the attention of the readers from results. It also wasn't beneficial to publishers, especially those working on their in-house SEO strategy.

Google plans to stop showing authorship in search results. It also clarified this move won't affect the traffic of the websites nor multiply clicks on ads.

Google said users and publishers can check the structured data tool in the Google Webmasters back panel and see the effect of the new rules.

Google's new rules have been implemented.

TagsGoogle Author Rank, Search engine, SEO, Google Authorship