Author rank and Authorship

Since Google launched there own social platform, Google+, people has been speculating about what this could mean for the rank of websites in Googles search results. Would the number of +1s influence the rank? Would the number of followers? What about the number of sharings?

On August 8, 2005, Google got a patent called the Agent Rank Patent, that gave them the right to use the identity of authors of articles to influence search results. This was the start of the launch of Google Authorship, a method to link the content you create to your Google+ profile.

The Authorship link is a two-way-link. You both have to link to your Google+ profile from the content page, and to the website from your Google+ (called contributing sites). In this way, Google can be sure that you really is the author.

When authorship has been established, you can find your Google+ profile photo next to the search results in Google. This can be a great benefit to your, because it is more eye catchy in the search results and it is therefore more likely that people will click into your site. Another benefit is that Google will be able to promote your article over a stolen version of your article. Because when you establish authorship, Google will know that you made that article before the stolen version.

Author rank

Google uses the authorship to calculate a rank, called Author rank, that determine the quality of the content. It is believed that this Author rank will influence the Google Pagerank in the future, although this relationship has not yet been established. When this time comes, it is very important for websites that they have established authorship of there content. Actually people think that author rank might be more important than the Panda update from Google.

The main goal of Author rank for Google is to rank high-quality sites higher in Googles search results. This should give people more high-quality sites in the top of search results, and therefore it will be more likely that people find good content in the start of there search.

How is author rank calculated?

Nobody knows how author rank is calculated. But there is a lot of guesses of how it is calculated. Some of the factors that many believe influence the author rank is:

• How often does people give your content +1
• How often does people share your content
• How many comments are there on shared content
• How important to the subject of the content, is the person that gave your content +1 or shared the content.
• Does the same people always share your content, or is it different peoples
• Are comments positive
• Who are you friends with? Are they experts on the subject you write about?
• Did you write more articles on the same subject?

There is currently rumors that says that Google in the future will launch a Google commenting product, that you can put on your website (just as the Facebook comments implemented in websites). This will enable Google to see the comment activity on websites and count this in, when they calculate Author rank.

How to setup authorship on your website

There are multiple ways to establish authorship for your content on your website. The easiest way is to do the following:

• Make sure to have a Google+ profile with a recognizable profile photo. 
• On each page you want the authorship setup to, write a byline, ie. By Andreas Andersen.
• Make sure the name in the byline is exactly the same as the name on your Google+ profile
• Create a link on the page to your Google+ profile. Add “?rel=author” to the end of the profile URL.
• Create a link to the domain the content is on on your Google+ profile under “Contribute to”.

Test if authorship works

You can test if your setup of authorship works, by going to the Structure data testing tool. Then enter the address of the content. If you see your profile photo on the showed search result, it works.

You can also see the development in statistic of authorship pages, that Google has discovered. You can see this in Google Webmastertools. You can also there see the URLs where Google has identified you as an author.

Why doesn’t authorship works

Even though you can see your Google+ profile photo in the Structure data testing tool, you might wonder why you can’t see it in the real search results. There might be multiple reasons why this is so:

• Google hasn’t indexed your content again yet. Then they haven’t discovered your authorship link and cannot show it in the search results. Please give it time, until Google has visited your content again. 
• Google might not see you as an expert on the subject you wrote about. Here you have to improve your author rank on that subject.

What should I do to improve my Author rank?

Work on establishing authorship on all your content. Then start to engage on especially Google+, but also other places where authorship is established. Start discussions and comment on posts on Google+.