Is Author Authority a Google Ranking Factor?

Imagine you have a minor medical problem. Maybe every time you eat, your jaw clicks behind your molars. It’s not painful, but it’s unpleasant.

To find a solution to this vexing problem, turn to that universal bank of knowledge, the Internet.

As you review the search engine results, which source do you think is more reliable: the page written by an ear, nose, and throat doctor with ten years of medical experience or the one written by a guy who runs a blog from Minecraft?

It’s an obvious choice. This does not mean that the Minecraft blogger page does not have the correct information. Still, he’s unlikely to know more about what ails you than a health professional with a medical degree, five years of residency training, and a decade of field experience.

It’s just a fact: credibility matters. And this has never been truer than today, when misinformation is rampant on the Internet.

And while most authors try to be helpful, there is a lot of information on the web that can be downright harmful. It doesn’t matter if this misinformation is the result of malice or ignorance: incorrect or wrong content can do a lot of damage.

This is why author authority, or author rank, is considered in the search engine optimization process. Let’s take a look at how.

The claim: Author authority influences page rank

When determining the overall quality of a web page and how well it answers a search query, Google puts emphasis FOOD. This is experience, authority and trust.

But does this include the author’s EAT? Does it matter if the article was written by a true expert rather than a recent journalism graduate?

Copyright is a concept that has been around for years. And the role it plays in site rankings has long been a debate among SEO experts and digital marketers.

Let’s take a closer look.

The Evidence: Author Authority and SERP Ranking

Google has never indicated that the author of an article directly influences rankings. But that doesn’t mean you can ignore it.

There is evidence that the search engine giant is interested in identifying authors.

In 2005, which is an aeon in terms of SEO, Google filed a patent by the rank of agent. Designed to help weed out low-quality content, it allowed the search engine to use digital signatures to rank articles by reputation.

In 2011, Google confirmed support for authorship markup using rel=”author”. However, the adoption of this label was slow. A 2014 study found that only 30% of authors used this tag, and Google officially removed it the same year.

At a 2016 SMX conference, Google Webmaster trends analyst Gary Illyes said the company doesn’t use authorship, but has systems in place to recognize who created content. This seems to refer to the role played by authors Google Knowledge Graph.

If you’re not familiar with the Knowledge Graph, it’s a massive database of facts and entities (that is, things or concepts that are singular, unique, well-defined, and distinguishable). Authors are entities officially recognized by Google, although not all content creators are known to the search engine.

Author reputation is important, but be careful not to conflate “reputation” with “expertise” and “authority.”

Google uses expertise and authority to assess trustworthiness on a given topic. Reputation, on the other hand, is a more subjective assessment based on how readers view the author.

Reputation is determined by Guidelines for Search Quality Evaluators: A set of guiding principles used to train human evaluators who evaluate search engine quality and sometimes test proposed changes to search algorithms.

One of these guidelines states that a low content creator rating is enough to give the piece a low quality rating. However, Google has been transparent that these human-generated ratings are never used to influence query results.

In March 2020, Google filed a patent for Author vectors, which helps you identify who created untagged content. It does this by assessing writing styles and levels of experience and interest in different topics.

While the search engine giant has not explained how or why they use this program to determine search rankings, it has been evident in recommending the addition of author URLs to the article outline.

It doesn’t specify what this URL should point to, but it’s most commonly used to send readers to a social media profile or bio page.

[Learn More:] The Complete Guide to Google Ranking Factors

The Verdict: The impact of author authority on rankings is unclear

There has been a lot of back and forth about the role of author authority in Google search results; unfortunately, there is no clear answer.

However, even if it doesn’t directly affect your organic ranking, it’s still smart to follow Google’s QA guidelines.

Users care about the reputation and relevance of the author of a piece. And that alone is reason enough to seek out the best possible authors and identify them in each article.

Featured image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal