I followed the following instructions but still not clear whether i had completely understood it.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1408986 http://www.labnol.org/internet/author-profile-in-google/19775/

I did the above last week and i did not find my picture in google search result.

First i added google + link in certain web pages and in my google profile i added those pages which had google + anchor link with rel=author tag.

After updating i used the following to verify.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fvikku.info%2Fcodesnippets%2Fphp%2F&view=

You can see that my pic is appearing at the right. here is a screen shot.

so, what am i missing? why it is not in the search result. The author of labnol.org said it will take 3 days for my profile photo link to appear... ?

Google has stated the following

Note that there is no guarantee that a Rich Snippet will be shown for this page on actual search results. For more details, see the FAQ( http://knol.google.com/k/google-rich-snippets-tips-and-tricks#Frequently_Asked_Questions ).

Fingers crossed. Thoughtful.