How To Claim Your Authorship With Google
81News:
In April 2012 HubPages changed the format of all Hubs in the Technology Category and inadvertently lost the Google Authorship markup. I reported this bug in the forum on the "New Hub Design" forum. All other Hubs still pass authorship markup.
This problem has since been corrected. As other categories are changed, we have to be sure HP doesn't make the same mistake. You can test the status of your own hubs yourself with Google's Rich Snippets Test Tool as explained in this Hub. Report any issues you may discover.
By Late Summer 2012 HubPages will change our profiles to include the ability to add links to other profiles, including a link to our Google profile. This should make this task of claiming authorship a lot easier, assuming they include the markup I discuss here.
Complete Google Authorship Instructions
In order to build a reputation for all the content you're writing, you need to let Google know that you are the author of your content. This could help enhance traffic to your articles.
Google has created a way for you to do this with "Google Authorship Markup."
It basically is a connection of links between all your individual author profiles and your Google Profile.
There are two types of Google profiles…
- A regular Google profile where you can specify certain information about yourself and a list of links to all the sites where you write articles, blogs, etc.
- A Google+ profile which is the same thing except that it’s part of the new Google+ Social Network, similar to Facebook. But becoming a member of Google's social network is not necessary for declaring your authorship. Just a plain Google Profile will do just fine.
If you use Google AdSense or Google Analytics or even just have a gmail account, then you already have a Google Profile. Just log into your Google account and click on the "Profile" link.
Once you complete a Google Profile, you declare your authorship by creating a two-way link between your articles and your Google Profile. The two-way link proves that you are the author since no one else can create the links in both directions but you. So no one else can claim ownership to your work.
Before you have a nervous breakdown wondering how you can link hundreds of articles you've already written, let me put your mind at ease. There is a shortcut...
You most likely have a profile page on each site you write on, such as your HubPages profile. Well, you only need to link your profile page to your Google Profile and back again.
You see? It’s your profiles that link to one another. All of your articles just need to link to your profile on that same site.
And guess what? HubPages has already done that part for you! And Squidoo and Wizzley have too!
See my illustration in Figure 1. See how it works? Your articles, blogs or whatever content you've created point to your author profile to show that you are the author. Then each author profile links (in both directions) with your Google Profile to indicate that it is "me." I mean "you." Oh, you know what I mean!
Authorship Markup - What It Is And How To Use It
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Back around July 2011 Google announced that they began supporting the authorship markup tags that existed in the HTML standards. (HTML is the language that's used to create web pages). The tags for this are the rel="author" tag in HTML5 and the XFN rel=”me” tag. But they improved on it by creating a way to actually prove an author's identity by implementing a reciprocal link to and from one's Google Profile.
The rel="author" tag is used to point all content pages to one's author page if they have one. Then all author pages can point to each other with a rel="me" tag as I've indicated in Figure 1 above.
All this linking is done in HTML. But as time goes on many sites are doing this for you in the background, and making it easy to specify your Google Profile without getting involved with HTML programming. I'll explain the details of the HTML requirements for those who want to know. And then I'll explain how various sites are implementing easier solutions, or at least alternatives. But let's start with what this markup is all about. You can jump down to the specific section that applies to you if you want to skip the details.
As you can see, Google’s Authorship Markup is a series of links that lets you point your content to your author profile, your author profile to your Google Profile, and a reciprocal link from Google back again to your local profile to prove it's really your content.
A similar link in your Google Profile links back to the individual author pages. Google places that rel="me" tag in the HTML for you. All you need to do is add the URL's of all your other profiles to your Google Profile. They will then be listed on your profile page as in Figure 2.
If you happen to write content on a site where you don't have an author profile, you can point your content pages direct to your Google Profile.
You still need a two-way link to prove it's really you. In that case the reciprocal link simply points back to the home page of that site. Just add URL's of the home page of those sites under Contributor To as shown in Figure 2.
I'll show you how to do all that in a moment.
What Are The Benefits of Authorship Markup?
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Authorship Markup has some powerful and important benefits. It gives people who are searching for information the ability to learn more about an author and find all their work on the Internet.
The main goal Google has is to identify and highlight high quality content. (Source: Sagar Kamdar, Product Manager at Google).
Many of us who write content online have been victims of having our work stolen and republished somewhere else. Authorship Markup also creates a form of protection from plagiarism, although this is the least important reason for establishing your Authorship. The main goal above is what Google had in mind.
Hopefully the steps Google is taking will help enhance an author's experience. If one writes quality content and some of their content is not getting the attention it deserves, the association of all content with the author should help. Your higher ranking content may actually help your other content that hasn't gotten the same attention from Google.
Initial Implementation By Google
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Those of you who may have been the first to attempt to implement this will notice changes to the original code and to your Google Profile. If you had read old blogs on the subject that have not been updated, you may even get confused. This is the nature of being beta testers.
I was one of the first to implement the authorship markup on a few sites, so I saw what was going on. I'll tell you what happened. Unfortunately, when all this started, Google quickly discovered problems that needed to be considered.
People complained that they didn't have control over HTML programming on some sites. But they did have the ability to enter URL addresses. So Google added a new method that would work on sites that only provided a URL field but did not allow HTML. But they also kept the initial method so as not to break what people already had done. I followed along in forums and saw how people were getting confused between the two methods.
These two methods are so different that it confused some people even more. I'll get into all that and I'll try not to confuse you. I'll let you know what parts you need to understand and what parts are actually done for you.
As a computer programmer myself, I have been able to interpret Google's instructions and have successfully implemented Google's Authorship Markup on several websites. So I know how it works and now I'm going to show you.
Terminology to Understand
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Allow me to explain a little terminology so that you'll be able to follow along easier.
Google uses the word "content" to refer to your articles, blogs, hubs, or any page that you create. They use the term "author page" to refer to your profile page. That is, any page that describes who you are.
On HubPages, all your Hubs are content pages and your Profile is your Author page.
How To Implement Google Authorship Markup In HTML
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In HTML you can pass information in several ways. One way is to use the "rel" parameter with a tag. This can only be done in HTML.
Another way is to use URL parameters. This is useful if you don't have access to HTML coding as long as you can still enter a URL in a field so that the URL is placed in the HTML link for you. I'll get into that later.
If you have access to the HTML, create a link that points to your author page on all your content pages, as in this example...
<a href="http://your.author.page" rel="author">Your Name</a>
Then in your author page create a link that points to your Google Profile similar to the following example...
<a href="https://profiles.google.com/11111111" rel="me">Your Name</a>
...where 11111111 is your Google-ID.
The only other thing you need to do is add a link in your Google Profile that points back to your author page on that content site. I'll show you that later.
How To Use The Alternative Method Using URL Parameters
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As I mentioned, Google introduced an alternative for those who write content on sites that don't allow including his or her own HTML code.
In most cases, they still provide a way to enter just a link with a URL. So Google took advantage of an HTML standard using the "?" to append a parameter to the URL. Such as…
https://profiles.google.com/11111111?rel=author
You can use that to point your Author Profile to your Google Profile. But note the discrepancy. Google says that the tag on the rel parameter should be "me" when pointing any profile to another profile. But with this alternative method they made it "author".
You need to also have an anchor with a plus sign at the start or end of that anchor, such as “Google+” or “+My Google Profile”.
So what they want is HTML that looks like this...
<a href="https://profiles.google.com/11111111?rel=author">Google+</a>
...where 11111111 is your Google-ID.
But since you're not entering HTML, you just need to be able to enter the URL and the anchor. If your site does not have a way to enter these two items, then you're still stuck. On HubPages the anchor is the text that you highlight when you make it a hyperlink.
[Update Feb 2012] I have discovered that when using the alternative method, Google does not always include an author's image in the search results, although author attribution is still accomplished if you do it right. Google also suggests that you have a high-quality head shot to be eligible for inclusion in search results.
Where I was able to use HTML and apply the original rel="me" method, I had no trouble getting my image to appear.
[Update April 2012] I noticed that Google just started listing all Hubs with the author's photo for all who followed these directions. Congratulations to you all.
Three Common Mistakes People Make
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[1] As I check to see how my readers are doing, I have noticed that some are not using the correct URL for their Google Profile.They copy and paste the entire URL from their browser when they are on their Google Profile page. This may end up giving you something like this...
https://profiles.google.com/11111111/about?hl=en?rel=author
... and that is just WRONG.
Your Google ID should be the end of the URL. Drop anything after that. Drop the "/about?hl=en"
Add "?rel=author" immediately after your Google ID. So you should end up with ...
https://profiles.google.com/11111111?rel=author
[2] Another mistake I see a lot, is confusing rel=me with rel=author with the alternative method. Remember that attaching rel=me to the URL is incorrect and will cause your authorship markup to fail. Using rel="me" can only be added as a separate parameter and only if you can enter HTML code. So if you use the alternative method, you need to specify rel=author attached to the URL.
[3] A third mistake I find is that some people do everything right with the alternative method, except they leave out the + sign on the anchor. Remember to place a + sign either at the beginning or ending of your anchor.
Authorship For HubPages
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HubPages already automatically links all your Hubs to your HubPages Profile with the rel=”author” tag. So all you need to do is place a link in your HubPages Profile pointing to your Google Profile.
Edit your HubPages profile and include a link to your Google Profile. As I just discussed, you need an anchor that has a + sign in front or at the end of the text.
On HubPages the anchor is simply the text that you are going to make into a hyperlink. Type the text (which becomes the anchor), such as your name with a plus sign, like this...
+Your Name
Then highlight it and click the hyperlink button to enter the URL of your Google Profile with a "?" and "rel=author", such as...
https://profiles.google.com/11111111?rel=author
Replace the 11111111 with your own code from your Google profile URL.
Don't forget to add the reciprocal link pointing back to your HubPages profile page from your Google Profile. I'll show how to do that in the section about reciprocal links below.
If you don't write content on any of the following sites, then just skip to the section "Add A Reciprocal Link" below.
★★★ Update On HubPages' Progress ★★★
HubPages will be making this easier when they roll out the new profile page, that Jason Menayan posted about back in September 2011.
Our new HP profile will have a field where we can specify our Google Profile URL and HubPages will take care of the HTML for us.
But if you want to get this done now, you need to use this alternative method I just described.
Authorship For Squidoo
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That’s easy. Squidoo lets you place HTML in your Profile.
Squidoo automatically places the rel=”author” tag in all your lenses (content pages) linking to your Squidoo Profile. So all you need to do is connect your profiles together.
Just add a link to your Squidoo profile such as...
<a href="https://profiles.google.com/11111111" rel="me">My Google Profile</a>
...where 11111111 is your Google profile ID.
And don’t forget to add the reciprocal link in your Google Profile. I show how to do that below. Skip any of the following sections that don't apply to you and continue with "Add A Reciprocal Link" below.
Authorship For Wizzley
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Wizzley has implemented the code to do all the links correctly. So all you need to do is add a link to your Google Profile in your Wizzley settings and a link back from Google.
Look for the field for Google+ in your Wizzley settings and put your Google Profile URL in there as...
https://profiles.google.com/11111111
...where 11111111 is your Google profile ID.
Then go and include a link in your Google Profile back to your Wizzley Profile.
Wizzley automatically puts the rel="author" in the links from all your pages to your profile. And when you add a link in your settings to your Google profile, or any other profile on your other sites, they also automatically include the rel="me" tag so you don't need to get involved with HTML programming.
See "Add A Reciprocal Link" below for the next step.
Authorship For Twitter
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Twitter does not allow you to add HTML, but you can claim your authorship with Twitter by using the alternative method.
When you edit your Twitter profile, you will see a field called "Web." Place your Google profile URL in that field in the following format...
https://profiles.google.com/11111111?rel=author
Replace the 11111111 with your own code from your Google profile URL.
You also need to include your twitter URL in the "Other Profiles" section of your Google Profile. I show how to do that below under "Add A Reciprocal Link."
Authorship For WordPress
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I don’t use WordPress but I wanted to show you how it’s done there. I found a well-written explanation in the WordPress Development site.
Add A Reciprocal Link
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After you completed adding all the links from your content pages to your author profiles and pointing your author profile pages to your Google Profile, you need to complete the loop by adding a reciprocal link back to each of your author profiles on any sites where you write content.
Go to your Google Profile and click "Edit Profile." You will now be able to add or change any reciprocal links by clicking on the list. Any links to profiles should go in "Other Profiles" as shown in Figure 3. Include the URL and a name for the site.
There are two kinds of reciprocal links. Those that point to an author profile that you have on that site, and those that point to the home page when you don't have a profile page on that site.
If you contribute content to a site where don't have your own author profile, then add a link to the home page of that site and place that link under the "Contributor to" section as shown in Figure 4.
All the content pages on a site without a profile should link directly to your Google Profile with the rel="author" tag. The rel="me" tag should only be used to point one profile to another of the same author. All of an author's content pages pointing to their profile page should always use rel="author".
The only exception, as previously mentioned, is when using the alternative method of appending the tag to the URL. In that case you use "?rel=author" and include a plus sign (+) before or after the anchor text.
NOTE - Do not include the same link under both sections. It should be listed under "Other Profiles" if it's your author profile. Or it should be listed under "Contributor to" if it's a site where you don't have an author profile.
When you're done adding all the links in your Google Profile, click the "Done Editing" button at the top of your profile. Now you're ready to test everything to be sure the links are correct. Google created a tool for that. But it wasn't created just for the Authorship Markup. It was designed to test all rich snippets of code that apply to Google coding. So it has a few awkward ways of telling you if you did things right. I hope Google fixes that someday.
Verify Your Links WIth The Rich Snippets Testing Tool
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The Rich Snippets Testing Tool will tell you what’s right or wrong with your entire linking process.
Test your profile by inserting its URL and clicking "Preview" as shown below in Figure 6. You should also test one or more of your content pages. In both cases under "Extracted Author for this page" it should say...
Verified: Authorship markup is correct for this page
Google's Testing Tool's Bug Is Fixed As Of April 2012
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[Update April 2012] Those who were here prior to April 2012 will remember that there is a bug in the Rich Snippets Testing Tool that did not recognize the alternative method. Google Product Manager Sagar Kamgar mentioned this bug in a Google blog.
The test used to say...
Error: Author profile page does not have a rel=me link to a Google Profile
Even though that did not mean you did anything wrong, as of April 2012 Google finally fixed that with the updated Rich Snippets Testing Tool.
Now when you had followed all my instructions correctly you will see...
Verified: Authorship markup is verified for this page.
Update Notifications To This Hub
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Eventually, as I previously mentioned, HubPages will have a field where we can enter our Google Profile URL and they will create the proper HTML link using the better "rel=me" method. Once that's available you can remove your own link and use that instead. But for now, this works just fine.
UPDATE AS OF January 23rd, 2012...
HubPages still didn't add a field to the HP profile to make this easy to add our Google Profile URL to our HP profile. So we still need to do it as explained above in this Hub.
I will update this when it's available, so you can convert over to the other method at that time. All followers of this Hub will be notified of any updates.
Optional Step: How To Include Authorship Info In Search Results
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This step is optional and so I've left it for last. Google mentions on their support site that you could have your authorship information appear in search results. This is not required for the Authorship Markup that I've discussed above. But if you want your picture and info appear when someone finds your content listed in a search, there are two ways to do it...
- You need to make your email address public. I don't agree with doing this and I am actually very surprised that Google would suggest such as thing, so I'm not going to say anything further about how to implement it this way. Google explains it in their support.
- Much better, just do what I explained above to declare your authorship and add one extra step… You need a real picture of yourself in your Google Profile. If you use an avatar, Google will not list your authorship info in search results. You need a good quality headshot.
What is Google+ Social Network - Inquiring minds want to know
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What is Google+ and what does it have to do with Authorship?
Google+ is Google’s new social network. It’s similar to Facebook but with many more features for controlling your social network and circles. But this has nothing to do with Authorship.
I mention this only because I discovered a lot of people getting totally confused with it. They think they need to apply for Google+ membership in order to use Authorship Markup successfully. This is totally not true and Google says on their site that you don’t need it.
If you do have it, then you already know that your Google+ Profile is...
https://plus.google.com/11111111
... where 11111111 is your Google ID.
I’ve been showing you all the examples above using https://profiles.google.com/11111111 as the URL for your regular Google Profile.
You can use either URL. And you don’t need to change them later either. If you start with a regular Profile and apply for Google+ later, Google will redirect the existing links with a 301 redirect automatically. If you code your Authorship Markup using plus.google.com and you don’t have a Google+ account yet, Google will redirect those links to the regular profiles.google.com. So it works either way.
Amazon Has No Plans To Implement Authorship Markup
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Those of us who have published books on the market and sold by Amazon, may also have an Amazon Profile.
I discovered I could not link my Amazon profile to my Google profile.
So I sent Amazon the following email...
I was wondering when Amazon will implement a way for authors to enter our Google Profile with the "rel=me" tag to show and prove authorship. If you are not aware of this new feature Google is implementing, please look into it. Thank you.
Joe G. from Amazon Author Central responded with the following...
Hello Glenn,
Thank you for taking the time to provide your suggestion to Author Central. At this time there are no plans to implement this into our service. However, we appreciate your ideas; we’re always looking for ways to make our service more useful to authors.
I’ve passed your message to the Author Central development team for consideration. We rely on author input as we make future plans for Author Central.
Best regards,
Joe G.
I simply sent the following back to them in case they wanted to add anything further for this article...
Joe G.,
Thank you or your reply. Sorry to hear that Amazon decided not to keep up with the latest requirements for the Google Authorship Markup. I will quote your reply in an upcoming article. If you have anything further to add, please let me know.
Glenn Stok
I got this back...
Hello Glenn,
I understand your concern about this new feature.
As my colleague previously mentioned, at this time we do not have any plans to implement this into our service. However, I've provided your suggestion to Author Central. We appreciate your ideas; we’re always looking for ways to make our service more useful to authors.
We won't be able to provide further insight for your request.
Thank you for contacting us.
Best regards,
Soujanya L.
Well, so much for Amazon!
Tell Google About It
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Google seems to be very interested in monitoring results of our implementation. This is evident since they have a form where you can submit your information so they can review any implementation issues and have a contact on your end in case they notice something wrong with your Authorship Markup code.
I've seen blogs where people said that Google actually contacted them to suggest a few modifications to the way they implemented the markup code. So as a final step, fill out this form for Google. It can't hurt.
Good luck with setting up your Authorship.
Copyright © 2011 Glenn Stok
See Table Of Contents of my other HubPages Support Topics
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Do you have any questions? I'll try to help...Loading...
AEvans, First of all, thanks for being the first to comment. As for your problem, you can't use your old HP URL as you indicated. You need to specify your new subdomain URL in your Google Profile and spell it right too. As for your HP profile, you don't have a hyperlink there to your Google Profile. It's a pleasure having you stop by. Take it step by step and you'll do fine. Good luck with it.
Glen, I had no idea something like that was implemented - looks like I should check google news more often ;)
From your descriptions it looks pretty simple so I hope I won't hit any issues while implementing it and I have already checked your HubPages profile for a guideline how should it look like.
I found the comments from Amazon quite amusing - I wonder if they use the same template every time they reply to their customers ;)
Great information about google, I accidentally, somehow fell on the page for this and end up always getting lost, so this has helped immensely. Though, does it matter to link all this if your overall traffic is weak? I have tried different tactics to create traffic to here and over at google and not really seeing any increase. Two theories of mine: I suck as a writer and have nothing compelling to view, and/or I am missing something.
Thanks again for a great detailed subject!
Ania L - Yes there is always something interesting in the Google blogs. I also follow Google on Twitter. It helps stay in the loop.
jenubouka - You're not the only one who got lost. It was difficult for anyone to follow along when Google kept changing it at the beginning. As for your theories about yourself, just keep doing what you're doing. You're on the right track. These things take time. It eventually kicks in and you will amaze yourself.
Thanks Glenn, I appreciate your wisdom and encouragement. I will keep trying...
Thanks Glenn! This is just what I need. recently I checked for plagarism of my work, and found a number of supposed RV Expert Advice sites that had copied, not just sentences but multiple paragraphs of my Hubs. I have contacted several of them and some have removed the copies but some are stone-walling me. At least, if I take this next step, I will maybe have a little more leverage out there in the world of "search"!
Don, Yes it will make it much more difficult for these thieves to copy content from the web. Authorship markup clearly indicates who it belongs to. It's not foolproof but it helps.
Thanks a lot for the information. I had no idea about this. I appreciate your endeavor to acquaint us with your so many important blogs. Thanks again.
Glenn, Thanks for letting us all know that it is possible to declare authorship in this way. I was unfamiliar with this until now.
I did go ahead add my hubpages profile url to my google profile. But I have yet to add my google id url to my hubpages profile. I had one question before I do so.
I took a look at your profile and can easily see your id. So what is to stop someone from using your id? Additionally, they can easily get your profile url from hubpages or wherever too. Am I missing something?
ktrapp, Very good question. It's important to understand that. If anyone would point their content to someone else's Google Profile, Google would not accept it as valid since they can't log into that other person's Google account to add the reciprocal link. The part you're missing is that they need to do it on both ends.
And they can't claim all my work by pointing their Google Profile to my HubPages profile. Google will reject that too unless they could log into my HP account and point my HP profile back to their Google Profile. Since they don't have my password they can't complete the reciprocal links.
This is very helpful information Glenn. Thanks for sharing this. I have always been concerned about how to protect my work and you've given me a very good example of how to go about it. I'm not very well-versed on the technical stuff but I'll give your advice a shot.
I will be bookmarking this to re-read later when I have more time to read, focus and work on it. Thanks for sharing this to help the rest of us out.
Thanks Glenn. Your follow-up answer makes a lot of sense. This is all very interesting.
Now I understand. I will use my subdomain, you have been a great help. :)
Glenn, this is very useful information. I have bookmarked this for further study and will look into doing the things you have suggested here. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.
Very interesting. I just hope they wouldn't use it against you somehow to downgrade you work across all sites you used.
Glenn, Thanks my Man! I sat down, read your instructions and BAM! I have it working, both ways! Piece of Cake! Thanks for the great (and simple) instructions. I just went to my Google account, opened my profile, and copied the URL for my ID, and then I pasted this into my name anchor that had a "+" sign in front. It works great.
Again, Thanks!
Wow, that is a lot to digest and I will bookmark it and go over it tomorrow again. It is a great help and I appreciate you kindness to explain it in such great details. Thank you so much, Glen.
Don, You did a great job. I checked out your profile and you implemented it correctly.
Hello, Hello, If you want, you can skip over the details and just use the instructions under "Authorship For HubPages" and you should be good to go.
I wrote the detailed part because I saw a lot of confusion in the forum about this. So I thought it important to write a clear explanation of the underlying details.
Thanks to everyone for your feedback and comments.
Thank you Glen, you're the best
Hey Glenn. I just finished reading your article and it is great! To be honest, this wasn't the reason I initially came to this page. I actually clicked it out of randmoness for an entirely different purpose and you had already reeled me in with your first few sentences. Anyways, the actual reason I came here was to thank you again for helping me create better hubs with your "Advice for New Writer's" article/hub. When I read it, I had two hubs that were at a hubscore of 80 or more. Now, only one short day after changing about 5 hubs, I have all of those 5 hubs at 80 or above. The two hubs that I had initially over 80 rose even more and one of them ended up at 89 for the first time (a great achievement for me)! Thank you so much for your help!
kripkrip420, Thanks for your feedback on how well it is working for you. Congratulations. You're doing a great job!
Glenn --
Thanks for the concise, informative hub. I've been looking into ways to protect my material online. Thanks for saving me so much time on this!
HikeGuy, You're welcome. Go ahead and set up your links so your hubs are all known to belong to you. Once Google knows all your hubs were created by you, it may help bring more traffic than you are presently getting. Good luck.
I note that they now say that you need a + sign at the end of your link to your Google profile when using the "Contributor to" method.
See http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answe
"Your link must contain the ?rel=author parameter, and your anchor text must end with a + character."
okay this was good, and it seems to be something my mind can eventually wrap my head around, but for example when you've got you Google+ link on your profile and someone clicks on it could they then follow you on Google+? I would wonder how people could do that... because this way it would make things so much easier to work with. Great once again...
Glenn, this was very helpful. Would you be willing to check out my profile and tell me if what I've done is correct?
Thank you for taking the time to write this hub. It's been a great help to me.
@Pcunix - The + can go at the beginning OR the end of the anchor. The "Contributor to" method is only for sites where you don't have a profile. For HubPages you need to include a link to your HP profile in the "Other Profiles" section of your Google Profile.
@Rebecca - Yes, the link will bring them to your Google Profile. Try it on my profile and you'll see what I mean.
@Motown2Chitown - I checked your profile. Your anchor is correct but let me help you with the rest. You need to remove "/about" from your URL. And you need to include "?rel=author" appended to the end of it.
Thanks for the informative Hub Glenn. I added my Google profile link to my Hub Author page. Hope I did it correctly.
I did notice when I went to my Google Profile page that it now has the plus.google.com at the beginning instead of just profiles.google.com. Is this going to be an issue with authorship or is this just a Google change?
I used a bookmarked link to the original Google Profile page I made a few years ago.
Done, Glenn. Thanks for all your help, and thanks to Pcunix for bringing this up in the forum and leading me to you. You're my knights in shining armor. :)
@Michael Willis - Allow me to help... The reason why your Google profile is plus.google.com instead of profiles.google.com is because you signed up for the Google+ Social Network. As I mention in this hub, either one is fine. And Google redirects links from one to the other so you don't need to worry about existing backlinks.
Your authorship does not verify properly right now because of a few things. I looked at your HP profile and one thing you left out is the "+" on your anchor. It won't work until you add that.
Also in your Google Profile you put a link to your HP profile under "Contributor to" and that does not work for profile pointing to profile. You need to put it under "Other profiles."
Finally, I see you put links to all your hubs in "Other Profiles" - you need to remove those because your hubs are not your profile. There is no need to list all your hubs. Google knows that since there is an "author" link from your Hubs to your HP profile, which HP already did for you.
@Motown2Chitown - Excellent! You did a great job. One thing I might recommend is to remove the extra link you have to your HP profile under "Contributor to" as you already have it correctly listed under "Other profiles."
I suppose it is a bit redundant, huh?
Took your advice on that one too. Thanks again.
Thanks Glenn. I will fix the errors you mentioned. The individual hubs were on my original Google profile before I sugned up for the Google plus. When I did this, all those links ended up on the Google plus page without me doing anything to them somehow.
@Michael Willis - Great job. It's correct now.
I see you moved your hubs to "Recommended links" and that's fine. That's your choice. I just want to make it clear so people don't think they need to list hundreds of hubs in their profile. Google knows what hubs are yours because you now have Authorship Markup properly installed.
The only reason why you might want to list hubs in your profile is for people to follow. But in my opinion it doesn't work well for that since Google only displays the first 18 characters of your title.
Thanks again Glenn. Your hub here is a great resource for those to figure out how to properly set this up.
Google must have "merged" my two profiles together when I signed up for the plus site. The old profile is where I had all the hub links before.
I see what you are saying about listing hubs and will consider what you suggest. I do have many followers online that just read my NFL hubs. Since I do not have a separate sub-domain for those, I am hoping the recommeded links will help those following find the new ones as well as the originals.
@Michael - If you write several unrelated niches, you might want to consider creating a Hub which is a table of contents of your NFL hubs. I did that with me tutorial hubs since I also write on other topics and I wanted to have a way of keeping them all in one place for easy reference. I add any new ones to that list in that Hub. I see from my Google Analytics that most of the traffic to that Hub is repeat traffic, which tells me that people are going back to that reference to find other related hubs. So that should work for you too.
Hi Glen, thanks for taking the time to teach us these things! it is much appreciated.
However, I still can't get hubpages to verify. Can you take a look at my setup to see if you could spot what may be the problem>
I am still getting this on rich snippets:
"Error: Author profile page does not have a rel=me link to a Google Profile"
I have been trying for a couple of days with no luck. Thanks!!!
@GAbaptist - Go back and read my section on the "Rich Snippets Testing Tool" where I mention about the reported bug that gives that erroneous error. Nevertheless, you have it correct. Well done.
Thanks Glen, somehow I missed that little part... Thanks for taking the time to check it and thanks for a great tutorial!
Thank you very much for this hub, Glen. I appreciate all the information and details very much. I've bookmarked the hub and I'm going to read it again in the future to get all the steps straight in my mind, since this is all new information for me!
I don't think that we have any reason to assume that error is meaningless. I used the direct method from my own site pages and get correct verification.
You MIGHT be correct, but I see no reason to assume that.
Pcunix - Google already said they know of a bug that gives the error with the alternative method. I mentioned that in my hub. I use the original method (which I think you mean by direct method) on my business site and that does not give the error for me either.
This is really interesting and a great idea. I was under the impression once your content was indexed, it was basically acknowledged as yours.
Hi Glenn, Homesteadbound sent me over to check out your hub. Thanks for sharing all this useful information! I will be bookmarking and working through your guide step by step. Voted up / useful
@festersporling1 - Prior to Authorship, indexing alone does not reference the actual author. Now the Authorship markup actually ties content to the author. Thanks for your comment and for reading my hub.
@Cloverleaf - Let me know if you need help when you implement it. Thanks for the vote up.
Dear Glenn ~ I started to read through your explanation, but my brain seems to be fried with too much circuitry input data today. I will bookmark as other have done and return when everything is rebooted upstairs. I've got a Google and Google+ account, but really don't want to use it because of having too many social networks. I need to simplify and downsize. Blessings to your for all you have given to the community, Debby
Debby, lol. Sometimes I feel a complete reboot would help my brain too. I agree with you about having too many social networks, which is why I don't use Google+. I just use the standard Google profile for the Authorship Markup.
What if I already have a Google+ How do I limit its usage? I am not responding to all those who link to me there.
Debby, I think you can cancel it, but I never applied for it so I don't know the details. When I had Facebook for a while I got many friend requests from people I didn't know and who never replied when I asked where I knew them from. So I am hesitant to start with Google's Social Network.
I read that Google automatically uses redirects so any existing backlinks to your plus account will redirect to your regular profile url if you go back to it. I tested those redirects so I know they work. You just need to find how to cancel the social account. But don't cancel your Google main account.
I see! pretty cool. I only wish I could follow you! ha ha... one day I'll get it.
Rebecca ~ Try just following the section "Authorship For HubPages" and then the section "Add A Reciprocal Link." Let me know if you want me to check it afterwards. Always glad to help.
I'm bookmarking this to read it tomorrow. Great Hub! I knew nothing about Google authorship. I've been thinking of creating a web site with all my writing in it but maybe this will do instead. But maybe I'll do both.
Don Simkovich ~ you can do both and tie all your content together under your Google Profile. So the the work you do on HubPages may help your ranking on your own site, and vice versa.
Glen,
Your authorship seems to have the same problem as mine. (I'm not talking about Hubpages. I know I never had that working right; I had it working right on my own blog and articles posted elsewhere.) Google search results do NOT show your author icon nor your author name for your content. For me, they displayed in Google search results for about a month (again, not on Hubpages; my Squidoo lenses and blogs were showing them), and then my author name and icon disappeared from the SERPs. This has happened to tech bloggers and prominent columnists on SearchEngineLand as well as authors on other sites I follow. Nobody has yet determined why their authorship stopped working, or at least, I haven't yet found any information from Google. I've reported the problem to Webmaster Central and on Google's authorship feedback form.
Have you seen this work for anyone on Hubpages? I haven't, so I haven't wasted time tinkering with it. The ?rel=author method using a URL instead of a property inside the HREF tag isn't HTML5 compliant, anyway. I hate using anything imposed on us by Internet Explorer, Google, or other entities seeking to benefit their own platforms while defying the web's original purpose of being a way to interlink content through agreed-upon standards by a nonprofit org like W3. Remember the 90s, when IE tried to win the browser war by introducing alternate tags to HTML standards? I'm afraid that Google's ?rel=blah method may be something similar, although their intentions may be more benevolent.
Greekgeek ~ The authorship is working. However Google said that the display of author info and image may take a long time. That's mentioned in their blogs.
Authorship and info in search listings are two separate things. One can exist without the other. Which is why you had your image show up for Squidoo in the past. It is possible that Google took it away becsaue they are slowly combining Authorship with author info in listings. And your Authorship is not done right in Squidoo. I checked.
Your Authorship is set up correctly on HubPages. But on your Squidoo profile you are missing the rel="me". Squidoo does not put that in for you. You need to add the link to your profile using the HTML method. See above where I explain Squidoo. As for Twitter, you don't have the reciprocal link in your twitter profile.
See how I did it on these three sites. Follow to my Google Profile and from there you can find all of them.
Test your profile on all your sites with the Rich Snippets test tool and you'll see what's wrong.
Adding tags to a url after a question mark has been a standard in HTML for a long time. Way before HTML5. Google didn't make it up. They are taking advantage of that standard for sites like HP who don't allow HTML coding. Just remember that in this case you use rel=author instead of "me" to point to Google, as they made clear in their blogs.
Hope that helps. I know it complicated. And Google didn't do a good job in keeping things simple.
Don't worry about the search listings. That's additional to all this anyway and not required for claiming authorship. For that matter, other people who don't use a real headshot can still declare authorship without info in listings.
This is great information (thanks, homesteadbound for the link to this hub), and I have bookmarked the hub for future reference, as well as rated it up and (very) useful.
But I seem to have hit a snag. I thought I had followed your instructions correctly for my HubPages profile, but when I check using the Rich Snippets Testing Tool to see if I did it right, I get a Google search preview, but I also get an error message that says, "Google Profile does not link to article site." It worked for my Seekyt profile page, however, and I thought I did exactly the same thing on both sites. Have I done something wrong?? Thanks in advance.
PWalker281 ~ Thanks you for the praise and the up vote. I checked to see what you did wrong. In your Google profile you are linking to your old HubPages URL. Even though HP does a 301 redirect to your subdomain URL, it does not work for Authorship Markup. You need to link direct to your correct subdomain URL.
Thanks SO MUCH, Glenn. I thought I had changed all of those old urls, but apparently one slipped by me. Now everything is working fine!
Still trying to figure out how to do it for my wordpress.org blog. The article you referenced was a little confusing, but I'll study it more to see if I can make sense of it. Appreciate your help!!
PWalker281 ~ I just noticed you mentioned this Hub in your Seekyt article. Thank you for the referral. I did some further checking and Seekyt does not include rel="author" in the links from your content to your Seekyt profile. So the implementation of Authorship Markup between your profiles will only be half the job. You still can't claim your content on Seekyt. Sure... Google will know which came first in case of plagiarism, but that's not the main reason for Authorship Markup anyway. What it will do is associate all content with the author.
As for wordpress, as I mentioned in my Hub, I don't use it so I could only refer to that other article.
Glenn, I thought the hub was worth mentioning. Writers over at Seekyt are always looking for ways to protect their content and I believe your hub is helpful in that regard.
But clearly I'm not understanding the main intent of authorship markup. Why is associating all content with an author important? Also, how do you know that rel="author" isn't in the links from my content to my Seekyt profile?
The Seekyt administrator is pretty open to suggestions for improving the site. I'd like to make one with regard to writers cbeing able to claim their Seekyt content, but really don't know what to say or why it's important. I probably need to go back and reread this hub.
Re: wordpress, don't worry about it. I'll figure it out. Thanks again for your help.
PWalker281 ~ The reason for associating all content with an author is to build authority. It will help your ranking when you write good quality and Google bots can determine the quality among all your content.
Without Authorship Markup, each time you publish something new, it has to build on its own merits. Isn't it better that your authority can also be applied to new content from the start?
As for Seekyt, you can see the HTML code they use. Look for "view source code" under "tools" in your browser. Depending on the browser you are using it may be a little different.
Along with the fact that I reread your article, your explanation makes a whole lot of sense now, Glenn.
Also, I told the Seekyt admin about the problem with the rel="author" tag (is that what you call it?), and he added it to the HTML link that already links to our user profile (i.e., the "written by" link at the top of our articles). I hope that takes care of the issue of being able to claim our Seekyt content.
I really appreciate your taking the time to answer my questions and provide such great advice, Glenn. I've learned so much from this article and the comments.
PWalker281 ~ I just checked one of your content pages on Seekyt and I see they properly added the rel="author" tag. Assuming they do this on all content pages, it should be fine. All your content will now be associated with you as the author. Isn't that neat? You can take credit for getting them to respond so fast.
Hey Glenn, as I said the administrator over at Seekyt is extremely responsive to suggestions from member writers. I'm just glad I found this hub so I could recommend the update to him :-).
Amazing Hub with massive information that has my eyes glazed over at this point but will bookmark this to help me implement what you have outlined. Great work! GClark
Thanks Glenn, there's a lot of very useful information there for me. I'll be back a few more times I think!!!
PWalker281~ Seems you had some clout with them too. Unfortunately there still are many writer's sites who don't care to implement Google's standards, such as Amazon admittedly fails to do, according to their emails that I posted.
GClark ~ I realize there is a lot of information here. You can skip the details if you wish, and just follow the implementation instructions that apply to you.
georgethegent ~ Thanks for checking it out. I welcome you back any time when you are ready to implement it in your profile.
My guess would be that those stubborn sites simply don't understand the value. I know on the writer side I have run into the foolish "I hate Google!" stuff too - which is fine, hate them all you want but they ARE critical to your success.
But then we have the paranoia too - "Google knows too much about me!" Sure - and you DO NOT want them to know that you are a prolific and widely read author? Yeah, that makes sense.. :-)
What a valuable nugget of information. I never even knew this, which is rather embarrassing since we all write unique articles here.
Great Hub and lots of great info. I bookmarked it and if this works, what a boon for online writers!
Since it is almost the end of 2011 and from what you said, HubPages is going to make this easy for us to accomplish, I think I will wait another few days. This is all very interesting. The thing I like best is that it will make it harder for people to steal our content (from what you say) and that is great! Thanks for all of this information.
Peggy, I didn't use those words. People will still steal your work, but at least there will be a documented reference to the owner, which in my opinion can help when you file a DMCA complaint. HP has not made any further statements as to when this will be implemented, which is why I did it with Google's alternate method for now.
Will have to study this further in that case and see if I can link my HP account to my Google acct. Thanks Glenn.
Wow! This looks like great information but I find all this stuff so confusing, with linking the urls, etc.... I'm going to bookmark this for further study. Glenn, you mentioned that HubPages is going to make it easier at some point. Will it be significantly easier? I think I may just wait and see...but I'll definitely be looking at this further....Thanks for letting us know all this.
Victoria Lynn, According to a post in the forum a couple of months ago, HP should be updating our profiles soon and it will include a way to simply enter your Google Profile URL. The rest is done for you then. But you still need to put your HP Profile into your Google Profile yourself. Thanks for checking this out.
Thank you for sharing! Very helpful!
Well, I certainly learned something new today. First time I heard of Google Authorship Markup. Thanks for the tutorial.
We are always joking about Yankees and especially New Yorkers in Florida. The truth is . . . we would go broke without you. Thanks!
Glenn, thank you so much for posting this. it was extremely helpful and something I had been fretting about. Thanks again and I shared with my followers.
Plagiarism issue is always alerted here on HubPages.
I experienced receiving an immediate alert at the start of my chosen title.
I am more careful now by simply writing important things that I've done that I consider worth sharing for.
Thanks for sharing this very useful information, Sir. G. It helps a lot. :D
Glen
This has been a very interesting read. Anything that can contribute to a publisher's cause in respect to Google and the various avenues of building traffic/rep from it is god sent. This guide is just that. Easy to understand and very informative!
Princesswithapen
Very useful and informative hub. Thanks
Glenn, I did it!!! Today in forums, Pcunix posted that he just saw his handsome pic on Google page, so I thought I should do it, too. Thanks to your awesome hub, I was able to do it in one try.. How cool is that? So thank you, thank you, thank you! Voted up and clicked all.. well, except funny, of course. Woohoo! Sorry, I get too excited. :D
Have a nice day,
Rosie
Thank you to all of you for your comments. Although you all deserve a special thanks for being a valued reader,
I need to leave specific replies for those who asked questions or need other feedback...
Moon Lightened ~ I see you added your Google Authorship Markup to your HP profile but you left out the plus sign on the anchor in the hyperlink.
molometer ~ You left off the "?rel=author" on your link to your Google profile.
Rosie2010 ~ Good job. You have your links correct in both directions. You followed my instructions very well.
Very useful information. Thankyou.
Well, obviously, I'm dumb as ??? because no matter how hard I try to write this code with my name in it, it doesn't work. So I guess I'll just be waiting until Hub Pages inserts the link! :)
Thanks Glenn. This is very new to me. Actually I want to ask something. Usually I write about two subjects: Urdu literature, and Pharmacy. As these two niches are completely different from each other,would you suggest that I put all of my work under one account?
I learned about this hub from the forums section and I am so glad I did! Thank-you for this very awesome information, and I'll be giving it some thought as to whether or not I want to implement this. If I do, this will definitely be my guide! Awesome directions, info, and this was all very well presented!
Sophia ~ Jusr take it easy and reread my directions.
Razatauqeer ~ Some people use separate accounts. I personally use just one account fir all my various topics here. It's really just a personal choice for you to make.
Moon Willow ~ If you decide to do it, it might help you combine your ranking from your various content.
Glenn, what a master! cristal clear...I have done as explained and the test shows great results. Question; does google consider facebook as "content"? I mean if friend is looking for great hotels in X area, and I have posted links on my wall to hotels in X area, will Google pick it up and show my friend (in her SERP) my reslut (if matching)? does that have anything to do with me having to put the rel=author markup to my Facebook profile?
Patricia Polvora ~ Good question. I'm sorry I don't have the answer. I don't know if you can put HTML code in your Facebook profile, which is required to link to Google. I don't use Facebook and I even wrote two other Hub's about my reason for that.
But getting back to your question, I would make a guess that Google would not apply much ranking for related content. My reason for saying that is because of how they rank...
High quality content needs to have all it's content within focus. All related to the same thing.
Your Facebook profile, with all the miscellaneous stuff on your wall, may have content that is all over the place with little focus on one important item. That will kill the ranking for your profile. I could be wrong, but that is what happens with regular web pages.
Hope that sheds some light on the matter.
Glad I come across this hub. The Google ID is it the same as the Adsense Code? I already put a HubPages link in my Google Account. But the reciprocal link from HubPages to Google does not work. I got the 404 error message. Maybe it is the problem with the ID. I don’t remember having any Google ID, except for the Adsense Code and Analytics Code. Would appreciate your advice. Thank you.
pinkytoky, It's not your Google affiliate code. It's the ID portion of your Google Profile URL. Go to your Google Profile and take the URL from your browser. But drop anything after the ID and add "?rel=author" as you did already. You just got the ID part wrong. It's complicated, I know. But you are real close.
Hi Glenn, I've got it done! With your guidance, such complicated thing becomes so easy. Really appreciate your fast response and help. Thank you so much!
Thanks Glen for the ?rel=me tip, very very useful.
pinkytoky ~ yep, it looks good. I just checked. Good work.
Peter Hoggan ~ Be careful with mixing up the tags. If you use the method that works on HubPages, you need to use ?rel=author. rel=me is different. It does not follow a question mark. But it is the preferred method when you can enter your own HTML. Not so on HubPages. I know I know. It gets more and more complicated, thanks to platforms that don't allow HTML coding.
Glenn, when I Google 'Glenn Stok Hubpages," I see your hubs listed, but the author attribution isn't there. Whereas when I Google "Greekgeek Squidoo" my author attribution is there. The difference is that I was able to use a rel="me" tag on my Squidoo profile to link to my Google profile; otherwise it's set up just like Hubpages with the site linking articles to the member profile page via rel="author."
I cannot get my author photo and attribution to show up on my hubs using your method, and I haven't seen ANY hub with author photo and attribution in Google. So the question is, does this method actually work, but Google is choosing not to display our author information because we haven't earned enough authority in its eyes, or is there something wrong with the method?
I really can't tell. And I wish I knew! More, I wish I could find some example of the method you're using-- which most certainly is listed on Google's support site -- where Google went ahead and displayed the author info.
If the method really does work, and Google is just choosing not to act on the author information we've supplied, there's hope we'll be able to overcome the sandbox, earn its respect with our content, and/or Hubpages itself may earn Google's respect at some point. But if Google's not actually recognizing this form of markup, then the breakpoint is the link itself.
Greekgeek,
I use rel="me" wherever I can, and it shows my image. Try a Google search for "auto attendant guidelines" and you'll see what I mean.
However, author attribution is still accomplished when you use the alternate method... attaching rel=author to the URL. But as you know, you need to be able to use HTML to use the rel=me method. Squidoo allows HTML, as you have done there.
The only problem with that is that Google does not include your image in the search results when using the alternative method. I had been trying to find something in the Google blogs about that. But all I find is that they say they choose when to include your picture.
When I discover new information on this, I will include it in the Hub under the "Alternative Method" section, which I just updated today to reflect your concerns.
Thanks for bringing up that question. It's been bothering me too and I can't wait until HubPages implements the ability to use the rel="me" method in our profile, as they said they will do eventually. When they make that change to our profile, I am sure many of us on HubPages who have a real photo image, not just an avatar, will start seeing our image in search results.
Glenn - I have set up both links for authorship, but I am wondering how you (and Greekgeek) get your link to about on the "about" page of your Google profile. My link opens on the "posts" tab. Is this happening because I have a Google+ account and not just a Google profile?
ktrapp, I looked at your profile. Yes, when you have a Google+ then it opens in the posts page. I guess they did that to imitate a Facebook wall. You might try adding "/about" at the end of your URL just before the "?rel=author" but this hasn't been tested. One thing you need to correct (not related) is that you put your reciprocal link back to HubPages under the "Contributor to" section. Your authorship will not work with that. Google only puts rel="me" in the return link when you put it in the "Other Profiles" section. The idea is that profiles link to profiles. The "contributor to" section is only for links to other sites where you don't have a profile.
Thanks for all your help Glenn. I moved my HubPages link from contributor to other profiles. I also was able to add the /about at the end of the URL before the ? and the link on my HP profile page now opens the about page on my Google profile (instead of posts). Thanks again. You're a great help.
Glen, voted up. I've been surprised to notice how few people seem to be using "the authorship thing". Maybe a lot of people still don't realize it's available I suppose the "Big Brother" issue may be a factor too.
Had to come back and leave another comment.
I have already done this myself but wanted to let you know that this hub is so useful to newbies and established hubbers alike.
The worry of theft is reduced big time as the mighty Goog is all over it. They hate people copying other peoples content so it is a win win for all.
Voted up and SHARING
ktrapp ~ Looks good. Thanks for reporting back on your success.
Lisa HW ~ I'm surprised about that too. It doesn't help that Google made it so complicated and then changed it along the way. I'm even surprised that HubPages didn't implement it yet to make it as easy as having a field to enter our Google profile. Then we'd get the full benefit of using the original method. Good to see you again and thanks for the vote up.
molometer ~ Thanks for checking back and for the vote and sharing this. Yes it does help protect us from theft too.
What an incredible, informative hub. For all of us who are worried about copyright, this is perfect! I must bookmark this so that I can reference it. I'm headed to my profile page to start this "linking" process. AWESOME! Voted up, across and SHARING - everyone should see this hub!
Pretty excited to see this information, I was wondering how to implement authorship as this is good for developing page ranking. The only drawback I see is you cant implement black hat techniques with Google tracking all your works. Its a definite big plus for copyrighting your works and for practicing white hat techniques. I'll bookmark it for later.
I so wish I was as tech savvy as you and those like you. Thank God you are! Up & shared!
Great information Glenn. I cannot wait to implement this. I had no idea this could be done with google. Vote up and a tweet.
This was very useful information. Thank you Glenn!
Voted this Up and Useful + pinned it!
It took me a couple of false starts and some fumbling around, but I eventually accomplished the mission. Thanks very much. Up and Sharing.
Tried to do this but could not figure it out. Need a more detailed step by step description if you have time. Thanks.
cclitgirl ~ Thanks for the vote up.
rasta1 ~ Thanks for stopping by.
Mark Pitts ~ You're welcome and thank you to you.
JamesPoppell ~ Thanks for the vote and the tweet.
mbyL ~ Thanks to you too. It helps other people find out about it so they can do it too.
giocatore ~ You missed the + sign on your anchore. Inlcude that so it works for you.
TIMETRAVELER2 ~ All detailed step by step description is above. But I know you're just kidding.
thanks again, I think I have it right now. How kind of you to check our work! Cheers, Jim
giocatore ~ Oops. You added the + sign now, but you removed the "?rel=author"
cut and paste error. thanks much.
Hi Glenn, I think I have this set up correctly but was wondering if you could check it for me to make sure I've done this right. Would be greatly appreciated.
Susan, Yes indeed! Well done.
Thank you Glenn! I've read this hub probably six or seven times since you first published it and finally today had to try it..Thanks again.
Glenn, I am so excited to have this valuable information in the palm of my hands. I am definately bookmarking this so I can carefully read and implement my links. Thank you so much for making it easier for simpletons like myself to understand! Mahalo nui loa!
Lisa
Wow--sounds like a good idea, but I'm so far from tech-savvy that my head it spinning, here. I'm bookmarking this to re-read when I have nothing else sitting on my desk staring at me demanding attention.
Thanks everyone for chiming in with your comments. If you are doing this just for HubPages, then you can simplify it by just following my instructions for HubPages. The rest of this Hub is useful if you want to understand the background and/or implement it on other sites.
The first time I heard about this from my dear fellow hubber PWalker281, I was sceptic and thought it wouldn't make such a big difference, but later I got all excited about the idea, put it from theory into practice, and feel much safer now :) Voted up, useful and interesting.
vox vocis, The only problem is that you need to place the + sign at end, not in the middle. It won't work the way you did it. You also have extra characters on your URL.
Oh, I had no idea! Thank you so much for letting me know! I'm not sure what those extra characters in my URL mean, but I'll look into it now and read your hub again to pick up on what I missed out.
Glenn, next time I'm going to look right under my nose. You explained the common mistake people do in the process very clearly, and the way to correct it (I'm blushing now) - on my first reading, I just scanned that part thinking I had done everything right, and bookmarked the article for future reference. I followed the steps you explained; I believe it works now!
I can't describe how happy I am to have come across this hub, and even happier you took the time to check whether I did this properly. I owe you one :)
vox vocis, Yep. You did it absolutely correct now. NO need to feel embarrassed. It's a really complicated thing and not easy for anyone. You should see what I went through to figure it out at the beginning.
Oh, I know, but you gave us all the information on a silver platter, and you didn't even get the wooden one (so to speak, LOL). I did the same on my Seekyt profile, but it doesn't work there. Ugh! (I'm Jasmine on Seekyt if you'd care to look :))
vox vocis, It doesn't work on Seekyt because they don't include the link from your content pages to your Seekyt profile. It's not sufficient to ONLY have a link from your profile to Google.
HubPages places the links in all our Hubs back to our profile so we don't need to do that part. Squidoo does the same. Squidoo is better and actually shows one's image in the Google listings because one can use HTML and actually use the "me" method. HubPages never caught up to that yet.
But Google keeps changing things and does show images for some people on HubPages. I think because there are many that don't interface correctly and Google tries to make it work anyway for people with authority who make the attempt.
I think the administrator on Seekyt took care of that a while ago. I know that Patrice completed the process successfully (for Seekyt, too). I'll look into it a little deeper. Maybe I should fill out that form for Google that you mentioned in the hub. Thanks :)
Glenn, sorry to bother you again, but I'd really appreciate it if you could help me one more time. In the comments above, you noticed that Patrice (PWalker281) has the rel="author" tag on her content pages at Seekyt. However, based on your latest comment, I concluded that my content pages on Seekyt do not have this tag (I'm Jasmine over there). Did I get that right? I asked our admin there if he included the tag for my fellow writer only or for all the members and he said that the tag has been added for everyone, but something must be wrong because I simply can make authorship to work for Seekyt although I did exactly the same thing as here on HubPages. I'm totally frustrated by this issue :(
vox, Both you and Patrice did it right for HubPages. Seekyt has "nofollow" on all your links. Google obeys nofollow tags so that's why it isn't working there. I agree with you that this whole thing is very frustrating. Amazon and twitter don't support it right either.
The Rich Snippets Testing Tool shows that Patrice succeeded with Seekyt, too. Well, I did everything I could and after almost a month I have to give it a rest. I don't know why it isn't working in my case, but it seems nothing can be done to change that :( Thanks!
vox, I see Patrice also has "nofollow" on her profile link in Seekyt. So obviously that is not the problem. You are using an avatar and she is using a real picture of herself. Google will not include your authorship in listings without a real headshot, as they explain in all their blogs.
I don't think that's the problem either. I use the same avatar on Hubpages and according to the Rich Snippets Testing Tool my authorship for content here is verified. Also, I've seen my avatar show up in search results. I know they want people to use their real photos, but I don't think that's fair. Google forgets that some people would like some privacy. Thanks for checking my profiles anyway :)
vox, I am sure Google does not have a human checking images. It must be done by software and your avatar is probably passing as a real face. lol. You are right about the Rich Snippets Testing Tool. The real face image is only their requirement for showing your face in search listings. I have no idea at this point why it fails for you on Seekyt. Try a search for "claim authorship markup on Seekyt" and see if you find anything.
I have already searched for more information about this in other hubs but I found that your article was the best tutorial. It helped me claim authorship here on HP, especially because you replied to my questions in the comments :) If I ever find out what the issue is (was) at Seekyt, I'll let you know. Thanks!
vox, I can see that you understood everything really well and that you followed all the instructions correctly. Unfortunately I find a few others who read this and end up not following all the instructions. Then they never check to see what they did wrong.
You are testimony that it works on sites such as HubPages. The thing with Seekyt has been an ongoing mystery. I congratulate you for continuing to try to discover the problem there without giving up.
Thank you, as well, for your kind comments about this being the best tutorial. I appreciate the feedback to know I did the right thing for my readers.
Thanks, Glenn :) Yes, I'm another testimony that the thing works on Hubpages (I understood everything well because you taught me well :)) You deserve the praise and I'll recommend this article to anyone who might be interested in claiming authorship with Google!
Thanks vox, It's been a pleasure.
I have a damn headache! I have tried and tried to get my site linked up to my google plus..It wont' work..I have tried everything. I tried step by step what you did, and it still doesn't work. Can you help me please?? thanks!
weezyschannel, Take it easy. Google has given me a headache over this too. Nevertheless, it works when you follow the directions as the others have attested.
I took a look at your HP profile. You never put the link in there to your Google profile. Just follow the section I wrote on doing it for HubPages and do exactly as I show you. The rest of my Hub is just to explain the entire situation. Let me know when you did it and I'll take another look to see if it's right.
Google will never include your image since it's not your face, as Google requires. I'm sorry. I'm assuming your dog didn't get hold of your HP logon password. :)
Glenn, do I delete the anchor text and all after it is linked up with Google? thank you ! You are wonderful! got the Hubpages to work with rel=author not rel=me
weezyschannel (Dina),
I deleted your prior post with your link to your site for obvious reasons, but thanks for giving it to me so I could take a look.
You have several problems. Which is why it's not working.
On your own site you are hiding the link to Google by making the text black on black. Doing that will hurt your ranking, as Google sees it as a way of hiding keyword stuffing. I doubt they care that you are doing it with your claim to authorship.
In your Google profile you have not added the reciprocal links back to HubPages, nor to your own site.
You need the links in BOTH directions as I explained in this Hub. And you need to leave the links there permanently.
Why would you want to remove them later? That's a strange question. Don't you want to keep your authorship status once you have it?
Remember that you need a real picture of yourself. not a dog. You don't have any image at all on your Google Profile. Upload a real picture of yourself.
Google does not take authorship seriously if you hide behind an image of a dog or if you hide your authorship link with black text on black background.
As per your last comment, HubPages requires the rel=author method as I explained in my Hub. But you should use the rel="me" method on your own site if you have control over the HTML programming. It's less buggy with the Rich Snippets Test Tool as a Google manager had mentioned (quoted in my Hub).
Thank you so much for the critiquing! I just really don't like my real name blasted everywhere. I tried to use a pen name in Google profile, but I was worried it wouldn't link correctly to my site. I see what you are saying though. Thank you for everything. I follow everything you write, so keep on writing! You are one of my favorites! Also, I am trying to learn all this lingo of rel= . I have no clue what it means, except that I have to do it. I'll get there
weezyschannel, Well I am sure you understand why a real name is needed for claiming authorship. But I think a pen name should be acceptable. You can search for blogs on that.
The rel= is simply HTML code as I explained in my Hub. It is a tag on the link to indicate "author" or "me". The rel tag is used to make a link work as required, such as rel=nofollow, for example. Thanks for your kind words about my writing. I hope to keep inspiring you.
One more question if you don't mind. If I use a pen name, it affects my google profile, would there be any confusion then from my pen name for use of adsense earnings? Thats all I need to know for now... you are a true inspiration!
weezyschannel, I'm sorry, but I don't know the answer to that one. You'll have to check to see if you can find any reference to that in the AdSense rules. You have to be sure you don't have a conflict with your bank account, otherwise you may not be able to get your payments deposited. This is beyond my knowledge.
Gotya! Thanks again Glenn..You really do put out great info on your articles and I think that should be acknowledged, however; I can see that I am not the only one who appreciates you, so kudos to you!
Weezyschannel, Thanks for the acknowledgement. It's always nice to know I am appreciated. It makes it worth the time and effort in writing tutorial hubs for hubbers.
Very helpful - thank you for this information! I will have to come back later and re-read to digest it all! Voted up!
NOTE TO ALL FOLLOWERS OF THIS HUB:
As of April 20, HP changed the format of all Hubs in the Technology Category and inadvertently lost the Google Authorship markup. I reported this bug in the forum on the "New Hub Design" forum. All other Hubs still pass authorship markup.
I am sure this will be fixed soon. You can test the status of your own hubs yourself with Google's Rich Snippets Test Tool as explained in this Hub.
Mr Stok: could you please tell me if there is a way to find out what I did when I changed up my website? For some reason, I my ads are still showing, but I am not registering any earnings whatsoever since I did that. I deleted some scrips (not knowing what they were, because I'm new at this stuff). Is there a way to get back my adsense ads that I had prior to the change-up? Thank you!
weezyschannel, I took a look at your profile and a couple of you hubs. I don't see that you added your authorship link. And that has nothing to do with showing ads anyway. Nevertheless, you still do have ads in your hubs so I am not sure what you meant. Can you be more specific?
I got it Glenn..it's on my own website I built.You will be proud to know that I figured out your instructions and am happily the author of my site :) thank you!
I have seen same topic of authorship on seomoz but you have written extraordinary . I have understand each and every point and have changes G+ profile according to your HP. Thanks for sharing great Unique content on authorship . Voting up !
I would love to do this for my hubs but I am finding it impossible to understand what you are saying here, Glen. Not your fault, all mine ... guess I'm too old. I would just like to prove my authorship to Google and link my google + account to my hubs.
Is it possible to put it simply in words of one syllable for dummies like me?
Angie, It is indeed a complicated matter. Google didn't need to make it so complex, but they did. Try just reading the part about doing it for HubPages and follow just that section.
Basically it is a reciprocal link from your HP profile to your Google profile and back again. But you need to also attach "?rel=author" to the end of your Google link and include a + sign on the anchor that you use as explained in my Hub.
Thanks for this, Glen ... I will try and sort it out.
Angie, I checked what you did. Your link in your HP profile is correct. But your link in your Google profile has two problems. Google does not accept you using your tracking code. If you try the Rich Snippets test you will see that it fails. Also you can't use the old HubPages URL. You need to use the new one with your subdomain. You can place it in the "Other Profiles" or "Contributor to" section in Google, but not under "Links" ... which is where you put it.
Many thanks for persevering with me Glen, I have now changed it and have put both my blog and my HP subdomain under 'Other profiles'.
Now will Google recognise me as author of my work?
Angie, Great work! Google now recognizes you are the author of your hubs. I put your HP profile into Google's Rich Snippets Test Tool and it says: "Verified: Authorship markup is verified for this page."
Yay!!!!!! Thank you so much for all your help ... I most certainly could not have done it without you. x
Angie, Per your question on blogspot... It's not as easy. You need to do an extra step. But you also need to follow the same rules with reciprocal links. Don't change it. You succeeded at it. Use the same method that you know works. Linking Google to Google, as you have done, serves no purpose.
You need to use reciprocal links just like you did with HubPages. Place a link in your blogspot profile (your about page) to Google. And place a link in Google to your blogspot URL.
Then the extra step is to include an author box in all your posts that link to your about page (not so easy). HubPages did this step for you in all your Hubs.
But with blogspot, you need to link all your posts to your "about page" yourself. You do this from your Blogspot Dashboard.
I don't use blogspot, so you'll need to check their tutorial for details on using the dashboard.
When all done, test it with the Snippets Test Tool. Google will tell you if you did it right.
I'm stuck way back on step one, "Just log into your Google account and click on the "Profile" link." I've looked in both AdSense and Analytics and don't see any "Profile" link. What's your next clue?
Thanks for the instructions, Glenn they seem very simple but I have had to give up ... just cannot work out how to do the links.
My blog will have to sink or swim by itself ... lol!
Howard, Google tends to hide the links to edit your profile, although they are in many places. Best way is to go to google.com/settings and click "edit profile".
AEvans Level 7 Commenter 7 months ago
I will be the first one that is honest. I have tried the examples on my google profile and it still is giving me problems. I am frustrated because these types of things are normally easy for me. But for some reason it is complicated. Ex: I type in http://hubpages.com/profile/Evans and add the anchors I know I am doing something wrong somewhere, can you explain this again please or give the example on how it should actually look based on my info? Thanks. :)