How can i get the Authors photo to show in the Google search result?

[irvingw]

I added the rel="author" tags to the blog posts last week and updated the authors page with a link to the Google+ account, but I have yet to see the authors photo surface in the Google Results.

Example URL: http://spotlight.vitals.com/2011/10/dr-richelle-cooper-testifies-against-dr-conrad-murray-in-trial/

Can anyone identify what else needs to be done?

[diywm]

I know this is an old post, but when I tested that link in the rich snippets testing tool, it doesn't appear to have valid markup. So until that is fixed the photo won't show ....

[BeTheBoss]

I've been battling with this regularly… there is no transparency so it's really hard to tell.

I have implemented it and this is what I have found, it's inconsistent. haha. I set up Authorship for all of my co-workers to ensure it was done correctly. All mark up is exactly the same and this is how it panned out:

**1. Myself - Authorship/Picture works: **

• I rarely post articles.
• Picture is a professional headshot.
• The article I posted didn't receive much traffic at all
• Was mostly just a test on myself to make sure it worked.
• Don't have an outstanding amount of Twitter/G+ followers.

2. Co-worker - Authorship/Picture works:

• Wrote an article that has received a lot of traffic.
• Hasn't written many articles - but more than myself.
• Picture is professional headshot.
• Doesn't have an outstanding amount of Twitter/G+ followers - but more than me.

3. My Boss - Authorship/Picture doesn't work:

• Writes articles regularly that receive a lot of traffic and show up consistently in Google News
• Originally picture wasn't professional (we recently changed this to headshot - no diff)
• Has a lot of Twitter followers, not a lot of G+ followers.

3. Contributor - Authorship/Picture doesn't work:

• Writes articles for major Canadian National News website - Financial Post.
• Writes articles regularly that receive a lot of traffic and show up consistently in Google News
• Professional headshot.
• Doesn't have an outstanding amount of Twitter/G+ followers.

All articles are shared equally over Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and email. At first it was the picture that made the difference, but I think I might be wrong on that now? There are probably multiple reasons why it works for some and not for others… like their other Algorithms.

So don't be upset, it's not you – it's them. haha.

[gfiorelli1]

That seems indicating that an "authorship value" is maybe needed, at least at this moment.

[irvingw]

Thanks to everyone for responding. I don't see anything amiss with my code, so it sounds like I just need to be patient.

[KeriMorgret]

I need to check internally, but I think Moz has set this up for several of their authors and yet Rand seems to be the only one whose image consistently shows in the SERPs despite everything else being the same.

[RyanKent]

To build on what Gianluca shared, a two-way link is required for the author's photo to appear. You need to link from your Google+ profile to your author page on the site which published your work, and a link back from your author page on that site to your Google+ profile. This implementation uses the rel=author approach.

There are a couple other means by which you can implement the process. Full details can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=1408986

If you do not see it working after the page has been crawled, I would check all aspects of your setup. You can also try each of the three implementation methods suggested in the above link.

[gfiorelli1]

What do you need is patience... Google is still not showing all the authors photos. Mine neither

Wait... did you put the link from the G+ profile to the author page specifying that it is about you (rel="me")?

That is needed too in order to then appear with the photo snippet.