How Google Knows Which Content Belongs to the Same Author

Google’s John Mueller describes a method known as reconciliation which is used to acknowledge when totally different content material throughout the internet belongs to the identical writer.

This subject is mentioned throughout the Google Search Central website positioning hangout recorded on April 23.

A web site proprietor asks Mueller what’s extra necessary to embody on an writer’s web page between hyperlinks to social media profiles or an e-mail handle.

This query prompts Mueller to clarify how Google is in a position to acknowledge the entity behind writer pages based mostly on a variety of various factors.

Read his full response beneath.

Google’s John Mueller on Recognizing Authors

The quick reply to the query is: it’s finest to hyperlink to a social media profile on an writer web page.

At the very least, no matter an writer chooses to hyperlink to on their web page, they’ve to ensure that it’s constant throughout the internet.

The concept is to reconcile all alerts to a central place, like a social media profile.

If an writer persistently hyperlinks to their Twitter account, for instance, then that can assist Google acknowledge they’re the identical entity behind a number of writer pages.

Here’s how Mueller places it:

“Essentially what I see on our facet is, when it comes to issues like writer pages, or details about the writer, or details about entities usually behind an internet site, an article, or one thing, – what occurs there’s our techniques attempt to acknowledge who that’s, what that entity is, and we try this based mostly on a variety of various factors. And that does embody issues like hyperlinks to profile pages for instance, or seen info that we are able to discover on these pages themselves.

So my advice right here can be to no less than hyperlink to a typical, or form of like a central place, the place you say every thing comes collectively for this writer. Which could possibly be one thing like a social community profile web page, for instance, and use that throughout the totally different writer pages that you’ve whenever you’re writing, in order that when our techniques have a look at an article they usually see an writer web page related to that, they will acknowledge that is the identical writer as the one that wrote one thing else. And we are able to form of group this by entity, and we try this based mostly on perhaps this frequent social networking profile that’s there.”

Mueller references a retired type of structured knowledge markup known as authorship.

Those who’re new to website positioning might not be conversant in authorship. Simply put, it was markup that could possibly be used to inform Google who authored a bit of content material.

Google even displayed an writer’s picture in search outcomes at one level, however that’s historical historical past in website positioning years.

“Long in the past we used to have the rel=”writer” annotation, and all of the older SEOs will facepalm now, however it’s one thing basically the place we attempt to use structured knowledge to explicitly apply this… the rel=”writer” annotations are not used at Google for fairly some time now, however we do attempt to perceive who the entity is behind an writer web page. And for a lot of authors it’s fairly clear there’s one title and it’s very apparent this one title is related to this one particular person.”

Mueller then goes on to acknowledge extra difficult conditions the place a number of folks with the identical title all have pages about them on the internet.

Without a hyperlink to a central location, like a social media profile, Google might assume totally different authors with similar names are the identical particular person.

“For different folks it may be a little bit extra difficult. Like me, for instance, John Mueller. If you seek for me you’ll discover Wikipedia pages, barbecue eating places, bands, all types of people who find themselves known as John Mueller.

And if, on my web site, I don’t specify who I really am, then it may occur that our techniques have a look at my web page and go: “oh that is that man that runs that barbecue restaurant.” And instantly I’m related to a barbecue restaurant, which may be a transfer up, I don’t know.

But these delicate issues make it simpler for us to acknowledge who is definitely behind one thing. We name that reconciliation when it comes to structured knowledge, form of recognizing which of those entities belong collectively.”

Hear his full response in the video beneath: