Is Google Authorship Markup working for your pages? – Solution

Google Authorship is a great way to get yourself recognized. It allows bloggers and webmasters to add a personal touch to their site’s search results returned to the casual searcher. Normally, search results return the title of a webpage, along with an excerpt based on the search query. But Google Authorship lets bloggers and webmasters associate a Google Plus profile with their websites, so that the content can be identified, and credited to a ‘real’ person. To that end, Google will return the display image as a thumbnail of the associated Google Plus profile. Aside from the thumbnail on the left, you can also get a larger image on the right along with some profile information.

Having your image appear in Google search results isn’t just about the bling. It serves other, more important purposes. Having an associated image with search results gives a site more authority, and increases click-through-rate for that website. Also, it establishes you as the owner of the website, thus preventing anyone else taking the credit on social profiles and other places online.

Adding Google Authorship to your blog

For WordPress blogs

On the website level, there’s just a few things you need to do in order to get verified. For WordPress blogs, it’s really simple, since there are tonnes of plugins that will help you with it. I have used WP Google Authorship, and I’ve found n reason to complain about it. Simply install it, and go to Users >> Your Profile in the WordPress menu. Add a link to your Google Plus profile in the given field, and Save the changes. Now, all you need to do is add the short code [googleplusauthor] anywhere on your page, or adding this line of code in your theme file. (You can add it to the header.php file of your theme).

<?php if ( function_exists( ‘google_plus_author’ ) ) { google_plus_author(); } ?>

For Blogger blogs

For Blogger blogs, it’s a bit more complicated. First, you’ll have to add the following line of code anywhere on your pages (sidebar or footer is recommended). Just replace Google Plus Profile Link with your own profile link, and change the text from ‘Join me on Google+’ to anything you want.

<a href=”Google Plus profile Link”
rel=”author” target=”_blank”> Join me on Google+</a>

Next, add a link to your About page as shown below

<a rel=”author” href=”http://www.example.com/about-us.html”>About</a>

To further enforce your identity, add a rel=”me” attribute to a link to your Google Plus profile, as shown below.

<a rel=”me” href=https://plus.google.com/107381172453188253394title=”Mohammad Mustafa Ahmedzai“>Mohammad</a>

Get active on Google Plus

Google Authorship is all about Google plus. To Google, a person who doesn’t have a Google Plus profile doesn’t exist, which is why you need to create a Google Plus profile, and get active with it.

For Authorship to work correctly, you not only have to link from your website to your profile, but vice-versa as well. Log into Google Plus, and View your profile. Go to the About tab, and click on Edit Profile at the top. Scroll below, and you’ll see a section ‘Contributor To’. Click on it, and add a link to your website there. It’ll also help if you fill out the ‘Other Profiles’ section with links to your social media profiles.

The next step is to make your +1’s public. Go to this link http://profiles.google.com/me/plusones, and click on Edit Profile. Check the box that says ‘Show this tab on your profile’, and click Save. Now you’re (almost) ready to go.

We have so far covered the theory. But even after completing these steps, your image might not be displaying. The problem could be your image itself. It should be squarish, so that Google won’t have to re-size it much. A resolution of 128×128, or 150×150 would be best. But feel free to upload large images in Google Plus, so long as they are squarish.

To get your image on the right side of search results, along with some profile information, requires a bit more work. You need to be active on Google plus for this to work. Share posts on Google plus, +1 stuff, and participate in conversations. The more the better. Take a look at how the profile image and information is displayed, along with all your posts on your site. Get active if you want something like this for yourself 🙂

Testing it out

Once you’ve taken all the steps necessary, it’s time to test out the results in Google’s Rich Snippets Tool. Simply enter a URL, say of your author page, and see how it’d be displayed in search results. If you don’t see your thumbnail image, then you might need to read through this tutorial again.

Oh, and remember one thing. It’ll take Google some time before your image appears. And even so, Google doesn’t guarantee that your rich snippet will be displayed. So be patient, and keep your fingers crossed 🙂

This is just one step every blogger needs to take in order to create his identity, and make his website look more real with a human touch. If you have questions regarding the process, feel free to contact us. We’ll be glad to help 🙂