Google Authorship Bugs
Oops...Was that supposed to happen?
By: Sean Murray
All I wanted Was a Face
My name is Sean Murray and I wanted to have my face accompany my
articles in Google's Search Results.
Everyone else was doing it... so why not me?
So I Followed the Directions
Article by: Sean Murray
And presto!
But Then...
My face disappeared for no reason and I was
And Then...
It came back even though I didn't change anything and I was all
like
And So You Must Know
This happens and there's no reason for it. Google Authorship is
not perfect and sometimes it actually doesn't show Authorship on
purpose. So don't be all like:
Unless
Your Authorship HTML is busted
The rest of your HTML is busted
Your Google Plus photo doesn't meet Google's guidelines for
Authorship
You have like 10 different Authorship links on 1 page
Your website sucks really bad
You didn't add the website to your contributor section
Check your HTML AGAIN
And Once Fixed...
You can apply Authorship to many things besides articles:Social
media profiles
Online presentations/ PDFs
Forum threads
Press Releases
Reviews
Get Creative! Assign your online life's work to Authorship and
let Google decide how to incorporate it.
Although
There are oddities. Like when all I did was comment on this
thread but I got Authorship for the entire URL.
First person to include an Authorship link in a forum thread
gets Authorship for the entire URL!! IS THIS A BUG??
And There Are
Because
Google started to confuse me with this guy:
A much morefamous Sean Murray
Other People Have Experienced It
I originally had no links to Quora on my Google Plus profile and
there was nothing on this Quora URL that linked to anything about
me on Google Plus. Google's algorithm made an assumption and acted
on its own.
This can happen!
In my Webmaster Tools under Author Stats:
I Made the Problem Worse
I signed up for Quora and added a link to my Quora profile under
my Google Authorship contributor section.
I though that would fix the problem but I was wrong.
EVERY Sean Murray on Quora is attributed to me now. BUG!!!!
And Then it Spread Further
All 398 Sean Murrays on LinkedIn began to show my face in search
results.
I still get their traffic data in Webmaster Tools. Oh Google,
what have you done?!
BUG!!!!
WE ARE LEGION!!
Which Means
Things are not exactly running perfectly over in Authorship
land.
And so sometimes Authorship problems are your fault and
sometimes they're Google's.
So Before You Say
MY AUTHORSHIP IS BROKEN. CALL 911!!!!
Make Sure
Your Authorship is set up properly. text
Google+URL?rel=author
Only 1 Authorship markup per unique URL and don't forget to add
the domain to your contributor section!
And WAIT
Google Authorship doesnt appear instantly. It can take days or
WEEKS until it starts to take effect. So don't sign up and be all
like this with search results:
Check it Here
If it works here, it should eventually work in search results.
It does NOT happen instantaneously!
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
And if All Else Fails
There's a great Community for help.
Google Authorship & Author Rank
Or do what I did, share your story and hope Google hears
you!
By: Sean MurrayNot the one of NCIS
