Combining rel-author with rel-me to chain authorship information?

[MinutePhrase]

I use HTML5 microformats to structure the information in my webpages. Now creating a forum, I'm interested if I should use the rel values 'me' and 'author' on the permalinks to the user profiles to indicate the author of a post.
[webmasters.googleblog.com...]

<a href="http://example.com/user/eric-smith" rel="author me">Erin Smith</a>

[justpassing]

I might be wrong but author tag is not for internal links, but for outbound links. Also, I doubt that Google minds today. (your links is from 2011)

[phranque]

i would refer to the html5 standard and not worry about 7 year old googleblog posts:
https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/links.html#link-type-author

I'm interested if I should use the rel values 'me'

why 'me'?

[MinutePhrase]

rel=”me” is used on hyperlinks from one page about a person to other pages about that same person

[martinibuster]

Check your forum configuration. Some forum software don't allow bots to crawl forum profiles. And if they do have permission, check if bots have permission to view member's recent posts.

Even if the bots do have permission to view the profiles, those are still thin pages.

Looked at another way, your goal should be to get Google to focus on your content. That's what ranks and earns you money, right?

User profiles do not rank and giving Google access to those serve no purpose.

Lastly, Google doesn't use authorship in it's algo for ranking.

Good luck!
;)

Roger Montti

[lucy24]

User profiles do not rank and giving Google access to those serve[s] no purpose.

I wish someone would tell the present site. GSC currently shows
:: shuffling papers ::
60 (sixty) links from WebmasterWorld to the page listed in my profile.