Google Authorship May Be Dead, But Author Rank Is Not

Google Authorship May Be Dead, But Author Rank Is Not

Google ended its three-year experiment with Google Authorship yesterday, but the use of Author Rank to improve search results will continue.

 Wait — you can have Author Rank without Google Authorship? And just what is Google Authorship versus Author Rank? Come along,

 because they are different things — and Author Rank lives on

What Google Authorship Was

Google Authorship was primarily Google’s way to allow the authors of content to identify themselves for display purposes. You asserted it by making use of “markup,” code hidden from human view but within web pages.

 Google extended from this original idea to link it tightly with Google+, as a step to create a Google-controlled system of identifying authors and managing identities.

Those making use of Google Authorship were largely rewarded by having author names and images appear next to stories. That was the big draw,

 especially when Google suggested that stories with authorship display might draw more clicks. 

What Author Rank Is

Separately from Google Authorship is the idea of Author Rank, where if Google knows who authored a story, it might somehow alter the rankings of that story, perhaps give it a boost if authored by someone deemed trustworthy.

Author Rank isn’t actually Google’s term.

 It’s a term that the SEO community has assigned to the concept in general.

 It especially got renewed attention after Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt talked about the idea of ranking verified authors higher in search results, in his 2013 book

Author Rank Is Real — And Continues!

Schmidt was just speculating in his book, not describing anything that was actually happening at Google.

 From Google itself, there was talk several times last year of making use of Author Rank as a way to identify subject experts and somehow boost them in the search results

Author Rank Without Authorship

Now that Google Authorship is dead, how can Google keep using Author Rank in the limited form it has confirmed? Or is that now dead, too? And does this mean other ways Author Rank might get used are also dead?

Google told us that dropping Google Authorship shouldn’t have an impact on how the In-depth articles section works. Google also said that the dropping of Google Authorship won’t impact its other efforts to explore how authors might get rewarded.