Google authorship is best applied to websites that have consistent content from one or more authors (real people). Google wants to promote people’s content using their Google + social network. They do this by showing the author’s headshot next to the Google listing and also offering to show other articles by this author. It leads to higher CTR (than links without the thumbnails) and also helps with extra impressions and clicks.
Google Authorship in Webmaster Tools
When authorship is set up correctly, there will be a new section in your Webmaster tools that will have data to analyze. On the left, look for ‘Labs’ then click on ‘Author stats’. The clicks you can rack up using Google Authorship are not small, it’s quite significant if done correctly and you pump out content on a regular basis. Look at this, 1000 free clicks using Google authorship over a 3-month period; amazing value there:
Brief Tutorial on Activating Google Authorship
In order to hook up your Google + profile to your website in a very certain way with backlinks and anchor text (technically called ‘Rich Snippets’), Google wants to see the following items to allow the Google authorship to work with the thumbnails in search:
1) Your website has to have an About page that links to your Google + profile. Google is very particular about the spelling of names, so it has to match exactly! I’ve even seen cases where the author tried to change their picture and the Google authorship shut off until they changed it back. Facial recognition for sure…
2) Your Google + profile must list your website as a site you are contributing to. You can edit this from your Google + profile setting page.
3) Each post must have the author names and the date of the post. This is usually achieved by WordPress or Joomla, or whatever platform your blog is on.
You can test if it’s setup correctly using the Structured Data Testing Tool here. You may need to verify your email using this tool at the bottom of the page, so this link is important.
Here is what a correct setup Google Authorship page will look like using the tool above:
Hope this helps and contact us with any questions!