Rel="author" - This could be KickAss!
-
Google is now encouraging webmasters to attribute content to authors with rel="author". You can read what google has to say about it here and here.
A quote from one of google's articles....
When Google has information about who wrote a piece of content on the web, we may look at it as a signal to help us determine the relevance of that page to a user’s query. This is just one of many signals Google may use to determine a page’s relevance and ranking, though, and we’re constantly tweaking and improving our algorithm to improve overall search quality.
I am guessing that google might use it like this..... If you have several highly successful articles about "widgets", your author link on each of them will let google know that you are a widget expert. Then when you write future articles about widgets, google will rank them much higher than normal - because google knows you are an authority on that topic.
If it works this way the rel="author" attribute could be the equivalent of a big load of backlinks for highly qualified authors.
What do you think about this? Valuable?
Also, do you think that there is any way that google could be using this as a "content registry" that will foil some attempts at content theft and content spinning?
Any ideas welcome! Thanks!
-
I own a company and usually write my own blogs but not every time. The times I don't I pay to have them written and thus own the copy. Can an author be a company and the link point to the company about us page?
-
To anyone following this topic... A good thread at cre8asiteforums.com
-
Pretty sure both say they are interchangeable.
-
I was wondering if this is needed? Doesn't the specfication at schema.org cover this? Or would Google use the Author itemscope different from rel="Author"?
-
Right now, rel="author" is only useful with intra-domain URLs. It does not "count" if you are linking to other domains.
BUT...
In the future it might, so doing this could either give you a nice head start, or not. Time will tell.
-
I think it's a good idea and may open up some content syndication options that were discounted before...
In the past I have been firmly against content syndication - I want the content on my own site. However, if I think that the search engines are going to give me credit for doing it then I might do it when a great opportunity arrives.
-
I think it's a good idea and may open up some content syndication options that were discounted before (as per Dunamis' post) however I've not see the rel tag do much for me.
Tagging links to SM sites as rel="me" has not helped those pages get into the SERPs for my brand (though I've not been super consistent with doing it), rel="nofollow" obviously had the rug pulled from under it a while ago and I even once got carried away and tried linking language sites together with rel="alternate" lang="CC" but didn't get the uplift in other language version sites I hoped (though it was a bit of a long shot to begin with).
I'm just wondering how much value this is going to have. I still like it in principal and will attempt to use it where I can.
-
Or, the other issue could be that content sites could grab content from a non-web-savvy site owner. If the original owner didn't have an author tag, then the content site could slap their own author tag on and Google would think that they were the original author.
-
However, it wouldn't be hard for Google to have a system whereby they recognize that my site was the first one to have the rel author and therefore I'm likely the original owner. This is basically a content registry.
Oh.... I really like that. I would like to see google internally put a date on first publication. One problem that some people might have is that their site is very new and weak and content scrapers hit them with a higher frequency than googlebot.
-
When I read it, I understood it to mean that the author tag was telling google that I was the original author. (I actually thought of you EGOL as I know you have been pushing for a content registry). Now, if someone steals my stuff I wouldn't expect them to put a rel author on it. However, I can see a few ways that the tag may be helpful:
-I recently had someone want to publish one of my articles on their site. I said no because I didn't want there to be duplicates of my stuff online. But, perhaps with rel author I could let another site publish my site as long as it is credited to me. Then, Google will know that my site deserves to be the top listing for this content.
-If I have stuff that I know scrapers are going to get, I can use the rel-author tag. My first thought was that a scraper site could sneakily put their own rel author on it and claim it as theirs. However, it wouldn't be hard for Google to have a system whereby they recognize that my site was the first one to have the rel author and therefore I'm likely the original owner. This is basically a content registry.
-
This might be helpful for you, especially if you can get the syndication sites to place author tags on the blog posts.
rel=canonical might also be worth investigating.
I am also confused about this. I'd like to see more information from Google on exactly how these will be used - especially in cross-domain situations.
-
I actually have similar questions about this. The company I work for hosts a blog that is also syndicated across 4 to 5 other websites. The other sites have bigger reach on the web and our blog isn't getting much direct traffic out of this. I have a feeling adding the author tags to our content will eventually pay off to show that the content is being originated on our site and then syndicated. I am interested / excited to see other ways this will be used. I think its a great fix for the scraping issue and will hopefully prevent needing panda updates X.X
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
-
Sudden increase in backlinks with "Link Reclamation": Any risk from Google?
Hi all, We failed to redirect the links of our old website versions to new website pages for years and we are planning to now redirect all those old links to new in the process of link reclamation. This activity may increase the back links suddenly or steadily. If there is sudden increase in backlinks, will it hurts us? What's Google's stand? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Where does Google finds "Soft 404" and "Not found" links?
Hi all, We can see very old links or anonymous links of website suddenly listing under soft 404 or 404 in GSW. As per Google, some of them are some script generated ignorable links. Other are actually the ones which were deleted but not redirected. I wonder how Google get these years old links even though there are no source links available for these. These must be fixed even though they are not linked anywhere from our internal or external pages? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
"Update" in Search Console is NOT an Algo Update
We've had a few questions about the line labeled "Update" in Google Search Console on the Search Analytics timeline graph (see attached image). Asking around the industry, there seems to be a fair amount of confusion about whether this indicates a Google algorithm update. This is not an algorithm update - it indicates an internal update in how Google is measuring search traffic. Your numbers before and after the update may look different, but this is because Google has essentially changed how they calculate your search traffic for reporting purposes. Your actual ranking and traffic have not changed due to these updates. The latest updated happened on April 27th and is described by Google on this page: Data anomalies in Search Console Given the historical connotations of "update" in reference to Google search, this is a poor choice of words and I've contacted the Webmaster Team about it. 2CsyN7Q
Algorithm Updates | | Dr-Pete12 -
Rel=Canonical Tag on Homepage
I have a Rel=canonical Tag (link rel="canonical" href="htttps://homepage.com") on the homepage. Could this possibly have a negative effect? is it necessary?
Algorithm Updates | | JMSCC0 -
Rel canonical
Hi, Since we sorted all duplication issues using the rel canonical tag in the home page, and redirects in the htaccess file, our Moz Ranking has dropped markedly (possibly because there are now less apparent links on our site. At the same time our rankings and traffic from Google have dropped markedly. I notice that none of our top ranking competitors are using the rel canonical tag in the source on their home pages. We have just performed the same seo strategy on another unrelated site with the same immediate drop in MOZ ranking.
Algorithm Updates | | FFTCOUK0 -
Google Algorithm Update .. Author-rank finally kicking in ?
These few days I've been seeing great movement of my sites growing by 70-100% in traffic spikes. Some how I think this has something to do with AuthorRank maybe kicking in now as more of a factor in rankings? Anyone have an idea whats going on ?
Algorithm Updates | | NikolasNikolaou0 -
ECommerce site being "filtered" by last Panda update, ideas and discussion
Hello fellow internet go'ers! Just as a disclaimer, I have been following a number of discussions, articles, posts, etc. trying to find a solution to this problem, but have yet to get anything conclusive. So I am reaching out to the community for help. Before I get into the questions I would like to provide some background: I help a team manage and improve a number of med-large eCommerce websites. Traffic ranges anywhere from 2K - 12K+ (per day) depending on the site. Back in March one of our larger sites was "filtered" from Google's search results. I say "filtered" because we didn't receive any warnings and our domain was/is still listed in the first search position. About 2-3 weeks later another site was "filtered", and then 1-2 weeks after that, a third site. We have around ten niche sites (in total), about seven of them share an identical code base (about an 80% match). This isn't that uncommon, since we use a CMS platform to manage all of our sites that holds hundreds of thousands of category and product pages. Needless to say, April was definitely a frantic month for us. Many meetings later, we attributed the "filter" to duplicate content that stems from our product data base and written content (shared across all of our sites). We decided we would use rel="canonical" to address the problem. Exactly 30 days from being filtered our first site bounced back (like it was never "filtered"), however, the other two sites remain "under the thumb" of Google. Now for some questions: Why would only 3 of our sites be affected by this "filter"/Panda if many of them share the same content? Is it a coincidence that it was an exact 30 day "filter"? Why has only one site recovered?
Algorithm Updates | | WEB-IRS1 -
Has Google problems in indexing pages that use <base href=""> the last days?
Since a couple of days I have the problem, that Google Webmaster tools are showing a lot more 404 Errors than normal. If I go thru the list I find very strange URLs that look like two paths put together. For example: http://www.domain.de/languages/languageschools/havanna/languages/languageschools/london/london.htm If I check on which page Google found that path it is showing me the following URL: http://www.domain.de/languages/languageschools/havanna/spanishcourse.htm If I check the source code of the Page for the Link leading to the London Page it looks like the following: [...](languages/languageschools/london/london.htm) So to me it looks like Google is ignoring the <base href="..."> and putting the path together as following: Part 1) http://www.domain.de/laguages/languageschools/havanna/ instead of base href Part 2) languages/languageschools/london/london.htm Result is the wrong path! http://www.domain.de/languages/languageschools/havanna/languages/languageschools/london/london.htm I know finding a solution is not difficult, I can use absolute paths instead of relative ones. But: - Does anyone make the same experience? - Do you know other reasons which could cause such a problem? P.s.: I am quite sure that the CMS (Typo3) is not generating these paths randomly. I would like to be sure before we change the CMS's Settings to absolute paths!
Algorithm Updates | | SimCaffe0