Source? Google says having an author photo increases CTR by 15% on average.

[ProjectLabs]

I was listening to an interview with Rand Fishkin on the Eventual Millionaire: http://eventualmillionaire.com/rand-fishkin/

Rand said that Google says that having an author photo increases click through rate by 15% on average.

I am trying to find the original source of this information. Has anyone know the source of this stat?

[ProjectLabs]

Awesome. Thanks so much for the help Rand and Lesley.

[LesleyPaone]

The only citation I could find in my searching is from Web Marketing Today.

"Conventional marketing wisdom is that anything that can make your search-result listing stand out and draw the eye will probably be beneficial to your click through rate — the “CTR.” Past statistics from the search engines have indicated that special listing treatments like this increase CTR by 15 percent on average. I suspect the increase could be greater than that, depending upon the search keyword and type of business."

http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/authorship-the-top-search-marketing-tactic-in-2013/

But I would take 15% as a relative number, that is pretty meaningless. Let me share some of my experience, I am a moderator of an e-commerce forum that is mainly male developers. We have around a half a million or so members with the demographic largely being male. One thing I have noticed is users with a female avatar get more help, a lot more help. The picture you use matters just as much as adding a picture is what I am saying. There are actually a few good articles on it, here is a link to one that mentions it. http://justinbriggs.org/how-does-google-authorship-impact-ctr

Admittedly, with my name being Lesley, I have thought about changing my picture to a good looking woman to see if it would increase my click through rate.

[randfish]

Hi Project Labs! Glad you liked the interview. There are a few sources, but http://searchengineland.com/is-google-authorship-affecting-rankings-today-168230 is one of the best (note the 15% average across the sites). Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the reference to Google's formal statement, but I believe it was also via a SELand post (or possibly from an SMX conference stage discussion).