authorship

‘Content is king’ as the old maxim goes and whilst there’s still an infinite amount of truth in that statement, the intriguing sub-plot that developed over the past decade or so could perhaps be framed as ‘visibility is a close second’.

Many a beautifully scripted site bearing gifts of great content has got lost in the vast, cacophonous sea of information that is the internet.

From early paid link schemes, through unnatural links to the frowned-upon ‘carpet-bombing’ practises of Link Farms, there’s been an ongoing search for new and improved ways to optimise website rankings.

The algorithms used in search engines have long been the subject of much keen analysis (and equally keen tinkering with a view to manipulating) but the latest phase in online behemoth, Google’s development intends to restore some much-needed transparency and trust to the SEO process with Google+ Authorship Markup.

In the boring old real ‘analogue’ world, ideas of authorship and authority naturally sit together. Over time we work out who is talking sense and who is full of hot air.

While I can work on simple hypotheses like ‘if this is written by Melanie Phillips it is almost certainly ghastly rubbish’, a search engine like Google has to calculate authority through a dense mix of keyword density, social cues, link quality, time on page, speed of hitting the back button, etc, etc.

That’s hard work - which is why Google is now starting to account for authorship in its algorithm. It is identifying content by author, and is starting to calculate the authority of different authors. So all things being equal, if Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver are both writing about breakfast, the author with the highest authority will rank higher and (cue drumroll) bring home the bacon.