Everyone is talking about how the search is going social. Google +1 buttons are now integrated in websites, search results, and even in Google Ads. Well all that is important, but we are now seeing a rise in verified Authorship for Google search results. Finally with the new redesign, we have added it in WPBeginner as well. Now when you search our articles, you will see the picture of our founder Syed Balkhi in the results like the screenshot below:
We heard folks claiming that this is increasing click through rates and sometimes rankings as well. In this article, we will show you how you can get google’s verified authorship for your WordPress blog.
You need to add the following code in your theme’s <head> section. (Don’t forget to change the Google+ profile URL to yours). Normally you can do this by editing the header.php file
<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/101623299936375408403/posts" />
If you are using a theme framework or just want to put this in as a function, then you can add this by hooking into wp_head(). Paste the following code in your theme’s functions.php file.
add_action('wp_head', 'add_google_rel_author');
function add_google_rel_author() {
echo '<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/101623299936375408403/posts" />';
}
Next thing you need to do is go to your Google+ profile, and add link to your website under the contributors section.
Lastly, make sure that your +1′s are public on your Google+ profile or this won’t work.
Now you are done. Simply wait for Google to re-crawl your pages and show your face next to it. You can check to see if you did everything right by going to the Google Webmasters Rich Snippets Testing Tool. Below is a screenshot of what it should look like.
This trick would work great for sites with individual authors. If you are running a multi-author blog, then you would have to be a little more nifty. You can add an additional user profile field for Google+. Then run a conditional statement in the header area to see who is the author, and display the appropriate URL. Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin will now includes this feature in the newest version.
Not seeing where in Google+ where to do this:
“Next thing you need to do is go to your Google+ profile, and add link to your website under the contributors section.”
Hi thanks for the tip but I have already added the code to my header.php file and my photo still doesn’t get added although it shows under the Structured Data Testing Tool.
Why?
Just because it shows in the rich snippet tool doesn’t mean that it will show up in the search results. Google has full control over what shows and what doesn’t. Right now, you have done your job. Now the ball is in Google’s court. Sometimes it shows for some users and not others. Its just a waiting game.
You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this matter to be really something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complex and very broad for me. I am looking forward for your next post, I?ll try to get the hang of it!
A very good article! just waiting for google to recrawl my websites. thanks wpbeginner.
A maybe silly question. The google+ URL must be accompanied by “/posts” or it’s not necessary?
The code worked perfectly
Doesn’t matter. Google will add that automatically for you.
Thank you for sharing the tips. Its works on one of my weblog.
Hello, I Have Done All The Steps Mentioned, But When I Go To Google Structured Data Page, It Shows Author Verified But It’s Not Showing My Picture…
Please Help…..!
This was beyond helpful. I’ve always seen sites that had this but never knew how to actually implement it onto my blog. Genius!
Great Post! I’m still having issues. My blog, cleverlyengaged.com is a wordpress.com site, not a wordpress.org site. Therefore, I’m not able to add the Yoast plugin, I don’t know where the functions.php file is located, and I didn’t see any place in my header to add the code above.
Do you know of any way to make this work on a wordpress.com hosted site? Thanks!
The easiest thing that we would recommend is that somewhere in your sidebar (using the text widget), add the code like:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/101623299936375408403?rel=author" rel="nofollow" >Written by Syed Balkhi</a>Then add your site in your google+ about page as something that you contribute to. Try it in the rich snippet tools and hopefully it will work.
Thanks, but couldn’t get this to work. I’m getting multiple error messages, such as:
Warning: Missing required field “updated”.
Warning: At least one field must be set for Hcard.
Warning: Missing required field “name (fn)”.
Here’s a link to my results using the Rich Snippet Tool
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcleverlyengaged.com%2F2012%2F11%2F25%2Farriving-at-an-integrated-customer-experience%2F&html=
I’m getting the same problem. What’s this? Can anybody help?
It seems that your problem is fixed.
Hi,
This works perfectly.
I’m wondering if its possible to use the author meta’s Google+ field (User Profile Options) to populate the URL for that ?
That way, different posts will have different authors displayed.
Khairul
Yes, it is possible and fairly easy to do. As a matter of fact, Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin already have that option built-in.
Thanks for the tip! I went to the webmaster tools and checked and it worked out. However I did receive this underneath:
Extracted structured data
hatom-feed
hatom-entry:
Warning: At least one field must be set for HatomEntry.
Warning: Missing required field “entry-title”.
Warning: Missing required field “updated”.
Warning: Missing required hCard “author”.
Is this something I need to be concerned about? What does this mean?
Nothing to be concerned about. That is if you are using schema tags to add more things such as Recipe tags, ratings, location data etc.
Has anyone tested whether you can add a Brand Page instead of an Author and have it show up in Google? That’d be more ideal for some sites, like this one, to have WPBeginner as the name, which is more pertinent to searchers and recognizable to readers, rather than it being the CEO or author.
You cannot do that just yet, but hopefully soon.
Hi,
Do you know if we’re able to do this yet?
Thanks,
Tom
Not to our knowledge.
If I just go into the header.php file to add the authorship code, do I need to add that info to the functions.php file as well. I’m not certain if this is a case of choosing to do one or the other or do both. I’m a bit of newbie at this. Thanks.
If you directly edit your header.php, then you do NOT have to do the functions.php option.
Thanks so much! I appreciate the clarification
hey i don’t have wp.head file in my theme. So is the second step is important to do????
Pls help
Just use the Yoast’s plugin.
i have implemented it but how long does this whole thing takes?? like 2 weeks or a month.
Nobody knows the answer to that. It can take 2 weeks, and it can also take a month. Sometimes, it happens right away, but you might not see it. Other people would. If you can see that it is working in the rich snippets tool, then google knows its working.
Thank you. It worked great!
I think I’ve successfully implemented Google authorship for my WordPress site and blog. For example, searching on Google for “Can I lower my house payments by filing bankruptcy” shows my blog article (a recent one) with my photo near the top of the results.
My question is, can I establish authorship for my WordPress blog articles that were published before I set up Google authorship?
Yes it just takes time
>>can I establish authorship for my WordPress blog articles that were published before I set up Google authorship?<Yes it just takes time<
You mean it happens automatically for those prior articles, or do I have to do something more?
Once you implement the solution mentioned in this article, it is applied sitewide not just on your new articles. You will NOT have to do anything further. If you are doubtful, which you shouldn’t be, then check your older article with the rich snippet preview tool. It will clear that doubt. Hope that helps.
Thanks so much. I simply searched on google for the title of an old blog article, and it popped up in the search results complete with my photo.
I did what you said. It was fairly simple though took a bit for me.
One question: I checked it with the Rich Snippets Tool and noticed that two other authors showed up in the result. (I the sole author of the site.)
I have a Twitter feed on my blog and had recently Tweeted to those two (rather famous) authors.
Is that acceptable or should I run not walk to my blog and take down the Twitter feed?
Thank you for an excellent post! Most helpful and timely for me.
Not sure what plugin you are using for twitter. But if it is causing markup problems, then get rid of it.
Thanks for the tip, shame I had to join G+ to get this feature. I don’t like using social netwking sites much, they just fill your inbox with clutter. Is there a way to keep my g+ profile completely private and prevent anyone from viewing it? I’d just like to get the CTR benefit of a picture without the burden of having my information and photo public plastered in hi res (the thumbnail in serps is bearable)
If you want your authorship to appear, you have to make your +1s public.
My site is showing that it works perfectly in the rich snippets testing tool but does not show in the rankings. I have 2 other sites that work no problem. Could it be that this is a newer site?
Yes, it takes some time for Google to start showing that for everyone. No one knows how long it can take. For all, it could be showing to some users and not others.
thanks. My other 2 sites took about 1 week for the photo to start showing. My new site has been about 3 weeks now and is still not showing. I am show that the site has been crawled and re indexed. I hope it shows up.
Can you have one G+ account linked to multiple blogs? If not, what is the work-around? Thanks for the tips!
If you run multiple blogs, then yes.
Thanks for this piece of info, had struggled with this; didn’t know +1 had to be public!
So… the only thing that is required is the post page to have author’s google plus profile url with rel=”author” attribute?
Is that all?
No, you also have to add your site in your Google Plus profile page.
Alright! Nice post by the way. I read a lot of similar posts, your one was the only one which ended my search.
Hi can you specify where exactly are we going to paste the code in function.php? For me i use a plugin that alls HTML in the author bio fielf in wordpress admin profile page. This a bit off topic but any time i add a code in single.php it appears in my footer, how can i fix it?
Please consider reading this guide on pasting snippets from the web:
http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/beginners-guide-to-pasting-snippets-from-the-web-into-wordpress/
Secondly, if you do not feel comfortable in doing so, then use Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin.
I can confirm now that using Yoast’s plugin it is pretty easy and straight forward.
Excellent instructions. I had followed a similar one elsewhere, which just indicated to include my Google profile in the Author tag, but I still was not seeing my image appear on results. I was missing the “Contributor” section entry on my G+ profile, thanks for the missing data!
Thank you for a great article i was wondering if you could help . I am getting the below error and i am really not sure why
author
linked author profile = http://www.nicheadvice.co.uk/author/richard-stokes/
Error: Author profile page does not have an authorship link to a Google Profile.
So far I have made an authors page:
http://www.nicheadvice.co.uk/about-richard-stokes/
as you can see this has a link page to my google profile page
The above page has this link on it
Google
them i set up a Blog page with a link to the about me page on my site
http://www.nicheadvice.co.uk/personal-pension-advice-for-self-employed-business-owners/
Then i went in the google+ profile and linked back to my about me page
https://plus.google.com/114132624177637474621
The only thing i can think of is that there are 2 of us writing for this website and maybe the wordpress site doest allow multiple authors?
Any ideas why i cant get it to work?
Can you try linking to this page: http://www.nicheadvice.co.uk/author/richard-stokes/ from your google+ profile?
How would I do this on a hosted WordPress blog? Mine is on .wordpress.com
You can’t at least not to our knowledge.
Useful stuffs for any webmaster,,, Thanks for your post.
I did the same as you described in the article, i am getting positive results as your in the Rich Snippets Testing Tool. But in the Google search there is not any small thumbnail beneath my search results. Any suggestions ?
It takes time for those to appear. It also doesn’t appear for everyone. Google only shows those when they think it’s helpful.
Nice tutorial, thanks. But i use My Theme Shop, Accent box theme for my site and it has an inbuilt option for Google Authorship, just adding my G+ id and its done..
Question,
Might be dumb one but here we go. Does this work if your account is a corporate account? Or does the authorship need to be defined to a particular (singular) person?
Thanks!
Marco
It does NOT work for business pages. As long as it is a personal account, it will work.
Can I connect my google+ page for my blog to the posts – or does it have to be my personal page?
It has to be personal page. No integration for google+ pages yet.
I tried my hand at using Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin to enable the google authorship of a blog I have but I’m afraid I could not understand how to go about it. The blog is multi author blog therefore adding the code is not the option that I can use unless I create a function in the functions.php file.
Great article, congratulations.
I pasted your code and everything works.
Thanks for sharing.
I tried Yoast SEO as well as some other plugins but still I’m getting these two errors
Warning: Missing required field “updated”.
Warning: Missing required hCard “author”.
Give it time.
i am using the seo plugin by yoast and it is pretty simple…we just have to go to our profile page and fill in our G+ profile url after that head over to the titles section and check the rel=author checkbox
Sorry @WAQAS
I like the new design. Change is usually good!
First of all I’m very happy you got rid of Livefyre commenting system that would not allow me to post behind the firewall.
I’m using the Yoast’s WP SEO plugin on almost all of my sites (except Thesis ones) and I was wondering if I still need to implement what you say here?
If you use Yoast’s WP SEO plugin, then go to your author profile. There is a new field to add the Google+ profile URL. Simply add your URL there, and then you won’t have to do what we are suggesting here.
I lurve yoast even more now. Cheers for the heads up on that one.
Thank you for the information.
Thanks to yoast as well for building the option into the SEO plugin for multi author websites.
o man… what you did what the site layout. the older one was better.
Not entirely sure about that. The newer one is definitely getting better response.