Authorship and Circles

[atstickel12]

This may be a stupid question, but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere. How does the number of circles that a person is in affect their rankings when authorship is installed. Does it make much of a difference? Knowing Google, I would imagine that it does.

[TomRayner]

If you're referring to a sort of Author Rank, right now I can be categorical in saying that it has no ranking effect.

While many things are suggesting that Author Rank might become a factor in the future, right now it has not been implemented.  That doesn't mean that you shouldn't prepare, however.

The following are three incredibly useful resources on Author Rank and what it may or may not mean.  Rather than regurgitate, I'll link them here for you to read through - they really are great guides and can help break down for you what you might need to prepare for its potential release:

http://www.copyblogger.com/author-rank/

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/build-your-authority-not-your-author-rank

http://www.virante.org/blog/2013/03/20/author-rank-facts-and-fiction-live-hangout-with-mark-traphagen/

Hope these help.

[atstickel12]

Thanks for the useful information. While that does answer some other questions, it wasn't really what I was asking. If you look at the attached image, this girl is in 20,838 circles. I'm wondering what affect this has on the overall SEO of pages that she's attached to.

Screen%20Shot%202013-05-28%20at%2011.15.55%20AM.png

[gfiorelli1]

"This girl" is Vanessa Fox, and she is one of the most reputed SEO out there, apart being an ex Googler and having worked in creating Google Webmaster Tools.

Said that, the number of people circling her has no effect on rankings.

What may have an effect is the old good PageRank her Google Plus Profile may have (and PR of the people who follow her).

In fact, every link on G+ that shared with the "Share link" function (and not reshared), is a followed link, hence pass link equity.

So, what people sometimes attribute to an until not ghostly AuthorRank, in reality is a more classic Link Graph effect.