CTR Changes After Google Has Removed Photo and Circle Count From its Search Results

<p>For long time SEO's were opting in for Google+ profile, Google Authorship and racing to gain more followers on Google's social network Google Plus, that was motivated simple - Google Authority with photos helps rank better and gives higher CTR.</p><p>I had a luck to test those features for less than a month - I implemented Google Authorship and started gaining more followers on Google+ at start of this June. Then on June 26th - Google announced that they are removing from SERP results photos and follower count. Some SEO's started to concern &nbsp;- claiming that it will drop their positions in Google Search.</p><p><strong>I decided to investigate &nbsp;- how true is that:</strong></p><p>Actually you can read my first findings in this post- &nbsp;<a href="http://www.reinisfischer.com/ctr-changes-and-without-google-authorship"… Changes with and without Google Authorship</a>, what I wrote soon after Google removed photos and follower count from SERP.&nbsp;</p><p>Here are my findings comparing month of May (no Google Authorship) with month of June (with Google Authorship on board)</p><p>CTR changes in July 2014</p><blockquote><p><span>Although my overall impression count decreased, clicks to my blog&nbsp;</span><strong>increased</strong><span>, and so did my CTR ratio.</span></p></blockquote><p>So today I will continue to &nbsp;investigate results - the life without Google Authorship on board, I will take data from Google Webmasters for month of July, and compare with previous months (June, May)</p><table border="0"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Month</strong></td><td><strong>Impressions</strong></td><td><strong>Clicks</strong></td><td><strong>CTR</strong></td></tr><tr><td>May</td><td>&nbsp;26,345</td><td>&nbsp;960</td><td>&nbsp;<strong>3,64%</strong></td></tr><tr><td>June</td><td>&nbsp;26,025</td><td>&nbsp;1029</td><td>&nbsp;<strong>3,95%</strong></td></tr><tr><td><strong>July</strong></td><td>&nbsp;<strong>42,976</strong></td><td>&nbsp;<strong>1292</strong></td><td>&nbsp;<strong>3.00%</strong></td></tr></tbody></table><p><em>CTR changes (data source: Google Webmaster)</em></p><p><em><img src="http://www.reinisfischer.com/sites/default/files/julyctr.jpg&quot; alt="CTR changes in July 2014" title="CTR changes in July 2014" width="851" height="315"></em></p><p><em>CTR changes in July 2014 (Data source: Google Webmaster)&nbsp;</em></p><p>Doing fast evaluation - it's easy to find that CTR from Google's SERP has <strong>decreased from 3.95%</strong> when I had photos and followers shown, to <strong>3.00%</strong> when I do not have photo displayed next to my articles in SERP.</p><p>On the other hand, you can see that my overall impressions on SERP has <strong>increased by 65%</strong>, while click count just for <strong>25%</strong>.</p><p>Lets do another maths example - this time I'm willing to see potentially <strong>how much search visits I didn't gained</strong>, thanks to drop for CTR.</p><p>Let's presume I had the 3.95% CTR rate for month of July, when I had 42976 impressions on Google SERP, what would be my actual click count?</p><p><strong>42976-3.95% = 1697 clicks</strong></p><p>How much 0.95% decrease CTR costed me in month of July?</p><p><strong>1697-1292= 405</strong></p><p><strong>I'm loosing 405</strong> visits from search in month of July, after Google decided to remove photo and followers count from its SERP.&nbsp;</p><p>Is it much? For a start it might seem - that 405 visitors is not so great number to be worried of - but again taking maths in help it turns out such changes means <strong>31% traffic drop from Search engines</strong>. &nbsp;I mean drop of 31% drop in traffic from organic search. It's huge!</p><p>Now - it results I have observed just on my blog - it doesn't mean that everybody is loosing their traffic from organic search, actually I'm not loosing it as well - I'm gaining more, just the CTR &nbsp;in month of July for my blog has decreased. Much is dependent of overall metadata is seen in SERP.</p><p>Overall I do think <strong>3% CTR still is a great number</strong>. Maybe I'm wrong.&nbsp;<span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Please share your thoughts in comments.</span></p><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Read more about my findings in <a title="Search Engine Optimization" href="http://www.reinisfischer.com/search-engine-optimization&quot; target="_blank">Search Engine Optimization</a></span></p>