Using rel="author" on product descriptions

[EGOL]

Unique and effective product descriptions can be one of the most expensive investments that go into building a retail website.  I would consider them part of the "intellectual property" of a company.

These descriptions are also one of the most often pirated types of content.  Some product descriptions have been grabbed and used by hundreds of pirates.

When people grab your product descriptions it creates a duplicate content problem, it also starts cutting off your long-tail traffic.

The discussion topic here is....

Have you heard of anyone using rel="author" on product pages with substantive content?

Do you think there is any value in doing that?

Is this an abuse of rel="author"

Thank you!

[Vivamedia]

Hi!

Interesting thoughts, I have never tried that.

Google says:
_We're experimenting with using this data to help people find content from great authors in our search results. _

More reading:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.se/2011/06/authorship-markup-and-web-search.html

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/search.py?hl=en&query=rel+author&ctx=en:searchbox

[PASSLtd]

Tried and tested.

If your authoring original content your not abusing the tag.

If your authoring the content using a well put together Google plus profile the benefits are much like authoring an article. Wonderful.

I'm yet to see if the subject mater of this article will also effect internal linking.