Last week on our Hot Blog Tips newsletter, Brian Hawkins talked a little bit about the new Google Authorship program and how, with a Google Plus account, you can how have your image show up next to your content in Google search, along with some other cool stuff. I wanted to show you what some of it look like and just how cool it really is.
First, check out the image below:
That’s what comes up on Google when someone is lucky enough (lol) to put in a search term that brings up my blog, in this case my business blog. You notice how it not only brought up the post along with my image, but it brought up more links from my site highlighting the same post in different ways. It also brought up some of the other posts that I linked to, but I didn’t want the image to go on and on. Truthfully, this is really cool, and to make sure it wasn’t a fluke because I was signed in on my Firefox browser I pulled up the same search terms on 3 other browsers on my computer and the same thing came up, with my picture, in the same order. Trust me, that’s pretty cool.
There’s the thing though. Because I have to many different blogs I wondered if it would pull up my picture for those blogs as well under my name. Below is one of the topics for this blog:
I posted the same link on Google Plus some days later and this comes up:
I’m not mad at that. But there’s one more thing that I thought was pretty cool. By having that Google Plus account, it also accessed my YouTube channel and pulled this up for one of my more recent videos:
I don’t know about you but I’m uber impressed and think this is the coolest thing. Two of my other blogs have images as well, and only my local blog won’t show the images. Why?
The only way G+ will do this is if you’ve verified the email addresses associated with those blogs. I have all the email addresses on my G+ profile except that one because I didn’t create a separate email address for it, using my personal email address that I subscribe to newsletters and the like instead. I don’t want that one out into the public so it only comes up if I have to write someone from that blog, which to date I never have. But I can live with that.
In our never ending quest to be better known, I have to say this works great for me, and the thing is that if someone just put in my name and a topic I might be associated with, it works out as well, as the example below shows what came up when I typed Mitch Mitchell Leadership, no quotation marks:
It listed a bunch more articles as well because, well, I have written lots of articles on leadership on my business blog.
Anyway, I wanted to share that with you in case you want to think about doing it for yourself. By the way, if you’re wondering why Google looks like this for me, check out an old blog post I wrote about Stylish.
I read about this on Adrienne’s blog, I still haven’t figured out whether it works for my posts or not!
It is a good tool though, associating faces with a post… definitely one step ahead in making it easier for recognition!
Hajra, if you have a Google Plus account and your email associated with it on your blog just go to Google, type in the name of your blog, and see if it’s working for you, like I did. It really turns out to be that simple.
I did it, but somehow my pic doesn’t appear… I wonder what I am doing wrong. I have my G+ account, have my blog with the same email and everything…. but my pic doesn’t show 🙁
Hajra, check out this link, http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets, and if it can’t find you it’ll tell you why & what to do. You won’t see an immediate change, but in a couple of weeks it’ll be working just fine. On the one account I talked about where it took some time, they even sent me an email telling me it was working.
Hi Hajra, I think I might see why you’re not getting authorship.
A) I didn’t see a link from your blog to your G+ profile. You should have a link to your Google Plus profile using the authorship tag rel=”author”.
B) You need to link back to your blog from your Google Plus ‘about’ page under “Contributor to”.
Try those two things and, after a few days, see if the Rich Snippet Tool that Mitch linked to offers any insight.
Thanks you guys! Will try it out and get back! 🙂
Previously this would appear only if structured markup language is implemented in a website or blog, currently just require to link G+ profile which is much easier.
Carl, I had a devil of a time trying to get it to work the other way, so I’m glad they came up with the email connection instead.
You might have succeeded first time, however often when you are logged in your account, it might not display the link, actually it doesn’t show avatar always, but says “by author”.
Seems like it always shows my link Carl, and I’ll take that. I do notice that once it shows your picture it doesn’t keep showing your picture for all your other links, and I guess that’s pretty cool as well.
That’s enterprising. But I don’t want my picture all displayed in the Internet. I’m shy…:D.
For now, I tried it and my picture does not show. I’m glad it didn’t.
What about pulling up traffic to your site/blog?
Jena, I think it’s too early to know if it’s driven more traffic to my site or not, but I can say that most of my traffic comes through search engines, Google in particular, and who knows if it’s my topic or my face (probably the topic) that helps get people to click on those links. lol
Wow! That looks pretty cool! I’ve refused to have a G+ account yet but now I’ve just found a really significant reason for creating one! Thanks for then inspiration!
No problem Hajni. This really is one of the best reasons to have an account there.
Finally remembered to fix my name here, Mitch 😉
Anyways, that is cool. I had tried to add google authorship to my guest posts at various blog (Well, I did like what Google told me to, but it never pulled up my images or my name in the search engine). About 2 weeks ago, I got an email (I think it was a mass email on Google authorship) saying that Google has finally recognized as the author as me 😉
(I was pretty impressed because the sites in which I didn’t do much to get my authorship also displayed my profile with it).
I think Google is making great steps to making search results more personalized and making the searching experience better (now, if I search for an article, I can see directly from my search page whether the author is a creditable on or not).
Jeevan, things like this certainly diminish some of the hesitation people might have in working with Google, that’s for sure. I’m glad it worked for you with guest posting; that means those folks are allowing you to set up your own account with your email; that’s something I did once on one of my sites that I’m not giving up again… well, for a long time. lol
You’re right though, if I see a link on Google with someone’s picture, I do get curious enough to check it out. That’s not so bad for anyone.
This is a great idea Mitch. I have done it and it looks more professional. It gives readers a bigger to click on your results.
It also helps to build your brand.
Thanks Michael. It really works on building your brand if you’re the brand, which I pretty much am. 🙂
Hi Mitch, It’s nice to see someone expressing some real excitement about authorship. For many people, I think it hasn’t quite sunk in just how big of a deal this is. You couldn’t pay for this type of listing in Google not that long ago.
True Brian, and seeing my name associated with my posts and articles in so many places is just the coolest thing.
Looks like I got some work to do. Only get photos for the G+ posts. Thanks for the heads up.
No problem Scott; that’s why I write this stuff. lol
Hey Mitch, So I’m a tech savvy gal and i followed the set-up accordingly and yet I’m seeing issues with this. Ugh! Anyway It is a dern awesome thing and it solidifies your web presence. Now if I can only get the sucker to work…
Mys, the instructions are a little confusing at times, but if you look at the comment here by Brian talking about some things to check out and the link I put in a comment to someone else that also helps you check your link hopefully you’ll get it working in no time.
Interesting find Mitch; I have to admit I’d never seen an author’s picture on any query I’ve searched for in Google. It’s an excellent idea of Google’s, and I suspect it will build the trust factor for yourself in more than one way. Google has certainly come a long way from 11 years ago when I first came across it :).
That’s true Richard; I remember when Alta Vista was my search engine of choice. It’s one of the better things Google has done, and counters some of the bad stuff. lol
Thanks Michael…i followed the setup according to u and yet I’m seeing issues with this….bur its cool.thnx for inspiring me for G+.
Vikram, if you do everything right and don’t see results immediately, it’s no big deal. For my business blog it took 3 weeks before it worked.
Hi Mitch, there sure has been a lot of buzz and talk about this Google authorship. I don’t know why but so far I’ve just been too lazy to look into it. I always say, ” it’s on my to do list” but that list is so long who knows if it will ever get done.
I’m sure you’ll do it in your own time Brian. I’m glad to see my face out there, as I’m hoping for more speaking opportunities.
Hi Mitch Mitchell,
Well i’ve read many posts regarding integrating google plus authorship but never tried it. But i thinks now its essential for make a authorship for every blogger.
thanks.
Raj, it’s probably not essential, but it’s definitely beneficial to some of us.