I'd like to have my 'mugshot' in Google's SERPs but I couldn't care less about Google+. I don't really want to link my website to Google+ either. Can I use CSS display:none; on the link leading to my profile and still have authorship, which looks like<a href='https://plus.google.com/111823012258578917399?rel=author' rel='nofollow'>Google</a>? Will the nofollow attribute here spoil things? I don't want to lose 'link juice' on Google+ if I don't have to.Now Google should crawl only the HTML but I'm sure they'll figure out the link is not visible (perhaps it's technically even cloaking.Does anybody have experience with this situation? And do I really have to become (reasonably) active on Google+ in order for authorship to show? This answer suggests I do but I didn't read anything on that in Google's guidelines.
Google Authorship: can I display:none for link to profile?
google authorship
Although I haven't tested myself, I would not expect this to work because the whole point of authorship is to utilise the system to build credibility as an author and producer of content that links to your Google+ page.Google also confirm that:-Hidden markup Make sure that your rel=author link is not invisible to humans using techniques like display:none or CSS. Broadly speaking, Google wont display any information that cannot be viewed by humans.If you hide content from the user then it essentially cannot be trusted, it defeats the purpose of the authorship model.