Past weekend was one of the rare occasions when I didn’t go anywhere with my family and decided to stay at home to get prepared for my presentation at soon-to-come PubCon New Orleans where I am speaking on optimizing your content marketing to Google’s authorship and potential Google AuthorRank update.
Hence I had some quality time going through my Author Stats in Google Webmaster Tools Labs and have come across some interesting results I am sharing here.
Table of Contents
The Ugly…
It’s not a secret that Google is trying to determine the author of non-verified content and they could really a better job:
Google assigns Mashable-scraped article to me (I authored the original Mashable article, not this one):
There’s no way the original article sends fewer positive signals to Google than the scraped one; it’s also verified as authored by me: So why include its scraped version in my article list?
Question: Can a poor full-of-duplicate content site potentially negatively affect my author rank?
I was really puzzled to see this article assigned to me:
Yes, I did write a couple of pieces on Advanced Google parameters (Can Google know that?) and one of my articles was for SEOmoz, but not this one!
I am looking at the article, scrolling down to my name and find the possible issue: “Edited by“:
Come on Google, that’s just my comment, NOT the whole piece!
Google Seems to Know I am into Guest Blogging!
Ok, I started with “the Ugly”, but this one is a good thing, I guess. Even though, this is another NOT MINE piece (if you take a look, you’ll even see there’s no way to assign it to me as there’s no usual “by” signal Google seems to be liking), the piece mentions guest blogging, MyBlogGuest (which I hope Google knows is mine) and my name – which probably makes Google thinks I am the author!
BTW: I know I may be assuming too much here but I see a positive sign that Google isn’t assinging to me just any article I am commenting at, but selects topic that are close to my expertise: advanced search and guest blogging!
Just Puzzled
Ok, I seem to at least be able to guess the reasoning behind the above three fails, but this one? I am puzzled!
I am not a moderator or member of that group; I haven’t posted there once and there’s no mention of my name on that page whatsoever… The only thing: I do know and I am connected to the moderators of that community – that’s the only connection! Still not enough to make me the author of that page 🙂
Conclusion
I get it, Google Authorship is still work in progress and Google AuthorRank will remain the future plan until they learn to collect authorship data properly. It’s fun to watch though!
