Has anyone had success with product page rel=author? Can I protect the content but dump the face on the SERPS?

[xoffie]

Hi,

Is there a way to get the benefits of rel=author for protecting site content but to disconnect that from the face photo on the SERPS?

We added rel=author to our unique and individually written product descriptions and reviews. This has led to a decrease in click thru thus far. I suspect this is because when searching for a product to buy the user sees the face and thinks "review" or at least "not corporate".

I don't nec. want to dump rel=author in the sea yet for our ecom pages, has anyone had success with product page rel=author?

Four our keywords, we are the only company of 10 well known travel sites that have the face in the SERPS, far from improving our CTR, it has trashed it.

Any ideas?

[duncan274]

I think the company logo or even a picture of the product could improve click through

but this would be going against google rules as they ask for a head shot.

I agree that you may be better of with http://schema.org. But it woulkd be great if you could find a way to protwct your unique contwnt with rel=author and not lose ctr.

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Xoffie,

This is a really good question, in part because we don't yet know the benefits of adding rel=author to your content, beyond the sometimes rise in CTR.

We assume that Google wants to someday incorporate authorship metrics into it's ranking algorithms and knowledge graph. (if they do this now, I suspect it's minimal or in an experimental stage) Currently, the major benefit of the authorship markup is getting the rich snippets boost from the author profile, and possible increased social visibility in the SERPs.

If you find the photo is hurting you, the first thing I would do is experiment with different photos. Attractive, eye-catching photos seem to get a higher CTR, and you could even experiment with adding a branded logo as your official profile pic as well.

If your site has a good Google+ pretense, you may benefit from the rel=publisher tag. Mostly, I've only seen this tag help much larger publishers like the NYTimes, but it seems to be rolling out to a broader base of publishers now as well. But again, the benefits of rel=publishers mostly seem to be an increased visibility in the SERPs, and don't seem to highly influence rankings (yet)

In the end, I'd recommend on focusing on appropriate rich snippet markup for your products, including price, description, photo, etc. and not worry so much about the authorship markup.

[xoffie]

I ask because I notice in individual Google profile you must fill in "contributor to" to get the rel=author to work, but that doesn't exist in the company Google profile. Im guessing the "Links" page in the Google + for a company then is how to verify?

[xoffie]

Hi

OK, so is it the same rel=author steps or is this now a rel=publisher thing?

Thanks

[pompano21]

Jamie's response is very useful. Make your profile page represent your company and make it easy for the person to then click through to your website from your google+ profile page.

I have had quite a bit of success with the rel=author tag. I have a new site I am creating and I have already had over 30 visits through search (not provided) this week. I am trying to use google+ as much as I can to interact with my site as I think it gives a real boost.

[jenmcardle]

One idea would be to create a company page for your site. You can then upload a company logo or other image to represent your company, and use that page to represent the author of your content. Then, any results would show your company image.

For example, look at the SEOmoz Google+ page. It shows Roger bot as their face photo. I don't believe SEOmoz uses their company page as the author for any material, but it seems they could.

To clarify, the above is just an idea and my best guess. I have not implemented this practice.