Google are taking it social and you might wonder why some search results are now showing the author of the result and others are not (this is different to the “Richard Mackney shared this” that you might see if you follow me). In the above example Edgar Cervantes is clearly attributed with writing the post and his Google+ avatar appears under the result.
This also applies to YouTube video search results – you can see below that Phil Campbell is listed as the author.
If you want to appear in results in this way then you need to ensure that all of your profiles have verified authorship and that means cross linking your Google+, YouTube and Blog.
Firstly, you should ensure that you have added your Google+ profile to your YouTube profile page as shown above. You’ll need to tick the box to show the World that you are the author of both accounts.
Then you need to ensure that you have your Google+ profile page set correctly, and this means splitting out your links in ‘Other profiles’ and ‘Contributor to’. As seen above, I’ve listed my main profiles (including YouTube) and listed that I am a contributor to this blog you are reading.
On your Blog you need to make sure that each one of your posts verifies you as the author and you can to do this with two steps. Firstly you need to tell Google who the author of the post/page is and this can be done by adding the rel=”author” to a link that appears on every page of your site. For me, that is my ‘About me’ page. If you use WordPress you can enable the ‘Link Relationship’ within the menu section and then you simply add the words ‘author’ into the box provided on your link item.
Secondly you need to make sure that the ‘About me’ page includes a link (text or image) to your Google+ profile with the following tag:
<a href="[profile_url]?rel=author">Google</a>
Once you have done this you can test the result with Google’s Rich Snippets Testing Tool as seen above.
If anyone notices their search results with me listed as an author, then leave a comment so I know it’s starting to work! 🙂
Update: Wahooo….
And a little later …
Great post. I like the idea of this. Need to get linking my accounts 🙂
Let me know how you get on 🙂
No worries. I will do. I’ve linked my Youtube account. Just need to split out my profiles in google+ about me page but I think I need to find a new home for the blogs 1st. Not sure that Skrivr is for me and I’m not too keen on going back to self hosting…..
Maybe you could look at the WordPress.com Value Bundle ($99 a year) Domain Name & Mapping, 10GB Space Upgrade, No Ads, Custom Design, VideoPress ?
I looked at that but I’m a bit of a tight Scotsman when it comes to that been so used to getting a descent services for ‘free’ and all that 😉
Thank you for this. I had been wondering how people had been getting their profile pics on google. I’ve signed back up to Google+.