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.

Facebook Plans To Adjust Real-Name Policy Enforcement To Address Concerns

Facebook Plans To Adjust Real-Name Policy Enforcement To Address Concerns

Facebook’s chief product officer met with a group representing those angered by the company’s recent action against the accounts of a number of prominent drag performers and apologized. Later, he posted an apology in a **public Facebook post:

I want to apologize to the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender,

and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community for the hardship that we’ve put you through in dealing with your Facebook accounts over the past few weeks.
In the two weeks since the real-name policy issues surfaced,

we’ve had the chance to hear from many of you in these communities and understand the policy more clearly as you experience it.

We’ve also come to understand how painful this has been.

We owe you a better service and a better experience using Facebook, and we’re going to fix the way this policy gets handled so everyone affected here can go back to using Facebook as you were.

 ** Facebook has asked users whose identities are questioned to provide proof with some form of ID, a drivers license, library card,
 piece of mail, etc. 

 Our policy has never been to require everyone on Facebook to use their legal name. The spirit of our policy is that everyone on Facebook uses the authentic name they use in real life. For Sister Roma, that’s Sister Roma. For Lil Miss Hot Mess, that’s Lil Miss Hot Mess. Part of what’s been so difficult about this conversation is that we support both of these individuals, and so many others affected by this, completely and utterly in how they use Facebook. 

Cox promised that Facebook will build better tools for reporting and enforcing the policy and improve customer service for accounts that have been flagged.

And it appears that the apology and promise to do better were well received by the angered parties. Mark Snyder, senior communications manager for the Transgender Law Center, attended the meeting today at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters and said Cox seemed sincere.

Your Social Media Strategy: Where Do You START

Your Social Media Strategy: Where Do You START

When I work with businesses, there is often an enthusiastic attitude about moving on to the social web but confusion about how to actually get started. Today’s post provides a step-by-step overview on how to move ahead.

 And by the way, your social media initiative doesn’t start with a Facebook page. It must start with …

1. Marketing strategy

2. Assess the company culture 

3. Social media lead team

4. Social media policy

5. Identify sources of rich content

6. Considering social media measurement

7. Develop a social media network strategy

8. Information eco-system

Build a Strong Social-Media Presence

Build a Strong Social-Media Presence

Running a social-media strategy is just like any other process: It takes time. There are no shortcuts, you just need to be agile.

So when you decide to join social media, make sure that your strategy is not just “post and run”.  Be active in the community, follow and reply to your customers. True, there are times when you do not have access to the Internet and you are just happy to be able to get a post out, but to me, that would be the exception. For instance, if you were traveling, you may not have access to the online world 100 percent of the time, but even then, you should check in and respond as soon as possible.

  Another one of my favorite social-media suggestions is to limit your tweets per day.  I’ll admit that I used to tweet way too much, but I now post about one per hour on average.  (That is, unless I am working on promoting an event or participating on a chat.) Do what works best for you but moderation is always a good rule to follow, as it is nice to give your audience a break.

 The Ultimate Guide to Outreach on Social Media

Also, you don't always have to broadcast from your social-media page; you can say your piece by commenting on others’ social-media channels.  I usually hop on all my social channels and watch what others are up to and really engage with them. Try to comment rather than just like or re-tweet, because that does not open the door to starting a conversation.

 Reconsider have all your social-media posts automated. If I hand-selected the content and want to share this with my followers globally but just can't do it right now, it is sometimes better to wait.  I’ve noticed that my fans do not have a problem with me responding at a later time.  We cannot possibly acknowledge, return or reciprocate every social-media transaction, but I do the best that I can.

How Much Time People Spend On The Major Social Networks

How Much Time People Spend On The Major Social Networks

We tend to talk about social networks in terms of size, because audience reach is one of social media’s biggest advantages. That’s why Facebook gets so much attention. With 1.2 billion monthly active users, it’s a beast

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Here are our findings: 

• Social is now the top Internet activity: Americans spend more time on social media than any other major Internet activity, including email.
• Social-mobile rules: 60% or so of social media time is spent not on desktop computers but on smartphones and tablets.  
• Facebook attracts roughly seven times the engagement that Twitter does, when looking at both smartphone and PC usage, in per-user terms. 
• Snapchat is a smaller network than WhatsApp, but outpaces it in terms of time-spend per user. 
• Pinterest, Tumblr and LinkedIn made major successful pushes last year to increase engagement on their mobile sites and apps. The new race in social media is not for audience per se, but for multi-device engagement.