Google Plus - Seems to Have a Grey Area

[tapper]

I am only interested in using the Author value.

The problem I see is that if your site(s) are not
personal pages or a bricks and mortar business you can't use it.

How do you protect your content if you are neither ?

In such cases Google considers a online business which is not bricks and mortar not eligible for a business profile ?

[tedster]

Using rel="author" requires the author to have a Google+ profile, not the publisher.

There is publisher mark up you might be interested in: [support.google.com...]

And finally, I think you want a "Brand or Product Page", rather than a "Local Business" page.

[tapper]

I ended up at the Brand Product page so thanks for confirming that I am likely at the most relevant spot.

I am already using the publisher markup options but thought that using rel="author". might add some more protection.

The problem I see is that even with a business page my personal name will show in the rel="author" profile. I thought that with the business account the brand page I created with the associated website would be the one visible.

It seems a complete waste of time. Would be like searching for a news story and finding a profile pic of Rupert Murdoch.

Just more junk for users to try and filter through before they finally get to what they are looking for.

It's already bad enough that so many of the first pages of Google are getting full of irrelevant Youtube results.