How soon before author rank becomes a major ranking factor?
-
Hi,
I wanted to pose a question
How soon do guys think itll be before author rank becomes a one of Googles major ranking factors?
From what I can see the way they have designed it signals that it is only matter of time, before they start using it as a major ranking factor...
And I have a question on Author ranks impact on the ability to sell a blog/site in the future. Surely if the blog is tied to an author(s) and the ranking of the site in the search engine is somewhat based on this authors author rank who is a part of the site/blog, then it becomes harder to sell the property if the author is not going to be a part of the property after the sale?.
I look forward to your responses on this,
-
Good response Paul.
-
A.J. Kohn just posted last week about how, from his information, the Authorship Project at Google is actually dead. Not that the concept of authorship is going away completely, but that there will be "a change in tactics from Authorship markup to entity extraction as a way to identify experts and a pathway to using Authorship as a ranking signal."
http://moz.com/community/q/trending-bugs-in-moz-analyticsIt's a really interesting read, and makes great sense, especially considering the direction Hummingbird has taken toward improving the Knowledge Graph. Given the amount of work still ahead on the entity extraction process, I suspect it will some time (a year?) before we start seeing authorship elements begin impacting rankings. And with the way the SERP pages are going, by then there may not be any actual "ranking" process to speak of.
As far as "ranking of of sites in search engines" with regard to selling sites, etc... Google essentially tries to rank pages, not sites. Obviously a site's other pages benefit from the halo effect of other strong pages and brand recognition, but if we follow their logic on author influence, as long as the "good" author's content remains on the site, it should still rank, regardless of whether or not the author still writes for that site (see current implementation of Authorship and how it references sites and author as a "former contributor").
I suspect the algorithm may be taught how to detect when the newer content on a site isn't as "influential" or trustworthy as the older content, and adjust the "halo effect" accordingly.
Google's got their work cut out for them to implement some sort of "authority ranking" (my term) that takes into account the famous, but doesn't burn the smart but lesser-knowns the way their current focus on big brands burns the often-more-valuable smaller sites.
As Takeshi says - building authority and trust in all the organic ways possible is a beneficial strategy, regardless of the specifics of how authorship plays out.
Good question, and as always in web marketing... interesting times ahead.
Paul
-
This is definitely on Google's todo list, but who knows when it will be an actual factor. As AJ Kohn says, build your authority, not your authorank. Focus on becoming an authority in your niche, and you will see benefits for SEO & your business regardless of whether Google implements authorank or not. And if they do, you should be well positioned to take advantage of it.
There are definitely things you can do to prepare for the coming changes (build up your profile on Google+, use rel=author on content you create, create a Wikipedia page), but as far when Google will roll it out, I doubt even Google's engineers know about it at this point.
As far as selling a blog, the question of author has always been an issue. If a famous author sells their blog to someone less well known, will people still read it? As far as search, the impact of authorrank should be minimal, all the old posts would still have the authorship boost of the old author, only newly authored posts would not. If the blog has a high enough authority, I could even see people buying blogs to increase their own authority in the niche.
-
This is something that I've had many heated debates about, but I think I proved that Author Rank is a factor, and this is how I did it...and it was a mistake by the way. But you could try it too.
(Unfortunately, because my client data is confidential, I can't share too many intimate details.)
I had a client who has a responsive WP theme. However, they have so much content, the responsive theme just isn't the best solution-- not as good as a mobile site-- for this particular client.
I put up a mobile site at mobile.example.com and I set up the canonical link to point to the main domain, just as it should. The mobile site was also a WP site.
However, when I made the mobile site, I accidentally left myself as the author. (I built the mobile site before I added the site owner as a user.)
A couple of weeks later, MY FACE started appearing in the Google results instead of the attorney. In other words, the attorney used to rank on page 2 for "What are the consequences of DUI in Arizona?"
And it was at something like: example.com/consequences-dui-az-something
But suddenly mobile.example.com/consequences-dui-az-something appeared on page one of Google, with my face. The rankings changed and Google preferred to believe that I was the author, rather than the attorney with his brand new authorship.
So even though I added duplicate content and a canonical tag, Google preferred the content that was authored by me, and chose to display that over the identical content that the attorney wrote and had been previously indexed and given author credit for. All of a sudden, the mobile site took precedence. When I changed authorship back to the attorney, rankings dropped slightly again and Google chose to display the MAIN site (as it should have), rather than the mobile.
I don't care what anyone (even Matt Cutts) says about Authorship. I've seen a real life example. Perhaps they are using it in certain markets and not others. But when it comes to attorneys, my primary client, I've seen it matter.
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
-
Huge difference between GSC ranking and browser ranking for certain keywords: How to proceed?
Hi, There is a huge ranking difference between the GSC and browser for our primary keyword. As per GSC, our ranking is around 15 and when checking on the multiple different incognito browsers it's around 50. How to handle this? Which is the accurate one? Product expert from Google forums claim that what I see on browsers are the personalized results; but I tried on different browsers with different connections. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Internal pages ranking over the homepage: How to optimise to rank better at Google?
Hi, We have experienced a shift in SERP from internal pages ranking over website homepage for more than a year. Previously website homepages used to rank for the primary keyword like moz.com for "SEO". Now we can see that internal pages like moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo been ranking for the primary keyword "SEO". Google is picking up these "what is ABC" pages than the homepage. All our competitor sites are ranking with these internal pages which are about "what is (primary keyword)". We do have the same internal pages "what is....", but this pages is not ranking; only our homepage is ranking. Moreover we dropped more than 15 positions after this shift in SERP. How to diagnose this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Consistent drop every time after ranking good for few days: Same experience?
Hi all, We been facing this ranking fluctuation issue for over an year. Every time we made some changes for better optimisation. We improve rank but eventually drop after few days. Most of the changes we employed are On-page like page loading, fixing broken links & redirects, page titles optimisation, etc. When can see the ranking improvement for our main keywords and related keywords for a while and we drop with in a week eventually. I wonder if someone face the same issue and any thoughts on this scenario? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Issue with Category Ranking on Page 1 vs. Homepage Ranking on Page 2
A client has a high-volume keyword that is rendering different results, whether it is on page one or page two of Google SERPs. If the keyword is on page one, ONLY the category page is ranking. When the keyword bumps off to page two, BOTH the category AND the homepage are ranking. This is happening on our IP and theirs, incognito and personalized searches. This has been happening since February. Any thought/insights would be greatly appreciated, thank you!!!!
Algorithm Updates | | accpar0 -
How to Interpret Rankings Decline
My website operates in 14 languages, and overall we have not seen a decrease in traffic (hard to measure because we are very vulnerable to external factors) I started using AWR about a month ago and in that time have seen the following changes in my visibility for some of my major markets: Nothing major in either direction, but any advice of how to delve deeper to find an explanation for the markets that are decreasing? UK: 15% ->13% RU: 25 -> 26% AU: 25% -> 21% DE: 18% - 19% ES: 11% -> 10% SE: 42% -> 44%
Algorithm Updates | | theLotter0 -
Is Moz Domain Authority still relvant when it comes to Google ranking?
My understanding of Moz DA is that it is predominantly based on external links. Since Penguin I am noticing more and more websites ranking high in Google with a "low" number of links and certainly a low DA but quality and relevancy of content and also of offering. I understand that there was always more to ranking than DA but is it anymore even relevant to how a site will rank in Google?
Algorithm Updates | | halloranc0 -
3 Subdomains - Can their authority or ranking affect each other?
HI, We have 3 different subdomains that target completely different industries.
Algorithm Updates | | danialniazi
a.example.com - school reviews
b.example.com - healthcare reviews
c.example.com - car reviews Q1: If any of the above subdomains gets demoted or penalized by Google would that affect the other subdomains? Q2: Moving forward with all the new changes in SEO, penalties, etc; would it be wise to utilize 3 subdomains for different industries or should we consider getting separate domains?0 -
Google.uk rankings plummet, .com improves. What to do?
Hey Guys, Seems so much has changed with international SEO I'm not sure what to do with our site. We have a huge site with many country level landing pages that perform very well on google.com searches (IE; keyword + Jamaica) etc. We are not using a .co.uk version of our site and now our rankings have plummeted in the UK. Should we just make a .co.uk with similar (or the exact same content) or is there some newer strategy to follow?
Algorithm Updates | | iAnalyst.com0