google authorship

candytog

Having read a fair bit about google authorship and linking your Google + profile to your website I have been doing both for the last few months. Thing is I havn't noticed any major difference in rankings. Just wondering has anybody else tried this and had any success?

adamrooney

candytog wrote: »

Having read a fair bit about google authorship and linking your Google + profile to your website I have been doing both for the last few months. Thing is I havn't noticed any major difference in rankings. Just wondering has anybody else tried this and had any success?

Google Authorship is no longer I'm afraid. The image support was dropped in June; now the bylines and everything else related to the program are gone. Google ended it last month, announcing that they will stop showing authorship results in Google Search, and will no longer be tracking data from content using rel=author markup.

However, Author Rank may likely still play a part. This basically means that Google may rank higher a story from a 'trusted' author.

candytog

adamrooney wrote: »

Google Authorship is no longer I'm afraid. The image support was dropped in June; now the bylines and everything else related to the program are gone. Google ended it last month, announcing that they will stop showing authorship results in Google Search, and will no longer be tracking data from content using rel=author markup.

However, Author Rank may likely still play a part. This basically means that Google may rank higher a story from a 'trusted' author.

Interesting, thanks for that. So I guess it could theoretically still help with author rank so I'll keep it going for now.

adamrooney

candytog wrote: »

Interesting, thanks for that. So I guess it could theoretically still help with author rank so I'll keep it going for now.

Author Rank isn’t actually Google’s term. It’s a term that the SEO community has assigned to the concept in general since Google talked about the idea of ranking verified authors higher in search results. If you are already an 'Authority' or a trusted source (difficult to know who is or isn't though), then I would probably keep going the way you have been doing. However I would not put any more weight or work behind your Google Authorship profile. They meant well with 'Authorship', but it was totally manipulated and was very easy to do so.

candytog

adamrooney wrote: »

Author Rank isn’t actually Google’s term. It’s a term that the SEO community has assigned to the concept in general since Google talked about the idea of ranking verified authors higher in search results. If you are already an 'Authority' or a trusted source (difficult to know who is or isn't though), then I would probably keep going the way you have been doing. However I would not put any more weight or work behind your Google Authorship profile. They meant well with 'Authorship', but it was totally manipulated and was very easy to do so.

Yea it was a little too overt for google when you think about it.

RedFly

Unfortunately, I see this all the time. There's actually no such thing as "author rank", there never was. There was a patent filed by Google on how something like it might work but it doesn't exist.

AAuthor MARKUP on your site used to enable your profile image in search results but that was removed a few months back.

Please be careful and check the dates on the SEO advice that you read. Most of it is hopelessly out of date.

mneylon

RedFly wrote: »

Please be careful and check the dates on the SEO advice that you read. Most of it is hopelessly out of date.

It's a constantly moving target

adamrooney

Blacknight wrote: »

It's a constantly moving target

Absolutely, with all the algorithm changes happening it just makes more of the stuff you read totally obsolete. I often wonder about people going off and doing 2/3/4 year degree courses in Digital Marketing etc. I fear that what they learn in the syllabus during their course may be totally irrelevant by the time they finish and enter the work force. What I did when marketing sites etc when I first started, 100% does not work today. What I did a year and a half ago does not work today. The environment keeps changing and thus your digital strategy and approach has to change with it. Even the software tools you use may need to change. I just hope that what people learn on these courses understand that, and that the syllabus they learn reflects that.

mneylon

adamrooney wrote: »

Absolutely, with all the algorithm changes happening it just makes more of the stuff you read totally obsolete. I often wonder about people going off and doing 2/3/4 year degree courses in Digital Marketing etc. I fear that what they learn in the syllabus during their course may be totally irrelevant by the time they finish and enter the work force. What I did when marketing sites etc when I first started, 100% does not work today. What I did a year and a half ago does not work today. The environment keeps changing and thus your digital strategy and approach has to change with it. Even the software tools you use may need to change. I just hope that what people learn on these courses understand that, and that the syllabus they learn reflects that.

Marketing is much broader than SEO.

adamrooney

Blacknight wrote: »

Marketing is much broader than SEO.

I couldn't agree more