Google help document adds author markup best practices

Make sure to verify that you are following these new best practices to ensure your rich results show properly in Google Search.

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Google has added a new section to the Article structured data documentation for author markup best practices. As a reminder, Article structured data can be added to your news, blog, and sports article page and can enhance your appearance in Google Search results.

Author markup. Google said in this new section “to help Google best understand and represent the author of the content, we recommend following these best practices when specifying authors in markup.”

New best practices. The new best practices include these points:

  • Include all authors in the markup
  • Specify multiple authors when applicable
  • Use the additional fields that is available to you
  • Only specify the author’s name in the author.name property
  • Use the appropriate author type

Google also shares some examples of how to implement these best practices.

Why we care. If you are using Article markup, make sure you are following these new documented author best practices. It may help your articles show up for article rich results and drive higher engagement and clicks from the Google Search results.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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