Google Authorship allows you to link your Google+ profile to the content you create. The setup process is fairly easy and vital for business owners and webmasters who want to take advantage of Google’s ever expanding services. Authorship establishes credibility and authenticity of information found on the web while allowing writers to claim their content and making it possible for users to find more content written by the same person.
Authorship verifies identity and is used to calculate Author Rank, which determines the quality of content. Higher credibility is synonymous with higher placement in the search results. Websites with authorship tags also have higher click-through rates because of the eye-catching head shots placed next to the text listing. In addition to these benefits, Google will add three additional links to related articles by the same author to the search results if a user returns to the search results after reading an author-tagged page for a certain period of time.
Other benefits of Google Authorship include a reduction in piracy and spam and an increase in genuine, quality content. If Google does not recognize you as an author it is simple for someone else to steal your content and use it.
Recently Google announced an update to Authorship that makes it easier to link your content to your Google+ profile image. Google added automatic author attribution when you sign into WordPress, Typepad, About.com, WikiHow, and Examiner with Google. It is expected that Google will increase support in the future. Another small update made in October was the addition of authorship-rich snippets to Google Image searches.
The Rules of Google Authorship
Pages that are eligible to have authorship applied to them carry a byline and are a single article. A compilation page of articles by the author does not apply. Nor do product listing. Only one author with a recognizable headshot may be acknowledged and business mascots do not count. You may also only use one Google+ profile, and your byline name must match the name on your Google+ profile.
For help in navigating Google Authorship, contact Surgeon’s Advisor.