AuthorRank and YouTube?

[Rich_Coffman]

My client asks me a valid question:

"Can we tie Authorship to YouTube?"

My response was: "Great Question. Authorship shows a thumbnail of your headshot in the SERPs. Regarding universal search results, YouTube videos are displayed with a thumbnail of the video.

What may be of benefit here is attributing authorship to a video in order to build AuthorRank. I think what could be done to signal Google would be to link with the rel=author attribute to your Google + profile from the description ..  [profile_url]?rel=author.

The only hangup is determining if the rel=author attribute is applied in the YouTube description link or not, and If Google recognizes the attribute because Youtube pushes the link through a redirect before connecting with the Google + profile."

Can anyone speak further to this?

[Rich_Coffman]

It would make sense that the same idea behind Authorship for the written word would eventually be applied to video content.

[DarinPirkey]

Great question.

I don't have the direct answer for you but here are my thoughts.

I know that you can now add your Google+ link to the links tab of the new YouTube Channels.  They show up in the Cover Art area now.  If YouTube was to use it I would assume it would have to be placed there.  This technically won't be the rel=author you are talking about but it would verify the users content this way by providing a link back to the Google+ Page.  Sort of like rel=me maybe? (speculation)

As far as AgentRank (AuthorRank) I don't think there was anything in the patents in 2005 or the update in 2011 that talked about YouTube videos being a signal for it though I could see the potential there.  It mostly talked about shares and likes; who shared and liked, how fast they shared and liked,etc but I don't remember anything about views or subscribers. I can definitely see the relevancy, however.