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Google has confirmed the complaints about authorship not showing in the search results. They said this is a bug that is impacting a "very few sites" in their index. The fix should be out eventually, as they are working on it.
So while my face still doesn't show up, you have cartoon images of @netmeg showing up instead. In all seriousness, netmeg is a great personality in the SEO space, so she deserves an authorship icon. But according to Google's authorship document, you need a "recognizable headshot as your profile photo."
Do you think netmeg looks like that cartoon representation? Maybe?
This is the first time in a very long time, I've seen an icon or cartoon show up in the rich snippets for authorship.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Comments:
netmeg
07/23/2013 01:41 pm
I'm a little taller. But not much.
Oleg Korneitchouk
07/23/2013 02:33 pm
I have a client who set his profile pic to a comic-strip style caricature of himself and to my surprise, it's been showing up in SERPs. I first noticed this about 2 weeks ago.
StevenLockey
07/23/2013 03:40 pm
Meh, if its representative, it should be fine. What are ghost writers meant to do otherwise?
SusanHallam
07/23/2013 04:06 pm
For some strange reason Google turned off my authorship after a while. I switched my profile picture from black and white to colour... and presto I'm back online as an author again. Maybe I should I used a cartoon profile pic!
Toni Laird
07/23/2013 07:58 pm
I did the same thing and it shows up for me too! I was too shy to use my face!
Andy Langton
07/23/2013 10:48 pm
I used a Facebook 'like' button as an authorship image at one point. Google didn't seem to have a problem with it. If you're going to use a script to enforce image guidelines, it needs to be a very good script ;)
Stephen Moyers
07/24/2013 09:34 am
I've also heard that many webmasters are saying that their Google plus profile pic disappeared many times and again came back. By the way it's nice to see cartoon picture in author's photo. Cheers,
Vic
10/20/2013 05:26 am
What did you change in the cartoon to make it fit? If I want to load my cartoon, there is a message that the image is too small (does not matter how large I make it) . How did you get it right to load this cartoon?