Google Publisher status

[davidmaxwell]

Hi all, I just wondered what the general opinion was with regard getting Google publisher status for medium to large organisations. Lots of our clients write a lot of articles & publications and it would be interesting to get some thoughts on how others view Authorship & in particular Publisher credentials.

Thanks!

[davidmaxwell]

Many thanks for your reply and suggestions, you have certainly shed some light on the situation and the article mentioned was excellent, a great resource. Thanks again!

[SamuelScott]

First, I'd look at this great essay by Mark Trapenhagen (a speaker at this year's MozCon and renowned expert on Google+, by the way) to get some background on authorship following Google's removal of author photos. Here's a summary of his final points:

1. Authors still matter

2. Bylines are not invisible

3. Author and publisher images still appear in personalized search

4. Authorship builds your "author" data in Google

5. Google remains committed to author authority in search

This final point, I think, is most important. When I was at SMX West, a Google executive hinted that Google is looking into some type of "Author Rank" in the future. Mark has more thoughts here.

Building the Google+ profiles of both organizations and individuals is very important for the future. While there are a lot of problems with any "Author Rank" -- people trying to misapply it, assign it to inappropriate pages, and incorrectly implement it -- but once Google can figure that out, I would bet that they will use it.

So, starting yesterday, I would use publisher markup for the organization's brands and authorship markup for the individuals who write for those organizations. It's that that difficult to setup, and I would bet that the returns will be great -- as long as you keep producing quality content and building the organizational and individual brands!