Google’s new authorship program has received good response across the world. Last year Google changed its algorithm to provide more meaningful search result to its users. It has been heard that they are still trying to modify the same to provide search results, which are rich in contents. With the introduction of google authorship program, it is definite that Google has something in mind revolving the authorship. Some people stated that if someone clicks on (read like) an article of a particular author, Google tries to rank the articles high from the same author to the search result of the same user. Though it is not definitely known, it is understood that authorship will have some weightage in Google’s search criteria going forward.
Before proceeding on how to establish Google authorship, we will see the benefits of the same (apart from the Google’s search result prioritization).
Author Name and Photo Display - When set up properly, Google shows search result along with Author’s name and photo. Having a photo along with search result is an eye catcher. If the users like your writing style, they can quickly pick up the article written by you by seeing your author tag.
Stats of the contents written by you -You may be writing in many sites. Google Webmaster gives you the facility to set up the statistics based on your authorship. So, you can see the impressions and clicks on the articles authored by you.
Now, we will see how we can set up Google authorship.
Step 1 – If you don’t have a Google+ profile, you need to create the same. If you already have a Google id, you can use the same to generate your plus profile. The url is http://plus.google.com. Attach a good high quality headshot photo to your profile. This picture will be shown along with the search result.
Step 2 – Now, go to https://plus.google.com/authorship and sign up with your email id. Ensure that the email generated in the same domain where you generally post your contents. A verification mail will be sent to your mail. You need to click on the given link in the mail to add your mail id to your Google+ profile. This completes your set up in Google authorship.
Step 3 – Now, to connect your article with your Google+ profile, you need to add a byline to each page of your contents e.g. “Suvendu Manna”. You must ensure that the byline name matches the name that you have mentioned in your Google+ profile.
Now when your content comes up in the Google search result, it will show your name and photo as author of the content.
It is highly possible that you are a guest writer and don’t have the e-mail id for the specified domain. How do you establish your Google authorship? In such a case, you need to link your Google+ profile anywhere from the page of the content. To link your Google+ profile, you can use below code
<a href="[profile_url]?rel=author">Google</a>
Here the profile_url is your Google plus profile url, which looks like https://plus.google.com/10019141570xxxxxxxxxx. The author tag will instruct Google to associate the contents to your profile.
Next, you need to add a reciprocal link of the said website in your plus profile. Edit your profile and scroll down at the bottom of the page to find out “Contributor to”. Click “Add Custom Link”, enter your website link and save. This step is not required when you have a domain e-mail id as Google automatically adds your domain to your contributor list.
Irrespective the kind of mail id, you can check whether you have set up everything properly. Click on the link http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets and enter your website url. This will show you preview of the search result with your authorship information. It will also validate your authorship when you enter your Google plus profile in author section.
The photo (woman working in laptop) is taken from fr.fotopedia.com, courtesy Ed Yourdon.
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