rel=”author” is Same-Site Only

By Andy Beard | Published: June 7, 2011

I managed to ping Google’s @mattcutts after the announcement of rel=”author” support from Google on Twitter and he clarified the use case a little.

As Twitter’s search is still so terrible at finding things I am adding the conversation here.

New rel="author" support http://goo.gl/FCK3l ( @ is this suitable for cross domain attribution too for syndicated content? )
June 7, 2011 6:20 pm via webReply Retweet Favorite
@AndyBeard
Andy Beard
@ for now it's same-site, just to be safe. My (personal) guess is we'll see if that can be expanded over time in a trusted way.
June 7, 2011 6:38 pm via webReply Retweet Favorite
@mattcutts
Matt Cutts
@ thanks for the clarification & intended current use
June 7, 2011 6:42 pm via webReply Retweet Favorite
@AndyBeard
Andy Beard
@ sure thing. Remember, rel=canonical also started as same-site only, then as we trusted it more, it became cross-site.
June 7, 2011 6:46 pm via webReply Retweet Favorite
@mattcutts
Matt Cutts
@ I can't sneak a rel="canonical" into an author bio link, or ask content partners such as @ to include it
June 7, 2011 6:50 pm via webReply Retweet Favorite
@AndyBeard
Andy Beard

My last point is at least partially related to Google’s Panda update because it is quite frequently seen, possibly more than before, that original content doesn’t rank yet scraped copies of it does.

There are reasons why that happens, but a microformat rel=”author” and possibly something new… rel=”original” for a link to the canonical source would be useful.

Something like this would be easier to implement than the metatag alternative currently in testing with newspapers . ( original-source & syndication-source )

This is something really easy to get implemented in a number of CMSs, though in most cases it would be theme dependent not something that is part of core.

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2 Comments

  1. Alex Sysoef
    Posted June 7, 2011 at 8:25 pm | Permalink

    Thanks Andy for getting this info :-) perhaps they find a way to allow us battle the scrappers, would be nice for a change.

    Makes one wonder where big G puts their priority – AdSense used on scraped sites or people who actually provide a value to the web…

  2. n0t.info
    Posted June 14, 2011 at 10:28 am | Permalink

    I’m a convinced fan of microformats, and I believe that rel=author will eventually become a very useful, semantic method to link an author’s different websites too. I hope Google gets out of the ‘same-site’ usage only very soon. :)

    [OT] As for the rel=nofollow that Google loves so much… I think it’s too generic. Something like rel=affiliate, rel=paidlink or VoteLinks, would work better toward a more semantic web that still aims at calibrating a site’s link power toward different resources.

    ~ Luana S.