Authorship Tag

[ZakD]

Hi Guys - I asked this Q, on the comments of Joost's blog post on this topic - repeating here, in case I don't get an answer.

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I have a question of the rel=author tag. Will Google attach the authorship, even if the Google+ profile is a Company page, and not a personal profile? The mugshot on the profile, is basically our logo - not a personal photo. What's the best way to make use of authorship markup, in a case like this?

Thanks!!

Zak

[RobertFisher]

Zakaria

The 'mugshot' to this point is attributable to the author. So, if you are an author who is a contributor to a given G+, and there is a post/page, etc. that comes up in SERPs, your pic as the author will be shown and not the company. If you have an image that is not a photo of you (or a stunt double!) other images like avatars or art will not come up.

Think of it this way: just as PR is a measure of page validity to query, authorship is a measure of author validity to subject. (I am not saying either is or is not correct at times).  So, a company cannot be an author (it can be a publisher, but have not seen logo show yet).

As to what is the best way to make that work for you, I would think it would depend on the situation, the strategy, and the company. We publish a lot for various properties we own and for properties of clients. With clients, we sometimes allow authorship to the copywriter if it in no way effects the client. With our properties (an example is we have a site on local merchants) we allow authorship and encourage it for our copywriters. If you have a good team member who is writing and becoming known on a topic, there is no reason they cannot be granted acknowledgement in the marketplace as knowing the topic. The only argument against it is that they may leave and compete against you and since we employ hidden ninja assassins we do not ever have that problem reoccur with the same employee... Just kidding.

So, over time, your increase in author credit around a given subject should be the benefit you derive.

I hope this helps a bit.

[ZakD]

Awesome - Thanks Robert for a very thorough explanation!

[ZakD]

Update:

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I starting searching on Google for pointers on enabling the Authorship markup. Came across this really helpful video -

http://youtu.be/YyIQzHD8rBY

Followed those steps - in linking my personal Google+ profile and enabling the Bio section with myself as Author in the blog posts. And so far looking good. Tested a post with the Rich Snippets Testing Tool in Google Webmaster - and it's picking up the Authorship with the photo quite nicely! Thanks for the help

YyIQzHD8rBY