Google: Duplicate Content Pollutes 25-30% Of The Web

So Google confirmed they reduced the authorship snippets from showing in the results. We know that. Matt Cutts strongly implied that there was no update on December 17th, despite all the tracking tools lighting up on that date. That implication that Google minimizes the algorithm updates before the holidays should apply to what I am seeing today - a lot of chatter, in some niches, of a Google update.
The key indicator I use is webmaster/SEO chatter. I check the chatter at WebmasterWorld and dozens of other forums and the chatter has picked up yesterday. Martin Ice Web, who is a Senior Member at WebmasterWorld but is based in Germany, is the loudest on claiming updates today. There are many who agree and see major changes and there are many threads in the Google forums with individual complaints.
That being said, one of the tools I rarely show you, because it often doesn't match the other tools, is the DigitalPoint Keyword Tracker averages changes. It is something fairly new added to the forums sidebar and this reports changes of actual rankings for hundreds of thousands of sites and I'd say millions of keywords. It is based off what webmasters enter into the tracking tools.
It showed a bit of a change on the 17th but on the 19th, it really skyrocketed, like the forums did.

I've emailed Google yesterday to find out if something is going on specific with rankings but I have yet to hear back.
It can be a refresh of Panda or something else but I have no confirmation from Google.

Google: Authorship Works With Google+ Vanity URLs

Once you get your authorship working, no one wants to mess around and change URLs. Some don't like to mess around even if the authorship is not live in the search results, in fear changing it might break something. This is even more so now that there was a reduction in authorship display in the results.

One question I get a lot from more advanced SEOs is should I use the numeric or custom/vanity URL from my Google+ page. Should I use the root or /about or /post URL as well? The answer is, it does not matter.
Google's John Mueller went on record about this topic this morning on Google+ saying:

I've seen this come up more since custom/vanity URLs for Google+ profiles have become more popular. Authorship works fine with vanity profile URLs, it works fine with the numeric URLs, and it doesn't matter if you link to your "about" or "posts" page, or even just to the base profile URL. The type of redirect (302 vs 301) also doesn't matter here. If you want to have a bit of fun, you can even use one of the other Google ccTLDs and link to that.

So there you have it, concrete information from Google on one of the scary topics to touch on.

For more information, please see:
https://plus.google.com/authorship
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1408986
https://support.google.com/plus/answer/2676340