Google authorship has become an important part of promoting yourself and your content through Google. Once you have configured authorship correctly, your profile image will be displayed on all of your websites and articles in Google’s search engine results. This raises your profile and encourages more people to click on your search listings.
Setting up Google authorship is easy. All you have to do is:
- Link your Google+ profile to the content that you create
- Link to your Google+ profile using <a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google</a>. For example, I use <a href=”http://plus.google.com/110549232980674026623?rel=author”>Google</a>.
- Edit your Google+ contributor section and add all websites you own and write for.
Once you have completed the above steps, you can verify that everything has been completed correctly using the Structured Data Testing Tool.
What if Your Google+ Profile Is Not Showing in Google Search Results?
I noticed months ago that my Google+ profile was not showing on search results. I had set everything up correctly and verified my configuration through the Structured Data Testing Tool. Yet my profile was still not shown in search engine results.
This was very frustrating. I asked for help from several people including Mike from WP Hub and Sam and Kevin from WP Squared. They had no idea why my profile was not showing on Google as everything was set up correctly.
Sam emailed me yesterday and told me that he might have the solution. When he was uploading a new photo to Google+, he got a warning that his face was too far away. I had never gotten any warning from Google about my photo, however the photo I had uploaded for my Google+ profile last year was not close up. I never thought that this would ever be a problem as Google never ever brought the issue up.
Sam emailed me the link to a great article by Greg Finn entitled “Google Authorship Not Showing Up? Try These 14 Tips To Get Authorship Working For You“.
The article lists fourteen ways why a Google+ profile would not show in search results. Most of the reasons given were related to the profile photograph used. If a user is too far away or is wearing a hat or sunglasses, their Google+ profile will not show correctly (my old photo was far away and I had sunglasses on!!)
I decided to give it a shot and changed my old photo:
To one where my face was more visible:
My profile is now being shown on all my search results:
One of the great things about authorship is that once your profile is showing, you can change your image at any time and it will be updated on all Google search results instantly.
If you have had problems with your Google+ profile showing, I recommend reviewing your profile image. It may just be the thing that is stopping your profile from being displayed.
Thanks again to Sam at WP Squared for resolving this issue for me.
Kevin