If Google Authorship is used for every page of your website, will it be penalized?

[MonsterWeb28]

Hey all,

I've noticed a lot of companies will implement Google Authorship on all pages of their website, ie landing pages, home pages, sub pages.  I'm wondering if this will be penalized as it isn't a typical authored piece of content, like blogs, articles, press releases etc.

I'm curious as I'm going to setup Google Authorship and I don't want it to be setup incorrectly for the future.  Is it okay to tie each page (home page, sub pages) and not just actual authored content (blogs, articles, press releases) or will it get penalized if that occurs?

Thanks and much appreciated!

[danatanseo]

There are times when rel=publisher is more approrpiate than rel=author, a product page on an e-commerce site for example. Will a site be penalized for establishing authorship on every page? Absolutely not. In fact, I think that is what Google is intending for people to do.

The problem right now is there is such mass confusion over rel=author and rel=publisher andhow to use them properly, that right now, you see lots of sites that should be using rel=publisher using rel=author instead. Because Google has done such a poor job of articulating how and where to implement these things, I can't imagine them penalizing sites for using one when they should be using the other. Although, I suppose strange things have happened.

I do think that the intention with authorship and also structured data markup is that Webmaster implement all the appropriate tags and markup on every page of their site.

Hope that's helpful!

Dana

[MonsterWeb28]

Hey Dana,

Thanks for the response.  So basically what saying is that if it isn't in the immediate authored content area (such as href="https://plus.google.com/104609087715575652977" rel="publisher"/> in the section) then it should be rel=publisher.  However, rel=author should be on authored content like the blogs and articles and press releases. This would be shown as "Authored by [Individual Name]" linking the name to the personal Google+ profile, Right?

Also, in doing rel=author /rel=publisher,  only "rel=author" translates into the Google+ head shot profile picture in search results, but rel="publisher" will list the company Google+ profile information?

Thanks again for all the responses!

[danatanseo]

Yes, you are right on both counts. I think there will come a time when Google will display the brand icon in place of an image for pages that are marked up with rel=publisher. I can see that pulling through for the sites I manage when I plug them into the Rich Snippet testing tool. Google, however, is not yet displaying those images.

Good luck! It sounds like you've got a good idea of what pages should use what type of authorship.

Dana

[SearchOfficeSpace23]

I actually don't think it is alright to use Authorship or Publisher on every page and this is not what Google intends, check out their blog on this:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/relauthor-frequently-asked-advanced.html

Specifically they say "Authorship annotation is useful to searchers because it signals that a page conveys a real person’s perspective or analysis on a topic. Since property listings and product pages are less perspective/analysis oriented, we discourage using authorship in these cases. However, an article about products that provides helpful commentary, such as, “Camera X vs. Camera Y: Faceoff in the Arizona Desert” could have authorship."

So while at this time using Authorship on non-article, product pages is 'unlikely' to get you Google slapped, you are going against their direct advice - which often then gets put into the algorithm when they notice something being abused.

You are right many sites are using this on every page, and it will as of now give you an advantage, even in not in higher rankings then in a more visible results listing which may have a improved CTR. However, as I said once Google see this is being abused they will attempt to stop the practice and make sure it is used for rich content pages only.

Publisher is different in that they want it to be from ideally the homepage to the Business G+ page, they are both different things and Google treats them as separate.

Hope this helps - basically, if what you are doing on your site doesn't benefit your site user, then you are right to question it.