Google, a single brand name that drives people crazy! A noble idea to display Author information using Google Authorship is now refining the search results that got transformed into a miracle for the online web world. Initially, it was Yahoo! who was the leader of this search engine game but now its entirely Google’s playground. There are various modifications going on to help the search engine algorithm return faster, and cleaner results.
If you’re a newbie then you might wanna update yourself regarding The Google Penguin Update !
Google’s new Authorship Program for your WordPress site
In a recent upgrade, they enabled the thumbnail view of the respective Author information in Google Search Engine Results that appears for that particular post. As a result of this new move, users are getting a chance to read more posts by the specific Author and discover better useful content.
According to Google Webmasters,
Google is piloting the display of author information in search results to help users discover great content.
Now, the problem is that this process of displaying the Author information in Google Search results isn’t an automatic one! The Author himself has to tweak the coding to activate this process. I was researching on this method, and I found that there was a cool new way to actually get this Author information activated by following simple steps that most webmasters have sort of overlooked.
Steps to display author information in Google Search Results for WordPress
For this method to work you need the following —
- Your Google+ Profile
- WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast – Click Here
So first let’s start with the Google+ Profile.
- Head over to your G+ Profile. [If you don’t have one then get one here – Create G+ Profile]
- On the left hand side of your G+ Profile page you will find the link to your Profile. Click on it
- Now click on Edit Profile.
- Then scroll down and click on Contributor To.
- Add the url of your site by clicking on Create Custom Link
- After that’s done click on Save and then also click on Done Editing.
Now we need to setup/edit your User Profile in your site so that it is linked to your Google+ Profile.
- Goto Users then goto Your Profile
- Then scroll down to Contact Info and add your G+ Profile URL
- Click on Update Profile
So now that’s done we simply need to link up your Author Name! Here’s how we do it –
- Login to the wordpress admin section of your site
- Then goto the SEO settings of WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast [if its not there then you need to install the plugin]
- Now click on Titles & Metas
- Then goto Home tab
- Now under Author metadata you need to select your Author Name [this should match up with your G+ Profile name]. Make sure that this is NOT set to the default Admin.
- Then simply click on Save Settings.
By doing this, you will see the Author information beside your blog posts. For my blog it took just 1 day to start displaying my details.
If you’re facing any kind of problems then do let me know 😉