Google Removes Author: Search From Google News

Hi Everybody,
You can no longer search for post from specific authors in Google News.

As Barry Schwartz reported this morning on Search Engine Roundtable, using the author: first-name last-name command at Google News brings up no results now, and Google has disabled it on purpose. If you think it has something to do with the rel=author movement, it seems that you’re correct. Here’s what a Google employee named Erik explained in the Google News help forum:

The author: search operator is no longer available. For author-specific Google News content, I would recommend use of the Authorship capabilities in Google News, introduced last month. Integration with Google+ circles means easier following and engagement between authors and readers.

The main problem here, as Barry points out on SERP, is that rel=author markup rarely seems to show inside of Google News search results.