Multiple Author Rich Snippets On A Q&A Forum Page

[94501]

Hi,

I work on a site that has a robust q&a forum. Members post questions and other members answer the questions. The answers can be lengthy, often by experts with Google+ pages and almost always by multiple member/commenters answering a particular question. Much like Moz's forum here.

In order to get rich snippets results in search for a single Q&A page, what would happen if each of, for instance, 10 commenters on a page, were tagged as author?  After all, the q/a forum pages have many authors, each as author of their own comments.

Or, should I pick one comment out of many and call that member/commenter the author or something else?

If it matters, the person asking the question in the forum is almost always not the expert providing a ton of detailed content. Also, a question might be 8 words. One answer might be 25 to 500 or more and their might be 5 to 10 different answers.

Thanks! Cheers... Darcy

[Philip-DiPatrizio]

The answer on this page is from someone that tested it, with 2 authors: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/25140/how-to-implement-rel-author-on-a-page-with-multiple-authors

You can test it as well and use the tool (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets) to see what happens.  I don't doubt that you'll end up with the same results -- the 1st instance of rel=author is going to be used.

I've come across this discussion a few times, and it always ends the same... there just isn't (currently) a way to handle multiple authors for 1 page using rel=author.  On your forum, is there a "best answer" chosen?  Maybe you can assign the respondent that gives the "best answer" the authorship?  I'm not sure how Google will feel about that though, as it's not a clear article or blog post that is being assigned authorship.  Rather, it's just a response in a discussion.  Much like blog comments.  Although blog comments aren't exactly like your scenario, it's similar enough, and it would be strange if a blog comment author was set as the author for a whole page.

[94501]

Hi Philip,

Thanks for the words and illustration. As much sense as that makes, can you cite a source for the info on no more than one rel=author on one page?

Assuming you're right, which you probably are, what can be done for a Q&A forum? Just pick one, even though they might have written a fraction of the page's content?

Understood that Google can do whatever it wants - nothing could be truer about all aspects of Google's SERPs.

Cheers... Darcy

[Philip-DiPatrizio]

You can't have more than 1 author per page.  If you put 10 rel=author tags on 1 page, I would assume that Google is just going to look at the first in the list.  OR, Google may just entirely ignore it.  They don't have to show a rich snippet, just because the rel=author code is there.  It's up to them whether or not the author image shows in the SERP and if you've got 10 on 1 page, there's a chance Google might do something like this (Warning: F-bomb ahead!): http://www.quickmeme.com/img/78/788d7237ecca60d8d235cb352eab832f472264065a048fcd24adc834f0ca82f0.jpg