Google+ Authorship, Rich Snippits and Three Names - a Problem?
-
Hello All,
I have a conundrum that I thought I'd resolved - but that's popped its gnarly old head over the parapet again.
I have a number of websites that I'd like to have show my ugly Google+ mug as author in the Google SERPS. I jumped through all the authorship verification hoops that Google threw at me and I thought I'd won.
The problem? I have three names: Nick Beresford-Davies.
One example of a page that I'm trying to achieve authorship with is: http://www.graphic-design-employment.com/illustrator-how-to-make-a-pattern.html
I have verified authorship of the above website on my Google Profile:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107765436751760696335/aboutOriginally I footed the page with Nick Beresford-Davies (hyphenated) and the Structured Data Testing Tool ignored the hyphen and just saw Nick Beresford. So I tweaked my online name (to please Google!) to Nick Beresford Davies (no hyphen). Initially this seemed to work - but I just checked again and now Google, for reasons only known to itself, sees "nick davies" as the author, completely ignoring the name in the footer of the page (by Nick Beresford Davies) and the fact that the site has been verified by Google+. This is also the case for all other websites that I contribute to - and not all the bylines are in the footer - some are by the headline.
When I test pages on the structured testing tool and enter my Google+ profile, it replies:
nick davies, we've found your name as one of the authors from the page. You can use "Authorship verification by email" method above to verify your authorship.Error: Author name found on the page and Google+ profile name do not match. Please consider adding markup to the site.Much as I would like to succeed on the Google SERPS, I draw the line at changing my name to keep this robot happy - so if anyone has any suggestions, or can see any obvious step that I've missed, I'd be very grateful. I find it hard to believe that no other double-barrelled website author exists - so I'm hoping I'm not the only one to have experienced this... Thanks!
-
OK, so as so often happens, after asking a long, drawn-out question, I've gone off and found a working solution. Whereas when I originally tried it the "?rel-author" tag didn't work for me before, now it does. I'm ready and willing to accept that I'd done it wrong the first time around... but just in case anyone will find this ramble of any use whatsoever, here's what I did (as per Google's instructions):
- Add a G+ profile link to each article posted - such as [View Google+ Profile]([your Google+ profile address]?rel=author)
- Make sure that under the "Contributor to" section the root domain of the site is listed. You don't need to put in a link to the specific article - just the root domain.
- Test the link using the structured testing tool again - it should give a pretty much instant result, hopefully in the positive.
- Wish that you'd done this properly in the first place.
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
-
Is all in one seo getting rid of my google authorship?
is all in one seo getting rid of my google authorship? I had it before and after installing All in One it is not coming up anymore. I have nothing in the google plus field of the main All in one settings, and I have it inserted in my user->your profile. When I view page source it is there. But it does not show up in the search, see: https://www.google.com/search?q=chicago+nightlife+superstar It even works in the rich snippet tester: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.howlatthemoon.com%2Fdueling_piano_bar%2Fchicago-nightlife-superstar%2F&html= Also my title has changed. It is correct in the tester but not in Google. Please help!!!
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
How to optimize for different google seach center (google.de, google.ch) ?
We all use Deutsch language and (.com) domains for the sites. I ranked well in google.com ,but not so well in google.de , google.ch , my competitors ranked much better in google.de,google.ch. I checked most of their outbound-links, but get few information. Links from (.DE) domains or links from sites located in German help the rank for special google seach center ? (google.de, google.ch) . Or some other factors i missed? please help.
Technical SEO | | sunvary0 -
Site Map Problems or Are They?
According to webmaster tools my Sitemap contains urls which are blocked by robots.txt Our site map is generically generated and encompasses all web pages, whether I have excluded them using the robots.txt file As far as I am aware this has never been an issue until recently. Is this hurting my rankings and how do I fix it? Secondly, webmaster tools says there is over 5,000 error/warnings on my site map. But site map is only 1,400 or so pages submitted. How do I see what is going on?
Technical SEO | | Professor0 -
RSS Feed Errors in Google
We recently (2 months ago) launched RSS feeds for the category pages on our site. Last week we started seeing error pages in Webmaster Tools' Crawl Errors report pop up for feeds of old pages that have been deleted from the site, deleted from the sitemap, and not in Google's index since long before we launched the RSS feeds. Example: www.mysite.com/super-old-page/feed/ I checked and both the URL for the feed and the URL for the actual page are returning 404 statuses. www.mysite.com/super-old-page/ is also showing up in our Crawl Errors. Its been deleted for months but Webmaster Tools is very slow to remove the page from their Crawl Error report. Where is Google finding these feeds that never existed?
Technical SEO | | Hakkasan0 -
Change in how Google displays SERPs
Hi All, Recently our SERPs have changed in Google results to show product prices from our pages rather than the meta description. This just started to happen in November with no change (that we know of) on our side. I have attached a from and to SERP image if that helps. Does any one have any ideas as its starting to effect our rankings? Thanks, Tony. Tkeou,6jg6Q Tkeou,6jg6Q#1
Technical SEO | | tstauntonwri0 -
Rich snippets
Hi Everyone, Hope you can help me out. We have customer reviews on our product pages and are also ranking highly for those keywords for those product pages. To improve our CTR for those keywords I think to show those reviews with organic results using rich snippets would be a good way of improving CTR. I have asked my programmer to integrate this, which he came back and said after the rich snippets have been integrated we then have to ask Google to integrate it in their search results, is this true? I hope this makes sense. Kind Regards
Technical SEO | | Paul781 -
Different TLD's same content - duplicate content? - And a problem in foreign googles?
Hi, Operating from the Netherlands with customers troughout Europe we have for some countries the same content. In the netherlands and Belgium Dutch is spoken and in Germany and Switserland German is spoken. For these countries the same content is provided. Does Google see this as duplicate content? Could it be possible that a german customer gets the Swiss website as a search result when googling in the German Google? Thank you for your assistance! kind regards, Dennis Overbeek Dennis@acsi.eu
Technical SEO | | SEO_ACSI0 -
Blocking Google from Crawling Parameters
Hi guys: What is the best way to keep Google from crawling certain urls with parameters? I used the setting in Webmaster Tools, but that doesn't seem to be helping at all. Can I use robots.txt or some other method? Thanks! Some examples are: <colgroup><col width="797"></colgroup> www.mayer-johnson.com/category/assistive-technology?manufacturer=179 www.mayer-johnson.com/category/assistive-technology?manufacturer=226 www.mayer-johnson.com/category/assistive-technology?manufacturer=227 <colgroup><col width="797"></colgroup> www.mayer-johnson.com/category/english-language-learners?condition=212 www.mayer-johnson.com/category/english-language-learners?condition=213 www.mayer-johnson.com/category/english-language-learners?condition=214 <colgroup><col width="797"></colgroup>
Technical SEO | | DanaDV
| www.mayer-johnson.com/category/english-language-learners?roles=164 |
| www.mayer-johnson.com/category/english-language-learners?roles=165 |
| www.mayer-johnson.com/category/english-language-learners?roles=197 | | |0