Fun Tip of the Day: Google Authorship

Have we talked about Google Authorship here before? I just enabled this neat little feature, which causes Google to display your picture and a profile box during searches on your name.

Here’s a screenshot of doing a search with my Google Authorship profile enabled. When I begin typing my name in Google’s search box, my picture appears along with the various search result options.

And here’s a picture of the search results. A box highlights my profile information, including a photo.

It’s hard to get everything on one screen to show you, but my Google Plus profile information also appears in a box with a photo. The example below shows Basil Sands’ picture instead of mine. Why, I’m not sure. Basil’s an IT guy, so maybe he can tell us, lol.

I just did a random sampling of searches on the TKZ bloggers’ names. The results indicate that most of us, but not all, have already set up a Google Authorship profile. Google Authorship is an incentive to get more familiar with Google Plus, which is much less popular as an outreach tool among authors compared to, say, Facebook.

So, have you been using Google Authorship as part of your Google Plus identity? Do you have any user tips or best practices you can share?

20 thoughts on “Fun Tip of the Day: Google Authorship

  1. I have been using Google Author to post links to original material on my website and have seen a hundreds more people visiting my site every day.
    You have to have a professional photo to make this work, and of course good, original material. It is always content that sells.

  2. Yes and Internet content farms are trying to force us, the faceless legion, to attach our names and faces to the 400-words-for-pay articles we crank out.

    I refused. One of the things I like about content-farming is that I get to remain anonymous. One of my fav clients is a rant site. The posts are all deliberately provocative. My day job is for government. Yeah, I want my name and photo attached to articles like “Why everyone hates you and your children.” If it persists, I will have to create a fake persona and avatar to keep that little day job.

    Wait, I already have . . .

    Signed: Crescents Gionnta

    • You have some excellent points there, Crescents! πŸ™‚ I’m totally with you on being nervous about the privacy invasions. I’m also made nervous by all the tweaks and twangs they do over at Facebook that invade privacy. But I figure we’re all stuck with Google to one degree or another, so I better figure out how to use their Google Plus features.

  3. Haha, that’s funny, Terri.

    I only recently learned about Google Authorship. I did set mine up, but I’m not certain I did everything right. I have not, however, done any additional troubleshooting. I’m trying to follow the sage advice of you experts who remind me that I need to keep writing more books. So, I’m trying not to wander too far down the Google rabbit hole.

    I do believe it’s a good idea to use Google Authorship, though — as long as one isn’t trying to stay incognito, of course. From a consumer perspective, I’ll often choose a search result with the picture of a nice, trustworthy looking individual attached. Likewise, I skip over the ones with images of sketchy looking people.

    • I have some incognito ID’s that I use for sociopolitical rants, esp. after I’ve consumed too much Merlot, lol! Hope Google Authorship never catches onto the soapbox-sermons of my alter ego, Red Saxon. His motto: “Don’t touch a wildcat without a glove.” (Motto stolen from my other clan, the McPhersons!)

    • I’m a Luddite too, Kris, which is why I thought maybe everyone already knew about this! You have to set up a
      Google Plus profile,
      then here’s a pretty straightforward summary I found: of how to set up authorship:

      How To Set Up Google Authorship

      I’m still not sure about what’s up with “claiming authorship,” what gets revealed, etc. Sometimes I get scared off by the privacy invasion aspects of these new twists and turns in the technology stream, as Terri pointed out. So I’m tippy-toeing into using this feature.

    • There are options in the setting where you decide who can see information. Some of my settings are filled in, but I chose to allow “Only me” to see it and I can only see it when logged in. You want your profile to be 100% complete for max efficiency. Just know you can change every data to be displayed to “Only you” if you wanted to, but then why contribute? πŸ™‚

    • Author and editor Marcy Kennedy did a Google+ webinar last week. Among her recommendations was to leave blank any of the personal details in your profile you didn’t want the world to know and which aren’t required. Your birth date was a prime example. Single women may want to not advertise that fact, she advised. The marital status field is optional.

      Balancing the need to be visible and approachable with “Would a troll want to know this?” may be a challenge, but it’s doable.

    • Good points, Ross! In fact I had a screen shot I was going to use in this post, but as I uploaded it I realized it contained my home address and cell phone number. I had a heck of a time figuring out how to undo those things!

  4. I have been using Google Authorship for my profile. The more you confirm your identity, the more you will be marketing your product/articles online.

    Also be warned, if you switch to the Google+ commenting, it is a great way to integrate your comments and allow Google Plus users to comment directly from their Google Plus accounts. Might be off topic, but thought I’d warn you in case some excitement ensues.

    A reader must create a Google Plus account in order to comment. πŸ™ I already have one so it wouldn’t bother me much, but you could possibly annoy some readers by turning on that feature. Just an fyi, sorry to go off topic.

    • Wait, that goes beyond my limited understanding of this thing, Diane! That’s my fear– I worry that I’ll inadvertently push something that’ll annoy the world of Google Plus cognoscenti. And have no idea I’d just do e something. Perhaps I better leave well enough alone, lol.

    • I know, Nancy! I think that’s a problem with Google Plus in general–it’s non-intuitive and hard to figure out. I’m just glad I’m able to get a picture and box-thingee to appear in results. What more it can do, I have no clue!

    • Actually, I already linked my Google Plus account to my blog, and my photo does pop up when I start typing my name into the Google search window. So maybe I already have this feature? Anyway, I, too, am confused by Google +.

  5. I need to look into this more. And now that I am looking into it, I also see that I really need to revamp my website. Time for a digi-makeover.

    Oh and by the way Kathryn, I’m not stalking you. That pic showed up because it was the graphic on a recent blog post.

    not that I wouldn’t if I were the type that did that sort of thing, cuz you seem like a nice lady and all and quite attractive and such, but I’m not into the whole stalking thing, too worried that if I stalked a person then there’d be other stalkers stalking that stalkable person, which means while I was lurking in the shadows there’d be other lurkers lurking that I couldn’t see who may end up being better stalking lurkers then me and next thing you know…blamo!… I’ve either got a garrote around my neck or walk into the store and see my face on the tabloids…both are a bad ending.

    • Lol, Basil, I knew that! I have a feeling with this Google Authorship like I do with LinkedIn–if I press the wrong button somehow, I’ll end up sending connection solicitations to everyone I ever knew in my entire life!

  6. Thanks, Kathryn! I had no idea such a thing even existed. I’ll have to wait for next weekend to do it, but I’m going to.

    Now…if I can only figure out hashtags…

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