Many of the plugins that we create are to solve problem for our clients, so while building WordPress websites we always keep an eye on ideas to help us and to help other WordPress users.
Google has been trialling a system, Google Authorship, where they link a profile on Google Plus to the web sites that a user contributes to. They also require the website in question to link back to the Google Plus profile.
So today, we’ve released a WordPress plugin that quickly and easily allows you to hook up your website with your Google Plus profile.
There is a lot of chatter around the internet about the SEO benefits of content that is linked with Google Authorship, so there’s some more reading on that topic, suffice to say it will probably help your rankings in the search engine.
What does it look like?
Take a look at the screen shot here, when your web site is shown up in Google search results your profile will be displayed link this.
How to setup the plugin
So here’s a quick step by step guide on how to set this up.
Go to your Google Plus profile and edit the profile, ensure that you add your web site to the section “Contributor”. This tells Google that you’re an author for the particular site.
Then configure the plugin, basically editing your user profile in WordPress to add your Google Plus Profile URL.
Then take one of your URLs from your site and paste into Google’s Rich snippet tool, all being well that should confirm that your setup is correct.
Thanks for making this plugin! In the settings, I see two fields: Google Profile URL and Google+. What info should I put in each field?
Google Profile URL is the field for this plugin, put your profile URL there
Oops, nevermind, it seems like the Google+ field comes from Yoast’s SEO plugin. Thanks again!
I’ve done all this and the author box still doesn’t show. Any more ideas?
I have been using the Google Author Link plugin and it has been working very well. After reading some forum posts about the AuthorRank being released by Google in the future, I would like to request a field for the rel=publisher attribute. All my articles are specifically for a single company and instead of it being just paired with my personal G+ account, I would also like to add the rel=publisher attribute to give the company credit as well since technically it is theirs.
Tamra
Thanks for your comments, we are going to be adding new features to this plugin shortly.
Certainly will be adding rel=publisher attribute
Look out for an update soon
Tried to use your plugin had this issue thou?
Linked author profile: https://plus.google.com/%E2%80%8Bu%E2%80%8B/%E2%80%8B0%E2%80%8B/108451944123349552428%E2%80%8B
Error: Author profile page does not have an authorship link to a Google Profile
Nevermind, plugin works perfect, my error. Great plugin, thanks.
How did you get it to work, as I am getting the same error?
I was able to get the plug-in to work on one site, but not the other. The test failed. I’d really appreciate any suggestions.
I’ve added your Plugin and I can see my profile picture in the preview testing tool but I’m also getting some errors. Could you tell me how to fix the following errors:
Warning: Missing required field “updated”.
Warning: Missing required hCard “author”.
Genevieve, we are working on an update that will fix a couple of those errors. Keep an eye on your WordPress automatic updates over the next week or so.
In the mean time you’ll find that the main functionality of the plugin will work just fine in Google.
Thanks! I’ll look out for the update.
Genevieve,
You might like to have a read of this blog post
http://technotes.khitrenovich.com/fix-missing-required-fields-warnings-rich-snippets-testing-tool/
It covers the cause of these errors.
We will look at what can be done with our plugin as well but it may be able to be fixed in your theme.
Was hoping this plugin would work but for the life of me I couldn’t get it to work on my site. There must be some conflict with the theme I’m using. Is that possible?
Travis Van Slooten
Travis, send us a support request if you’d like us to take a quick look
Wasn’t able to get the Author link plugin working at first. Thanks for tut.
Glad to hear you got it working!
Hi all.
We’ve released an update today that adds support for Google Publisher Profiles
Head over to the blog for info….
My image shows in the Rich Snippet Preview. It also shows additional posts and it shows the following errors;
Warning: Missing required field “updated”.
Warning: Missing required hCard “author”.
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”.
How can these errors be corrected? Thanks.
John
Have a look at this URL for info on stopping those errors in WordPress
http://technotes.khitrenovich.com/fix-missing-required-fields-warnings-rich-snippets-testing-tool/
Thanks Peter…. I will look over.
It worked on the first url I put in, but then I randomly choose another of my posts and it said it wasn’t verified. Shouldn’t it cover all of the posts in my domain? Hmm… did I do something wrong?
Hi Becky.
Yes it should work for all your posts.
In your WordPress setup, are you the author for all the posts? Remember that the plugin works for multiple author blogs so each posting author needs to fill in their Google + profile URL
Hi I’m just wondering, if you know how to get the LinkedIn Field to work on the bio, whenever I input my link for my profile it then try testing it on the author bio it just leads me to a LinkedIn page which says profile not found.
My name an everything is correct since I copied and pasted it from the link.
Is it to do with the way linkedin.com/pub/ is not present because the plugin puts linkedin.com/In/..
Hi Alex, but the linked in field that you’re referring too, is not part of our plugin, so not really sure about how to help on that one 🙂
I am using this plugin, but currently it’s not working. Does it still have any incompatibility with Yoast SEO plugin?
Yuvin.
We did have some reports on earlier version of an issue when used with Yoast SEO. However later versions of our plugin now work fine along side it.
Peter
When I use the Structured Data Testing Tool, my photo shows up just fine. But when I go to a new page and google the same blog title it shows up without a photo. What am I doing wrong (because I am sure it’s me)?
Carol,
It takes some time for Google to show your pic up to all the pages in your site.
I have seen examples where even after weeks some pages don’t show up with a photo even though the testing tool shows up fine.
Just a google thing I think
Peter
This is good plugin . Thank!
Very glad you like!
Hi. I’m a little confused about removing authorship from some blog categories. In the plugin settings I see all my blog categories listed, none are highlighted. How do I set to ALLOW all my blog categories? I’ve set the one’s i want in SERP’s to grey colour, does that mean they ARE the ones that will be in SERP’s or the other way around? Thanks
Hi Luke,
The settings for blog categories, custom post types and now pages will remove authorship only on the ones that you select.
If you select nothing in those settings authorship will be included on those items.
Peter
Hi,
Thanks for making this plugin. We’ve been successfully using your plugin for some time – the correct image and author name were successfully showing in Google search results. Unfortunately, however, the image and author name suddenly stopped appearing in search results. When we test our URLs in Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool, the correct image and author name appear, but they are not displayed in search results. Any suggestions?
Hello Sean.
I’ve had people report this kind of thing happening.
Once you’ve got the plugin installed and then tested with the Google rich snippet tool, it’s then up to google’s system to include the authorship on the result page or not. There is a good community on Google + where you could ask about this problem and see if anyone there has further advice
https://plus.google.com/communities/104474428845467390263
Peter
Hi all.
We’ve had few people asking about why their Authorship does not show on search results. Check out this new post on our site for more information that might help.
Hello,
first of all I would like to thank you for great plugin, nevertheless I have some issues with it.
I’ve added Google Profile URL, linked G+ profile with my website and authorship still doesn’t work… What could be possible wrong?
Hi Peter, I’ve installed and setup the data via your plugin but I’m not sure if it’s working so have some questions if you don’t mind :
My main website (johnharrisphotography.co.uk) has an entry page that I’ve added links for both publisher & author :
Everything looks OK when I put the website address into the Google testing tool but I’m not sure if I need to specify both publisher & author – what’s the difference?
My blog (johnharrisphotography.co.uk/blog) is WordPress based so I’m not sure if the steps I’ve taken above will automatically work for the blog as well but to be safe I installed your plugin & added my Google+ url into the settings & tested again but for my blog address the tool is saying that the publisher markup has been verified but that authorship hasn’t so I’m very confused!
Any light you can shed on this would be great. Thanks
Thanks a lot for this plugin. I have implemented it and everything seems ok except the below “not found” item in the rich snippets testing tool. How can I solve it? Thanks a lot
“Automatically detected author name on webpage: Not Found.”
I have selected my profile which is “Steve Gardner” from the profiles drop-down list in your plugin settings. But it shows as “not found” as you can see it above.
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