Tracking Google Authorship without Author Data
A little over a month ago, Google announced it was removing author photos from the search results. Since those photos were one of the main reasons many people implemented Google Authorship in the first place, there was plenty of uproar about it. Of course, Google insisted this wasn't the end of Authorship and that click-through rates would still be strong.
Last week, Google quietly removed Author Stats from Webmaster Tools, leaving us to wonder if Authorship means anything at all anymore. Without any official announcement, the Labs section of WMT was completely dropped.
What Were Author Stats?
Author Stats in Google Webmaster Tools allowed you to see the impressions and click-through rates for all of your Authorship pages. Unlike other areas of Webmaster Tools, you could actually see data for any page on the web for which you were a verified author. This was especially helpful if you published posts on sites where you didn't have access to Analytics. While it didn't provide detailed information about search queries, it did give a sense of your author performance.
Tracking Google Authorship
Without access to Author stats, it may seem like tracking the success of your posts is a lost cause. However, there are still plenty of resources you can use. For posts published on your own sites, you can still use Analytics to gather data about page views, bounce rate, and much more. In Webmaster Tools, you can still access data about any authorship posts that appear on your verified sites (you'll just have to sift through all of your pages to find them). For your posts that aren't on your verified pages, you can use resources like BuzzSumo to check the number of social shares you are receiving for each of your articles.
Even with the removal of author photos, you can still continue Authorship verification via Google's Structured Data Testing Tool. If Authorship on your page is setup correctly you should see a result similar to the image below.
The Future Of Google Authorship
The loss of this data doesn't mean that you should stop using Google Authorship. While we don't know the fate of the program at this point, there are still plenty of possibilities. Google may be moving forward with a more detailed algorithm for author rank. At least for the time being, Google Authorship remains a core piece of any content creation.