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.
Update (August 28, 2014): Google has announced that they’re killing Authorship, and search results will no longer show author names or photos.
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.
Does it still make sense in 2016 to use Google Authorship?
Thanks
I also want to know if this still make sense in 2016?
it been removed, dont waste your time with this now, more important things to work on in respect of SEO.
It’s great,thanks for it and i wish you always stay there for us#
Thanks for this very helpful article.
Authorship is gone.
Hi this question is not related with this post, but i couldn’t find the post. When i check my webmaster structural data, i see author, post, missing:updated
Just followed this – added code to functions.php and site / dashboard is now blank and inaccessible!!! Help please.
Hi,
I think I did all the steps right, and my Google+ page is now verified. However, on my WP, I now have an ugly “google+” link on top of my home page, instead of the nice and clean menu which appears just under the link.
Does anybody know how I can remove the link (or put in the footer for instance) ?
Thank you very much in advance !
Google+ Authorship is gone. This article is not valid anymore.
Google has decided not to display author profiles next to search results anymore.
Can we put an image besides post display in Google still? I searched for this page but it is not showing as explaining in this article.
You should still display it because G+ is a social network.
Will try to do this now.
Since Google has decided not to show authorship in search results. Is it still relevant to link G + profile to my blog?
Very helpful post! Thankful for the screenshots
can tell me how to add your site in google+ contributor section , It’ll be vary helpful for me atleast
Hi,
Thanks for the post first of all. My problem is that when I tried to check my website in the Snippets testing tool, it said something like,”The server at http://www.example.com took too much time to load”etc.. I have no idea what to do and any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Hi Guys,
Thanks for the post. Getting authorship in three simple steps. I got it right away and i love WPBeginner. This blog is awesome.
Great post- Couple of questions.
I have content on various sites throughout the internet. I do a lot of guest blogging and am a published author. Can I show Google somehow that I am the author in all these various websites and different places in order to gain authority?
Does author authority effect SEO at all- For example, if I wrote something on a new blog will it show higher in the SERPs because I wrote it ( or insert someone with strong authority), regardless of the websites relevance?
Robert, from SEO point of view author authority is only one of the factors considered by Google when listing their results. Search engines use hundreds of matrices to determine which result would go on top. You will see results on Google where sometimes authors with far less authority are out ranking authors who are experts in the field. We would suggest that you concentrate on creating quality content.
As for getting authorship credit from other sites you will ask them to add a rel=”author” tag to a link pointing to your Google+ profile in the author bio section.
THanks For the Info.I am Getting following message on webmaster rich snippets tools for my website
Error: Missing required field “updated”.
Error: Missing required hCard “author”.
What to do??
Hi Thanks for making this easy. Please tell why am I getting this in rich snippet link
Error: Missing required field “updated”.
Error: Missing required hCard “author”.
thanks !
I have done all these steps twice but google does not show the author information. You can also check of my website.
please help me what to do?
Thanks for this Verified Authorship implementation tip. I will try it right away.
Do you actually know how and when Google decide to accept your request ?! seems a little bit foggy to me ! (excuse my French …) have a nice day !
Hi,
I have an issue with google+ not appearing in the widget I have installed. I have tried everything but it is still blank. If you check the widget in the sidebar, google+ is not working, and I passed the code from my page to the widget but no luck. http://goodmood-gm.com/
Any ideas?
Tnx
This helps a lot but I cannot see its working on Google search. Do I have to wait for some day, week or month ? Generally how long does it take to get success.
Santosh Google has limited the showing of author profile image in search results so you may not be able to see it in action right away or for quite sometime.
I’d like to do this, but I am pretty close to a beginner… not sure where to go to find the header.php mentioned here:
“You need to add the following code in your theme’s section. (Don’t forget to change the Google+ profile URL to yours). Normally you can do this by editing the header.php file”
Can somebody tell me where to find this php file? Thanks!
Usually it is among your theme files and can be accessed from Appearance » Theme Editor
But I do not have any such option. I have a free blog(xyzsite@wordperss.com) and I haven’t found the option. The options under Appearance are Themes, Customize, Widgets, Menus, Theme Options, Header, Background, Custom Design and Mobile. I can’t find the header.php file from anywhere under the “Appearance” tab. Please help!!!
It seems like you have a blog on WordPress.com, please check our guide on difference between WordPress.com vs. Self Hosted WordPress.org
I’ve read many tutorials on how to get this done and yours was the only one that actually helped me accomplish it. Thank you!
I run a multi-author website. How can I go about getting verified Google authorship for each one of the writers? Is it necessary for all of them to have a Google+ account?
My image used to appear in SERP..from past 2 weeks it has disappeared though my posts are showing up in the search results and the image is showing up when i check in google authorship check. Dont know what to do as my traffic is affected
Can you psl suggest what to do.
It is not just you Google has decided to limit displaying author image.
I think its depend on premium wordpress site. ? Actually I never found any html editing option in my wordpress blog .
You are probably using WordPress.com, see the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
Great Guide Sir I did it properly but one problem in my rich snippets google+ In Circles is not showing please help me to fix it.
Check your Google+ profile privacy settings, click on edit profile visibility settings and check the box “Show people who have added you to circles”
please help.after setting the my google+ profile account on the theme header,
i coulnt locate contributos section on my google +profile
help me out!!!
Next thing you need to do is go to your Google+ profile, and add link to your website under the contributors section
How to Get Google’s Verified Authorship for your WordPress Blog
ifeanyi, go to your Google plus profile while signed it with your Google account and then click on the About tab. Scroll down to Links and Other profiles section. Click on the Edit link under that section.
Bro Can You Tell Me How To Find header.php file please help me
Go to Apperance » Editor on your right hand you will see a list of files. You will find header.php among these files.
Great article. Just one question.
Correct me if I am wrong. The authorship only works well for a blog, where we post articles and not for a company website. For instance on my website:
It’s a design agency website, is it a good practice to do so?
Please let me know.
Thanks!
There is a solution to use rel=”publisher” but the problem is that it will only show your company’s Google page when someone specifically searches for it. So it is not very useful as it has no effect on how your articles appear in the search.
Great information. Although I do believe that there is a WP plugin for people that aren’t for sure about going into the coding of their site. It’s free and I believe you can search Google Authorship in the plugin to get it. That’s what I used anyway, I’m no coding wizard and it really helped.
We recommend using Yoast SEO plugin. It’s mentioned in the last sentence of the article.
I have done all these on my blogger blog. The structured data preview also shows the image in the search. But in actual search it is not showing. Can any one help me.
Google doesn’t show it for everyone or for all pages. It’s entirely up to them.
Killer post man!!!!!!!!!!!!
I tried lot of things, but this is a trick that actually worked for me.. Thank-you so much.
Thank you YOAST too.
Hi, thanks for this tutorial.
I’ve added it to my photocrati header.php file as instructed but im quite confused as although the rich snippets tool says Authorship is working for this webpage.
the bit below where you add your google+ page:
“Please enter a Google+ profile to see if the author has successfully verified an email address on the domain to establish authorship for this webpage”
When I enter the information, the result shows this:
Email verification has not established authorship for this webpage.
Email address on the bjmphotography.net domain has been verified on this profile: Yes
Public contributor-to link from Google+ profile to bjmphotography.net: Yes
Automatically detected author name on webpage: Not Found.
I’m confused as to why its saying: Automatically detected author name on webpage: Not Found.
Any help on this will be GREATLY appreciated, my website is: http://www.bjmphotography.net
Thankyou!
The authorship is working fine. Google offers multiple ways to verify authorship. Email is one of the ways, but you are not using that way.
Not working bro… In google rich sinipist tool it is working but in search result not working. I have done this 2 weeks ago but not working ..
Google reserves the right to show the authorship or not. The fact that you can see it in the rich snippets means that the code is working fine. Also remember that Google shows everyone different results. So for some people, it might be showing the authorship.
I have a site that has a GA showing up – yea! Now, I would like to set up another website using the same authorship profile – will that work? Meaning, will this new site display the photo in the SERPs? Both the old and new site are WP. Thanks.
Thoughts?
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.”
Go to your Google+. Click on Profile. In the navigation bar, you should see About, Posts, Photos, etc. Click on About. Scroll down to the Links section and click Edit.
Hope that helps
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.
I have a WordPress site and I use both WordPress SEO by Yoast and the Yoast Local SEO plugin. I setup rel=author and I was given the following “green lights” on the Google Webmaster Tools page:
“Authorship is working for this webpage.”
“rel=author markup has successfully established authorship for this webpage.”
“Publisher markup is verified for this page.”
I also get the same errors Jason mentioned, which you said weren’t a big deal, but I don’t show the author profile on Google searches despite setting it up two weeks ago. Are they a big deal in my case or is there something else that I’ve done wrong? The website is http://injuryattorneyshouston.com, if you’re interested in checking it out. Thank you for whatever help you’re willing to give!
Chad you can try email verification method to establish authorship. Another method that could help is adding a rel=”author” link to the name of the person. Like for example if your google+ author profile has the name John Smith try adding this somewhere on your main page
<a href="http://plus.google.com/XXXXXXXX" rel="author">John Smith. Simply adding the user’s full name on blog posts could work too.Thanks for your reply. I installed WordPress SEO by Yoast, which is supposed to do that for me, I believe. The only think I can conclude is that perhaps I have setup my Google+ links wrong… Here’s the G+ profile for the author I’m trying to set as rel=author: https://plus.google.com/101000944951496862346/
It looks right to us.
That is so strange. I don’t know what’s going on then. I seem to have Google+ and WordPress SEO by Yoast setup properly, but it isn’t working. Thanks for trying to help!
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.