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Google’s Matt Cutts: Someday, Perhaps Ranking Benefits From Using Rel=”Author”

Barry Schwartz on June 5, 2013 at 1:28 pm

A new video by Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, talks about how potentially using rel=”author” structured data can help Google’s Web spam team improve search quality.

Matt Cutts explains that moving from the anonymous Web to a Web with identity helps Google understand the authority and trust of the person writing that content. It can help identify a spammer from an author with a lot of authority and credibility.

The example given by Cutts is of our own Founding Editor, Danny Sullivan. If Danny writes something in a low PageRank forum, Google may consider that post written by Danny with more authority, despite the overall domain/forum it was written on having low PageRank.

Here is the video from Matt:

Let’s not forget that despite Google talking about an algorithm or having a patent on an algorithm, it does not mean Google uses the algorithm in their live search results.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.