Google rel hell
-
So apologies in advance for this question, but:
Can someone explain whether as a site we should be using the "rel author" tag or the "rel publisher" tag?
1. We don't really need to distinguish between the people who write our content.
2. We definitely do need to establish ownership of our content, as unfortunately it has been widely copied. We are spending quite a bit of time filing DMCA notices.
3. Do we need to apply either tag to every page? Or does "del publisher" just need to be applied to the homepage to cover the rest of the site?
4. What looks better in the search results? - a person's face or a company logo?
If prefer a face, but understand we need to promote our brand.
Thanks
P
-
Hi Guys
Thanks, very helpful.
We are an ecommerce site and an information site. So I guess we will go with publisher on the homepage and author for content pages.
Though we have tried author on product pages and G displays the author photo in the results. Not sure what effect that has, but I like to see a face related to the product. (We sell information products - legal documents). It also helps our product stand-out in the results.
Thanks again.
Patrick
-
There seems to be some confusion here.
First of all, rel="publisher" is a way to connect your site to your page on Google+. This can help your page be recognized as the "official" page for your brand and make it eligible for Google Direct Connect. The rel="publisher" tag goes ONLY on your homepage. rel="publisher" will NOT get your company logo shown in the search results (at least not yet).
rel="author" is a way to link the content on your site to specific authors on Google+. This has the benefit of building up the author rank for those authors, as well as displaying author snippets in the search results. This only works with photos of people, not cartoons or logos. The author tag should go on every page where you have unique content.
This link shows you the different ways you can verify ownership:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1408986
Hope that helps!
-
1. What type of site are you promoting? An eCommerce site? A Brand? A consultant? An informational site.
For me, the ultimate decision would come down to what I want the "face of the company" or website to be.
For example, I may have two or three websites and am trying to build "Me" as a consultant or an expert in a particular subject matter. In that case I would definitely use "author." However, I own an eCommerce site where I want to build a brand...the people who write the content may come and go and I don't want to the article ownership (in Google's eyes) to leave with that person. I would use "publisher" in that case.
I have seen sites that successfully mix it up too. They would use "publisher" on the catalog pages and use "author" on blog type pages.
3. I would apply this to every page with unique content.
4. To me, same as question 1. If I were a consumer, I would want to see the website brand for products or catalog data but for opinions, industry expertise, consulting, etc., I would want to see a face with the content.
My 2 cents
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
"Google-selected canonical different to user-declared" - issues
Hi Moz! We are having issues on a number of our international sites where Google is choosing our page 2 of a category as the canonical over page 1. Example; https://www.yoursclothing.de/kleider-grosse-groessen (Image attached). We currently use infinite loading, however when javascript is disabled we have a text link to page 2 which is done via a query string of '?filter=true&view=X&categoryid=X&page=2' Page 2 is blocked via robots.txt and has a canonical pointing at page 1. Due to Google selecting page 2 as the canonical, the page is no longer ranking. For the main keyphrase a subcategory page is ranking poorly. LqDO0qr
On-Page Optimization | | RemarkableAgency1 -
Frustrated by Google Search Result
We have a page on our website for our review of the "Voltage" shisha flavor by "Social Smoke" (Social Smoke is the brand). Voltage is one of their hookah tobacco flavors. https://www.hookah.org/social-smoke-voltage-flavored-hookh-tobacco/. When I search for "Social Smoke Voltage Review", our page is at the bottom of the first page result. We have a video, decent content on the page, and a review function. We've implemented correct Schema code too: https://goo.gl/iwCP7E. When I use the page grade tool on Moz. Our page ranks B for that keyword but the results number 1 and 2 and 3 on Google all rank C or D. Our video and review schemas don't show up on Google search result either. We have a good community online. Our social media pages are popular. We share the blog posts on the social media accounts fairly regularly too. We have an old and established website. From what I understand we are following all of Google's standards and rules too. What does a website owner gotta do?
On-Page Optimization | | Heydarian0 -
Google Webmaster Guideline Change: Human-Readable list of links
In the revised webmaster guidelines, google says "[...] Provide a sitemap file with links that point to the important pages on your site. Also provide a page with a human-readable list of links to these pages (sometimes called a site index or site map page)." (Source: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en) I guess what they mean by this is something like this: http://www.ziolko.de/sitemap.html Still, I wonder why they say that. Just to ensure that every page on a site is linked and consequently findable by humans (and crawlers - but isn't the XML sitemap for those and gives even better information)? Should not a good navigation already lead to every page? What is the benefit of a link-list-page, assuming you have an XML sitemap? For a big site, a link-list is bound to look somewhat cluttered and its usefulness is outclassed by a good navigation, which I assume as a given. Or isn't it? TL;DR: Can anybody tell me what exactly is the benefit of a human-readable list of all links? Regards, Nico
On-Page Optimization | | netzkern_AG0 -
Blocking Subdomain from Google Crawl and Index
Hey everybody, how is it going? I have a simple question, that i need answered. I have a main domain, lets call it domain.com. Recently our company will launch a series of promotions for which we will use cname subdomains, i.e try.domain.com, or buy.domain.com. They will serve a commercial objective, nothing more. What is the best way to block such domains from being indexed in Google, also from counting as a subdomain from the domain.com. Robots.txt, No-follow, etc? Hope to hear from you, Best Regards,
On-Page Optimization | | JesusD3 -
Need I add rel="dofollow" or not?
Hello, My website is http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com is using the href links without meta tag rel="dofollow" such as I am using . Should I put ref="dofollow" in this: Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Why aren't our articles ranking in Google?
We have a website promoting Pakistani lawyers online. The website also has an articles section where we post articles reviewing different legal cases and laws. All of our articles are written by actual lawyers are high quality and unique. Website itself doesn't have large page/site authority but its not a baby website either. I can't figure out why our articles don't rank on Google. Here are few of the articles:
On-Page Optimization | | Heydarian
http://www.pakistanilawyers.com/articles/pakistan-child-custody-laws-explained-479/
http://www.pakistanilawyers.com/articles/pakistan-divorce-law-476/
http://www.pakistanilawyers.com/articles/pakistani-law-insolvency-guide-460/ I don't know whether its simply because there are not enough links pointing to our website or if there is a problem in the website itself that i can't find. Thanks for the help0 -
Rel=canonical Query
Hello Everyone, We have just launched our new ecommerce site for flooring in the UK. I have run through the first crawl and there are 549 instances of rel=canonical including the homepage? Is this a major issue in any way, i have never had to tackle it before and i would appreciate any advice that could be offered on the subject. Many Thanks Andrew
On-Page Optimization | | DFD20120 -
Does hosting server location affect my local google page rank
Hi All, This is my first (of many I would say) questions. My clients site is in Ireland but the hosting service is in Canada. So when i use the MozBar it states that the IP is in Canada. Will this affect my page ranking in Dublin, Ireland? The company is a plumbing service so we would only want local Dublin customers. Thanks so much and I hope someone can help me out. cheers, Aidan
On-Page Optimization | | aidanlawlor0