How soon before author rank becomes a major ranking factor?
-
Hi,
I wanted to pose a question
How soon do guys think itll be before author rank becomes a one of Googles major ranking factors?
From what I can see the way they have designed it signals that it is only matter of time, before they start using it as a major ranking factor...
And I have a question on Author ranks impact on the ability to sell a blog/site in the future. Surely if the blog is tied to an author(s) and the ranking of the site in the search engine is somewhat based on this authors author rank who is a part of the site/blog, then it becomes harder to sell the property if the author is not going to be a part of the property after the sale?.
I look forward to your responses on this,
-
Good response Paul.
-
A.J. Kohn just posted last week about how, from his information, the Authorship Project at Google is actually dead. Not that the concept of authorship is going away completely, but that there will be "a change in tactics from Authorship markup to entity extraction as a way to identify experts and a pathway to using Authorship as a ranking signal."
http://moz.com/community/q/trending-bugs-in-moz-analyticsIt's a really interesting read, and makes great sense, especially considering the direction Hummingbird has taken toward improving the Knowledge Graph. Given the amount of work still ahead on the entity extraction process, I suspect it will some time (a year?) before we start seeing authorship elements begin impacting rankings. And with the way the SERP pages are going, by then there may not be any actual "ranking" process to speak of.
As far as "ranking of of sites in search engines" with regard to selling sites, etc... Google essentially tries to rank pages, not sites. Obviously a site's other pages benefit from the halo effect of other strong pages and brand recognition, but if we follow their logic on author influence, as long as the "good" author's content remains on the site, it should still rank, regardless of whether or not the author still writes for that site (see current implementation of Authorship and how it references sites and author as a "former contributor").
I suspect the algorithm may be taught how to detect when the newer content on a site isn't as "influential" or trustworthy as the older content, and adjust the "halo effect" accordingly.
Google's got their work cut out for them to implement some sort of "authority ranking" (my term) that takes into account the famous, but doesn't burn the smart but lesser-knowns the way their current focus on big brands burns the often-more-valuable smaller sites.
As Takeshi says - building authority and trust in all the organic ways possible is a beneficial strategy, regardless of the specifics of how authorship plays out.
Good question, and as always in web marketing... interesting times ahead.
Paul
-
This is definitely on Google's todo list, but who knows when it will be an actual factor. As AJ Kohn says, build your authority, not your authorank. Focus on becoming an authority in your niche, and you will see benefits for SEO & your business regardless of whether Google implements authorank or not. And if they do, you should be well positioned to take advantage of it.
There are definitely things you can do to prepare for the coming changes (build up your profile on Google+, use rel=author on content you create, create a Wikipedia page), but as far when Google will roll it out, I doubt even Google's engineers know about it at this point.
As far as selling a blog, the question of author has always been an issue. If a famous author sells their blog to someone less well known, will people still read it? As far as search, the impact of authorrank should be minimal, all the old posts would still have the authorship boost of the old author, only newly authored posts would not. If the blog has a high enough authority, I could even see people buying blogs to increase their own authority in the niche.
-
This is something that I've had many heated debates about, but I think I proved that Author Rank is a factor, and this is how I did it...and it was a mistake by the way. But you could try it too.
(Unfortunately, because my client data is confidential, I can't share too many intimate details.)
I had a client who has a responsive WP theme. However, they have so much content, the responsive theme just isn't the best solution-- not as good as a mobile site-- for this particular client.
I put up a mobile site at mobile.example.com and I set up the canonical link to point to the main domain, just as it should. The mobile site was also a WP site.
However, when I made the mobile site, I accidentally left myself as the author. (I built the mobile site before I added the site owner as a user.)
A couple of weeks later, MY FACE started appearing in the Google results instead of the attorney. In other words, the attorney used to rank on page 2 for "What are the consequences of DUI in Arizona?"
And it was at something like: example.com/consequences-dui-az-something
But suddenly mobile.example.com/consequences-dui-az-something appeared on page one of Google, with my face. The rankings changed and Google preferred to believe that I was the author, rather than the attorney with his brand new authorship.
So even though I added duplicate content and a canonical tag, Google preferred the content that was authored by me, and chose to display that over the identical content that the attorney wrote and had been previously indexed and given author credit for. All of a sudden, the mobile site took precedence. When I changed authorship back to the attorney, rankings dropped slightly again and Google chose to display the MAIN site (as it should have), rather than the mobile.
I don't care what anyone (even Matt Cutts) says about Authorship. I've seen a real life example. Perhaps they are using it in certain markets and not others. But when it comes to attorneys, my primary client, I've seen it matter.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best place to employ "branded" related keywords to gain SEO benefits and rank for "non branded" keywords?
Hi all, I want to put this question straight with an example rather than confusing with a scenario. If there is company called "vertigo", a tiles manufacturer. There are many search queries with thousands of searches like "vertigo tiles life", "vertigo tiles for garden", "vertigo tiles dealers", "vertigo tiles for kitchen", etc....These kind of pages will eventually have tendency to rank for non-branded keywords like "tiles for garden", "tiles for kitchen", etc. So where to employ these kind of help/info pages? Main website or sub-domain? Is it Okay to have these pages on sub-domain and traffic getting diverted to sub domain? What if the same pages are on main website? Will main website have ranking improvement for non branded keywords because of employing the landing pages with related topics? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Long term rankings drop after swapping primary domain
Hey...this is my first post on Moz so please go easy on me! I've recently been baffled by the ranking behavior of a domain I do SEO for. In short, the primary domain was "musashispicymayo.com". After several months of SEO efforts and a really solid PR run the site managed to run up to #1 for several target keywords. For the purposes of this question I'd like to focus on the term "spicy mayo". "Musashispicymayo.com" was steadily climbing for as far back as page 5 until it ultimately reached #1 rank on Google for "spicy mayo". We also had another domain "musashifoods.com" which was originally 301 redirecting to "Musashispicymayo.com". About 3 months ago (shortly after acquiring the top ranking) the client wanted to reverse the domains so we started using "musashifoods.com" as the primary and redirecting "musashispicymayo.com" to that. In summary:
Algorithm Updates | | Andy-Twizen
ORIGINALLY: musashifoods.com 301 redirect -> musashispicymayo.com
NOW: musashispicymayo.com 301 redirect -> musashifoods.com At the time of the swap I did the following: Redirected the domain using a 301 via htaccess (made sure "www" requests are forwarded too) Created a new Google analytics account / webmaster account for "musashifoods.com" Went into my old webmaster tools account and used the change of address tool In the new webmaster tools account i submitted a sitemap and requested a crawl of the new domain Ensured the new primary domain was properly configured and all pages had the correct urls in the source code Verified that Google has updated their index and "musashifoods.com" now shows in the results. Now of course musashispicymayo has the keyword in the domain but I find it hard to believe that that is what caused such a dramatic and swift drop in rankings. In fact a good portion of the backlinks actually point to "musashifoods.com"...Did I miss something else here? Does Google penalize you for reversing 301 redirects like that instead of just using a new domain altogether? Let me know if I can provide any additional info that would help clarify...any advice is greatly appreciated!0 -
Diluting your authority - adding pages diluting rankings of other pages?
I'm looking after a site that has around 400 pages. All of these pages rank pretty well for the KW they are targetting. My question is: if we add another 400 pages without doing any link building work, holding DA the same, 1) would the rankings of those 400 previously good pages diminish? and 2) Would the new pages, as more and more new ones are created, rank less and less well?
Algorithm Updates | | xoffie0 -
Would 37,000 footer links from one site be the cause for our ranking drops?
Hey guys, After this week's Penguin update, I've noticed that one of our clients has seen a dip in rankings. Because of this, I've had a good link at the client's back link profile in comparison to competitors and noticed that over 37,000 footer links have been generated from one website - providing us with an unhealthy balance of anchor terms. Do you guys believe this may be the cause for our ranking drops? Would it be wise to try and contact the webmaster in question to remove the footer links? Thanks, Matt
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Loss of 1,000 links has negatively affecting rankings
Hey there, One of the clients we're working with has lost about 1,000 or so backlinks over the last two or three months - mainly old article and directory links - and it has massively affected the site's search rankings. The site was ranking for pretty much all of its keywords in prominent positions on Google (mostly first page) but has now seen positions dive to 50, 90 and even outside of the top 100. Is there any immediate action we can put into place to help restore our rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
How do search engines calculate ranking?
On SEOMoz, I can see that when people type in X keyword, my website comes up at Y place. For example, if someone googles "Mobile Productivity", a page on my website comes up at #10. How is that #10 ranking calculated? I would've guessed it's based on some combination of linking root domain and page authority, but I see sites that rank below mine that have higher scores on both. For example, on the aforementioned 'Mobile Productivity' search, my site comes up #10 with a Linking Root Domain score of 2, and a Page Authority of 29. But Honeywell Products and Services comes up #13 on the same "Mobile Productivity" search (ie, BELOW my site), even though they have a Linking Root Domain score of 40 and a Page Authority of 72. Similarly, Mobileproductivity.com comes in at #1 for that search with scores of 7 and 31 respectively, but mpifix.com comes in at #2 with scores of 61 and 47 respectively. How are the search engine rankings calculated? Thanks in advance, Julian
Algorithm Updates | | MobileDay0 -
High ranking but low traffic, what gives?
One of our clients is in the top 3 spots on high volume keywords that get 20-70k hits in the US each month (per adWords keyword tool), but their daily traffic is in the low hundreds. What's going on?
Algorithm Updates | | optimalwebinc0 -
New Blog Post Ranking Fluctuation
I wrote a recent blog post on Friday. It was indexed and ranked on the first page on Monday. On Wednesday, it was nowhere to be found. I noticed that, after a few more recent posts, it was on page two of my blog. So I expanded my results so that it was back on my first page. Today, it is back on the first page - same spot as before. Was that my problem, or could it be something else I am unaware of?
Algorithm Updates | | BMac540