Can changing G+ authorship on a well-ranking article drop its search ranking?
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We have an article that ranks #1 in Google SERP for the keyword we want it to rank for.
We decided to revise the article because although it's performing well, we knew it could be better and more informative for the user.
Now that we've revised the content, we're wondering: Should we update the article author (and the G+ authorship markup) to reflect that the revisor authored the content, or keep the original author listed? Can changing G+ authorship on an article impact its search ranking, or is that an issue that's a few Google algorithm updates down the road?
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Maybe not in ranking per se. But if you are signed in as you search, and your google plus profile happened to somehow interacted or be connected-with the person (especially if he is really a well known and well connected ie a lot of people have circled him/her on G+); for those signed in users the article might have showed up on the first page (lets say) and with no authorship or someone else might not even show up.
With this in mind I would keep the author that has the most influences or people that have circled him, or that has the most activity on his/her Google+ network.
Again Google is saying one thing, but with the move of making the search more social this is not unlikely. This also in Google's eyes may not be a pure "ranking" process but more related to "displaying relevant info" from your friends on the G+ network.
Just some thoughts
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Google plus and authorship dosen't have any influence on the rankings. You can change / remove / add and it won't have any influence on your current rankings.
There are some tests out there specificly for this with the same result - just in order to test Google's statment that it dosne't incfluence rankings.
It dose make sense to play a role in rankings but as the guys from Google said - there is so much room for spam that they can control (at least not yet) that is better to cut it off completly from the ranking signals.
So in a short sentence : you are safe whatever you do.
Hope it helps.
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