This week Google released Author Stats within its Webmaster Tools product. Authorship annotations (read more here) are fast becoming a must-have element on websites as they provide greater visibility on the SERPs.

The new report will essentially just show how often this annotated content is showing on the search results pages. If an author has associated their content with a Google profile, they will be able to see the amount of impressions and clicks it received. While there’s certainly no guarantee that setting up authorship annotations will matter to SERP position, but it is easy to understand how they might positively influence a users decision to click through.

Google has made several improvements to its authorship annotations since its release earlier this year. For example, an indication of how many Google+ users have the author in their Circles appears on the SERPs, as does the ability to add an author directly to circle. Search engine users can also access comments posted on Google+ about an article shared by the author.