Google Tweaks Its Rel=Author Display, Promotes Google+ In Search Results

Google has rolled out a few changes to how it shows results that use the rel=author markup. Some of these are things that have been spotted in testing in recent weeks, so today’s announcement formalizes how that markup will display in Google’s search results.

Here’s how it currently looks using one of Danny Sullivan’s recent articles:

(I was going to use one of my articles as an example, but Google has turned off my rel=author status for some reason. But I’m not angry. At all.)

Anyhoo, the author’s image is justified to the left of the snippet information — that was changed some time ago from the original display when the image floated to the far right of the search result. Announced today are several changes that promote Google+:

• Circle counts — you can see how many people have the author in Google+ circles.
• Add to circles — in the case above, you can see that I have Danny in a circle called “Search Engine Land.” If he wasn’t in any of my circles, there’d be a gray “Add to circles” button there.
• Comments — at the bottom, you can see how many comments there are on the Google+ post (not the original Search Engine Land article) when Danny shared this “Bing Promotes Firefox” story. There’s also a link there to drive traffic to the Google+ post.

On a related note, just yesterday Google announced a way to establish authorship status using email. Me? I’m still waiting for the post about how to re-establish authorship after it’s been taken away. Ahem. (/end of whining)