Why did Google shut down Google Authorship (Google Creation Source), but still continue to use Author Rank (author ranking) to improve search results? This article will tell you in detail about the correlation and non-correlation between the two.
Google Authorship (Google Creation Source) is not the same as Author Rank (author ranking). Here is an explanation of why Google Authorship will disappear, but Author Rank still exists.
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Google ended its three-year Google Authorship experiment, but continues to use Author Rank to improve search results. Don't make a fuss about this, thinking that the two cannot be separated. In fact, they are different.
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1. What is Google Authorship?
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Google Authorship is mainly provided by Google to allow content creators to verify their identity when displaying their works. You can use "markup" so that although the code is not visible, it actually exists inside the page. Google expanded on this idea, tying it closely with Google+ to create a Google authorship and identity management control system.
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By using Google Authorship, author names and images appear next to their articles. That's a huge temptation, especially when Google is suggesting that content with an original logo might get more clicks. The following is a graphic example of the display:

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Above, you can see how the author's profile picture and signature line are arranged.
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However, now that Google Authorship has been shut down, the avatar function has also been stopped in July, the attribution and everything else related to it have been cancelled, and Google Authorship is completely over.
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Google says there will be no violations of flagged persons already present on the page. The markup is simply ignored and no longer serves any purpose. But do not rush to remove them, remember that such flags may be used by other companies and servers. Microformats like rel=author and rel=me may be used by other servers.
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2. What is Author Rank?
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Author Rank was forked from Google Authorship. If Google knows who the original author of an article is, it can change its ranking in some way. If the author is considered trustworthy, the ranking of the article can be greatly improved.
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In fact, Author Rank is not a term published by Google, but a term assigned to the concept in a general sense by the SEO community. In 2013, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in a book that certified authors ranked higher in search results. As a result, Author Rank has once again gained public attention.
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Posts with profile verification will rank higher in search results than posts without such verification. This naturally leads to many users clicking on the topmost, i.e., verified results, so anonymous information doesn't get as many clicks.
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3. Author Rank does exist and will continue
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In Schmidt's book, he speaks in terms of speculation rather than describing what actually exists at Google. As far as Google itself is concerned, it has mentioned several times in 2013 that using Author Rank to identify subject matter experts has greatly improved its search result rankings to some extent:
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Google Authority Advances: Google Algorithms Determine Which Sites Are Authorities on a Topic, May 2013. the
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Google Matt Cutts: In the future, rankings may benefit from using the Rel="Author" tag, June 2013.
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Google Remains Committed to Pushing Topic-Specific Authority in Search Results, December 2013. the
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It was all just empty talk at the time. The first time Google took actual action on this was in March 2014. When Google search director Amit Singhal said that Author Rank had not been used, the Google web spam team issued a warning: in the occasional Google search results The in-depth article section, Author Rank has been used.
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4. Author Rank without Authorship
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Now that Google Authorship is over, how does Google use Author Rank in the limited form it confirms? Or Author Rank is useless? So does this mean that other ways to use Author Rank are also dead?
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Google said the end of Google Authorship will not affect the in-depth articles section, nor will it affect Google's exploration of other ways to reward authors.
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Google has said it will ignore original logos, so where did all this come from?
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The answer is: there are other ways Google can identify the author of an article if needed. In particular, Google may look for bylines that are often visible in news articles. These existed before Google Authorship and will not disappear in the future.
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This also means that if you are really worried that Author Rank will be used by more people, then consider the authorship of the article. Now that Google has abandoned the formal system, this byline seems to be the first choice for marking the original author of an article.
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Jiexin Internet Marketing Agency believes that there is no need to worry about Author Rank. At present, it has only been confirmed in a very limited part of Google search, and the scope may continue to expand in the future. If the scope is extended, it also only affectsGoogle SEOranking factorone of many factors. Compared to adding proper bylines to an article, but more important is ensuring the quality of the article and the visibility of the author.