Google Authorship: Helping You Find the Posts You Didn’t Know You Were Looking For
We all know Google is a stickler for detail. Google loves detail with the enthusiasm of a man wildly threatening to cut his own hair. Perhaps, in fact, the only thing everybody’s automated internet scouring machine of choice prefers to details, is updates. Updates and details. Pork and beans. John McAfee and the word ‘fugitive’. Authorship, one of Google’s more recent profound marriages of updates and details, seemingly includes more benefits than any of us could possibly have imagined. Or at least an extra one we weren’t previously aware of.
If I’ve gone too far, allow me to hastily back track a second. Authorship is Google’s way of linking the content you publish online to your Google+ account, which, on the surface, sounds suspiciously straightforward. It isn’t. After jumping through several hoops, including altering the rel value of the links pointing toward your Google+ account on your website, adding a Contributor To link to your website on your Google+ profile and verifying the whole process by email, you’re just about ready to go.
You’re then flung bodily into the roller-coaster world of AuthorRank, allowing your Authorship profile to gain authority as your G+ linked posts increase in quantity and quality of location. You also get a lovely picture next to your post in Google’s listings, so as to make your page more attractive (or less attractive, depending on the picture) to the casual browser.
Recently Google have confirmed an extra layer of benefit to the already inarguably salacious concept of Authorship. Say, you search your desired topic, and the most relevant choice from Google’s illustrious menu, happens to have been endowed with a picture of the author, thus signifying the presence of an Authorship account. Click that link, spend a certain amount of time on that page, and Google now has you down as an indelible, evangelical advocate of that very author.
Clicking back in your browser, expecting to return to an identical set of search results, will cause you to be shocked and amazed to the core of your being. Probably. Directly underneath that page you just visited, you’ll see a choice selection of links headed by the title More by ‘author’s name’. Essentially, spend roughly two or more minutes reading an author’s work and Google will help you find more by that writer in an unanticipated manner!
So engagement, proportionally measured by time spent on that site and that author’s specific post has a direct and immediate impact on AuthorRank.
Undoubtedly, Authorship will continue to grow as Google rolls out updates, utilizing more of those raw, user-based details, and combining the two elements to refine what is already a living, breathing SEO component.
