In the latest update released by Google, webmaster trend analyst John Mueller has announced that Google will no longer be displaying the pictures and will remove the pictures from the search results. But not to worry, the author name and Google + profile will be displayed in the search results. Also, the information on number of circles linked to author's profile will also be stripped.
The argument proposed by Google's John Mueller is this change will increase the click-through rates.
Since the authorship was introduced in 2011, Google has released number of updates to help the quality content writers. We are surprised by this update and puzzled about the reasoning behind this update. Though we do not question Google's reasoning behind this, it's just going to be another challenge to combat for the SEO community.
Let us know your comments about this update!