Google strengthens its message about rel="author"

[engine]

In the latest video from Matt Cutts, he goes on to describe how authorship profiles will be strengthened by use of rel="author"

Here's the video.

[GifAnimator]

Anyone with a little knowledge of Google+ will see that it is not easy to game but I do believe it is only a small part in giving websites any sort of author rank with many other factors involved.

[IanCP]

For me, and I'm possibly being naive at my old age and experience, verified Authorship meant to Google that "I am the author, intellectual property owner, copyright holder, and not some scumbag scraper".

Like I said, naive...

[SerpsGuy]

Authorship does not even work, all my content was stolen and duped. Now I lost rank to the spammers. Not even a way to report this to google

[lucy24]

verified Authorship meant to Google that "I am the author, intellectual property owner, copyright holder, and not some scumbag scraper".

Well, unless the scumbag scraper got there first.

[SerpsGuy]

Or unless google makes a mistake and labels the wrong person a scumbag, which has happened to me just recently. Then what do you do? Lost all rank, and sit around wishing google had some way to reach them about this.

[Zivush]

A question: Why not consider rel=publisher instead of rel=author in case you want to hide personal details of the writer?

[zeeshanaayan07]

I cann't access this video please share link on youtube

[lucy24]

[youtube.com...]

[mihomes]

Why is there no mention of rel=publisher? When they first came out with these I knew there would be conflict. So I have a site and all content on it was created by me... I use rel=pub because I want the site rather than me personally to take the credit.

Are they now saying that you need to personally take credit as well with rel=aut and your personal profile? Are they to expect a company to have one or more people taking credit for pages rather than the company? I can think of tons of issues with this.

[ColourOfSpring]

What about a scraper that sets up a Google+ account, scrapes articles from non-Google+ verified authors, and then is seen by Google as being more trustworthy? It's easy also to be indexed before your victim is indexed - subscribe to their RSS feed, then scrape as soon as anything is published, then point some decent links to your scraped copy. The scraped copy is found by Google first, the genuine original second. Factor in Google+ authorship versus non-Google+ authorship, the scraper not only is seen as the original author, but Google sees him/her as more trustworthy.

[GifAnimator]

ColourOfSpring, this is what I would do,

Request that content be removed from Google

Join Google+ and check the offending profile and if copyright material is used report abuse.

Name and shame the scraper on Google+ and encourage members of your circle to do the same, there is great comradery within groups, I have several Google employees as well,with brilliant support whatever your problem, another bonus to being on G+.

[netmeg]

rel=publisher is not quite the same thing (yet). I don't think that, for example, avatars show up in the search results with logos (although supposedly may happen at some point)

I use both; the rel=publisher is linked to my company page and rel=author is linked to my personal page. I suspect that places like searchengineland use it the same way - publisher for the entity itself, and author for the individual authors.

[aristotle]

GifAnimator wrote:
Anyone with a little knowledge of Google+ will see that it is not easy to game

Are you saying that spammers won't be able to get their faces into the search results?

[GifAnimator]

Aristotle… you would be amazed at the amount of people trying to set up spammy Google+ accounts but they have to rely on other members to interact with them and to give them some credibility before the authorship tag is approved and displayed. This just does not happen and these accounts are very easy to report and soon disappear anyway.
Of course some websites slip through but I have outlined a procedure on how to deal with them.

From my experience it is not an easy thing to actually get your profile photograph in Google search so I should imagine Google has a very strict method of approving this. Just take a look at the webmasters who are complaining that their rich snippet has not appeared yet on this forum.

You obviously disapprove of Google+ but you also have no knowledge of how it works, I would suggest you look deeper into the facts instead of continually complaining about it here, you may even get to like it as you may find people with your interests there.
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 6:02 pm (utc) on Jun 9, 2013]

[Bluejeans]

I've had rel=author and rel=publisher on my site for a year, just as netmeg suggested, but it hasn't stopped my site from being pushed down by mega-sites. Has done nothing for me that I can see except maybe that I don't get outranked by scrapers.

I would like a system that allows the offline authority I've acquired by actually having published books on my subject to boost the authority of my website. It would seem logical.

[mihomes]

rel=publisher is not quite the same thing (yet).

Exactly... when these first came about I had all sorts of questions and there really was no definite answer either. Publisher is for the publisher and author is for the author.

So, for a non-personal page... lets use a simple product/company website as an example... what are we supposed to do?

At the moment I use rel=publisher on every page and have it linked to the website/company Google+ page (which must be under my personal account mind you).

Am I the only one who does not want my business/company page personally linked to me should I use rel=author on every page!? I bet not. Furthermore, why would someone want to promote themselves personally instead of the company/brand as is by using rel=publisher?

I just don't get their logic... nor have I understood ANY of their recent logic. The underlining makes sense, but there are LOTS of 'rebuttals' or 'scenarios' where it does just not work/make any sense.

[Dymero]

I don't think it'll be just as easy as implementing the proper code and then automatically getting a boost. I'm guessing there will be an on-Google+ authority aspect to this.

There is already some evidence that this kind of system is in place to increase the speed your pages get indexed, even if it currently does nothing for rankings. (mods, hope this is an okay link): [jeffalytics.com...]
.
Mod's note: Exception made for this link. Not necessarily an endorsement, but it's a thoughtful study providing data not available elsewhere.
.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 1:53 am (utc) on Jun 17, 2013]

[netmeg]

I think they're still trying to figure out what they're going to do about rel=publisher (I can't wait to see something similar for ecommerce) and refine rel=author. I don't consider either to be a finished product and I bet Google doesn't either.

As far as scrapers go - the sad truth is that pretty much any hoop you jump through to prove you own / have generated your content, someone else can can also spoof to make it look like they did. And there's no shortage of criminals. I honestly don't know that I believe Google will ever be able to definitively solve that one.

(And personally, I think Bing and Yahoo would have the same issues if they were big enough or sent enough traffic to make anyone want to go to the trouble)

[guggi2000]

I added the author tag in March... my picture did not appear in the SERPs.
On April 20 I found out, that the "Contributions" in G-Plus needs to be "public". On April 24 I lost 50% of the traffic of the articles. CTR went down, SERPS went down, changing picture did not help, Nothing...

Yesterday, I changed the G-Plus "Contribution" to "Private" again.
Guess what: the traffic to the articles are back to normal, within a day.

Do I use Google Plus? Yes, but I post articles only to my followers (private circles), and travel images to the public... I guess that is not enough for G.

[networkliquidators]

Google can still read your data even if it is marked private. It's similar in how they monitor Gmail and can serve personalized results from your messages when you do a query.

They can "see" the data even though the rest of the world cannot. How they use that data, well, only Google knows.

[guggi2000]

@networkliquidators I disagree. Rel=author works only if you have the contributors section in your profile set to public. Read their help section.

[networkliquidators]

@guggi2000 I'm referring to behind the scenes what Google could do with the data. They can still "do something" with the data regardless of instructions they set for the public.

[guggi2000]

@networkliquidators please read the instructions of how to link rel=author and the G-Plus profile.
Of course they "could", but they don't, sorry.

So, having set the contribution section to private is like saying "I am contributing to this site and I do not want the public to know about it."

[jetteroheller]

Just another hint that we should be using Google's defacto standards - in other words, FB won't get you rankings but using G+ like a mad man will make you an expert in any field and place you at the top. Let the gaming begin. Meh.

My sites have been havy hit by Panda April 2010.

I tried my best in Google plus in the hope this will influence the Google rankings of my web sites.

Until May 11th 2013 in around 38000 circles on Google plus.
Now June 14th in 7000.

I found out, that I am at all my key themes under the top profiles at the Google+ search.

So I hope they will change soon, that Authorrnak influences the search rankings.

[IanCP]

Curiously, I visited a well known site yesterday, a site which is a very big name in regular computer components of varying types.

They proudly announced on the home page they had 290 Google+ followers. With their likely traffic?

[mihomes]

Dymero - great link and read... that was very interesting to see how the group reacted.

I am still confused though on how an e-commerce site is supposed to take advantage of this? Using the same example I posted above... website selling a product(s)... should one use rel=author on every page of the site? Typically on a site like this there will not be articles per say, but rather product information or information relating to the product(s). I was under the assumption rel=publisher was to be used in scenarios like this where publisher takes ownership of the pages, but now it doesn't appear this way - or perhaps just yet?

In other words... lets say Coca Cola (I am drinking one right now)... it would make more sense for them to use rel=publisher on each page of their site and link to the G+ page they setup which is what I do for my product sites. I don't see how rel=author could be used in a situation like this? Multiple employees using rel=author for various pages they 'made' on the site?