Does Authorship Affect Rankings? A Rand Fishkin Study

I think the only potential flaw in this test, is that your using the author Rand Fishkin, to rank for a phrase containing the words “Rand Fishkin”. Doesn’t mean it would necessarily aid rankings for more generic phrases. Would make an interesting second test?

Excepted an interview??

Agree with Anthony on this one. Would love to see another test for an unrelated search term. Maybe I’ll do one myself.

That being said, I really like to see out-of-the-norm SEO thinking like this so appreciate the test! Great post

That’s a really interesting experiment. I think Anthony’s concerns are legitimate, but should be answerable by looking at what else that article ranks for (if anything) and whether it’s changed for those terms too.

I’d be a little wary about having the url of the page in this post at all (even though not linked) just out of tin-foiled-hattedness that Google might crawl the link even if not wrapped in hrefs (a test for another day maybe).

There is one other factor that could be responsible for the rankings change. You say you updated a link at the same time. It’s possible Google could be seeing this page as ‘fresh’ due to the change (though, as you said, it’s pretty small). I think Viperchill blogged a while ago about a few articles that increased in ranking purely by changing the posted date from its original date to that day. If it is this, It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the rankings over the next few weeks.

Hey Glen,

Oops good spot.

Yea I agree and it is something I considered myself, Only really the mark-up which has changed, I think I had it at “randfish” and updated to “Rand Fishkin” this of course is enough to sway things but still a pretty big jump.

Let me know if you do an experiment yourself

I did indeed. I think the change would be too small to be honest but the idea definitely has merit.

Doh, I don’t think the reply button works..

Hey James,

Yes I agree, certainly not conclusive evidence but certainly food for thought. I don’t want to say it’s not a freshness thing but certainly a minor factor (I’d have thought anyway).

Glen – Yea just a little bug in our redesign, working on it now.

Ranks on #7 here using your UK and pws=0 unpersonalized link.

Hey Tad,

Yea I’ve had someone else say the same to me over Twitter, I checked with multiple people who will have never looked at my blog (or worked in this industry) and all had it at number one.

Interested to know where everyone else is seeing it though.

Yes of course it does you dont need silly experiments like this to ram home to have a go spammers that Authorship can be gamed for rankings. You should however be aware of the recent updates Googles been making to cut down on Author Spam and now…finally… its started slapping Authorship spammers. You know… the ones who’d use Authorship on an article about their dogs flatulence to get ranked on Gas Prices or [brand] coupon code.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2327459/Google-Starts-Penalizing-Sites-for-Rich-Snippet-Spam

Hi Tom,

Thanks for your comment. Sorry you feel it’s a ‘silly experiment’ I’m simply reporting my findings but I can’t please everyone, I’ve not declared it conclusive merely providing food for thought.

This was certainly not aimed at spammers otherwise I would have spammed something and reported back on that. Rand is one of the most authoritative and influential figures within this industry, so if ANYTHING it’s aimed at pushing home the fact that you should build a brand and build authority NOT spam Google.

Hi Craig, seeing it at 7th here too (UK, Chrome incognito)

Hey Will,

Interesting, there seems to be a split between 1st and 7th :-/

Question: Arent google authorship rankings heavilly affected by the people in your circles or people og whom you +1?

Im basically saying, that the experiment isnt correct if you have logged on to your gmail / g+ account?

Hey Magnus,

As per the comment above, I checked with multiple people who aren’t in this industry never mind even on Google+ and all had it ranking at number 1

6th for me. Set to UK and never been to your site before.

Interesting. I’m seeing it at 1st place. I’m in Italy but ranked sites are all English so I guess localization doesn’t affect results.

Big time localization differences. In the states near Washington, DC and not seeing the listing on page one for Google .com or .co.uk w/ pws=0 on both.

Interesting that you saw the bump though.

Hey Scott, Giuseppe, Chris,

Yea, it’s interesting how everyone is getting different results, it seems mainly between 7th and 1st. Speaking to some people on FaceBook and they are seeing it in 1st also, one chap on Twitter was getting it in 7th and he is in Leeds which is a stone throw away from where I am, yet others who are also pretty close are seeing it first so not sure if it comes down to localisation…

My WMT data is showing Avg. position of 4.3 (8th – 31st) and February so far as 1

I think authorship is part of the reason why it is ranking number one, but it’s probably more indirect.

Here’s some things that are probably influencing it:
– Freshness (you just updated it)
– Following Rand on Google+ bumps postings from people you follow on G+ higher in rankings for you (I follow him as well. The fact that you just fixed authorship means that G+ can actually associate authorship correctly.) That said, I just did a search on Incognito mode (signed out, etc.) and it still showed up at the top.
– Given the screenshot, it looks like you may have looked at this without cookies, etc., but recent visitations can bump content to the top as well (less convinced of this one).
– Has anything else changed? New links? New social media shares? Recently algo update? etc.

I know everyone loves a “Hey, I did this one thing and it changed everything!” but Google’s algo is INCREDIBLY complex and the rankings of a page aren’t about just your page, but every other page for that particular SERP, all of them dealing with that same incredibly complex algo.

I’m rooting for you, man, but I’ve been doing this too long to believe that a single change can make a difference.

To add to some of the other comments indicating that this test lacked a few controls I’d like to see before I would accept “Aha! Author Rank!” your interview has been online for almost a year now. We’ve seen other cases where making any change to an older post, but especially adding Authorship, can cause Google to recrawl the post, and in so doing perhaps pick up other signals or relevancies that it hadn’t before.

In some cases, Google will treat such material as “new and fresh,” and temporarliy pop it up in the rankings. The Authorship may have triggered Google to think “Oh, here’s some fresh content highly relevant to the query, so lets shoot it up and see what searchers do with it.” If it starts getting links and such, it may stay there (or at least stay higher than it was previously). If not, it will begin to drop down over the next few weeks.

Keep an eye on it. but also benchmark its backlink profile now and watch to see if you’re getting new links because of its new position.

Wonderful analysis, Author rank do affect the rankings. Your analysis proves it. I also took an interview with Rand @ http://www.techwyse.com/blog/interviews/interview-with-rand-fishkin-of-moz/ and its ranking in 5th position.

Thanks for sharing this Craig. Very interesting results, and at the very least it demonstrates yet again the importance of consistency when declaring personal names.

A quick (and contextually somewhat ironic note:) that your Google+ profile link at the bottom of this article. You’re missing the, um, protocol and domain.

Craig on Google+

Thank you Anthony. I agree that we need more testing, but your results certainly seem to indicate that things are just going to get worse for those of us who lost our rich snippets unjustly.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be sobbing in the corner.

And it sure would be nice to be able to edit my comment and replace Anthony with CRAIG! *d’oh*

Seems like authorship is mich stronger than wie thought. Will will do some Tests and geht back Witz mm results

I’ve seen pages move up 20 spots in the SERPs just from attaching authorship – from page 3 to page 1. The effect was greatly diminished the farther up in the results the page started. So if I attached authorship to a page ranked 3rd, it didn’t move. But 30th? It moved up significantly.

There’s really no reason to NOT use it on informational/personal/opinion-oriented content like blog posts, articles, etc.

Heya – great little experiment and definitely worth doing. I also get #7th on an unbiassed browser with pws=0. However, that alone is better than your average 9th-12th position pre-authorship. So potentially yes, there is *some influence* even if it is slight?

Just looking at title tags for the SERP, it looks like you and SEO Book have about the same structure.

The others are more recent interviews with non-optimal titles for that SERP.

It is possible that you got a boost from the authorship, but also the freshness by adding it.

It’s an interesting find either way.

Is there a way to check on a split test?

Interesting stuff Craig!

I agree with Anthony, it’d be good to see this tested a couple more times to see if there’s any consistency there.

It’s always going to be one of those tests where it’s really hard to isolate it out from all other factors, but I think this was about as fair a test as you’re going to get. I’m not sure I share the ‘freshness’ concerns as I can’t see that being enough to trigger the post as being fresh (assuming you left the publish date on the blog post in tact and that the link was the only thing on the page that was changed). But that tipping point is probably a whole other series of tests in itself.

Might have been good to leave it a couple of weeks to see if the rankings stuck, but that’s going to be a bit bias now with all the new links you’ll pull in off the back of this post.

Anyway, cheers for sharing your findings mate. Much appreciated.

Just FYI – I’ve got you 8th here. Incognito, UK, signed out etc

This is interesting. I was messing around with Google + and authorship and discovered that if someone was in my circles and had a post in the SERPS I was looking at – they immediately jumped to first place if I was logged into to the browser.
Is this what has happened here, or a genuine top slot?

Hey Nick,

As above, I checked on multiple computers of people not in this industry or even on G+ and WMTs has show an average rank of 4.3 for Jan and now a 1 for Feb.

More controlled testing is needed but I hope this will spark some more interesting tests.

Thanks for your comment.

@Jeff, Thanks for the awesome comment mate and thanks for rooting for me but I have not in anyway said this proves anything, I have reported my findings and asked the community, I’m very much on the same page as Ant on this one, I just think it makes an interesting case and hopefully we will see more controlled experiments.

Personally I think it comes down to Google now understanding the connection between Rand and an article that he is a contributor to and that has affected the rankings due to the strong correlation between his name and the article, but I guess that will depend on the length of time if stays ranking higher, if it drops away then maybe it was a ‘freshness’ thing, like some are suggesting??

Thanks again for the comment.

It’s on Pos. 8. I did test it with different locations. Maybe just a quick hoop to the first place and a drop afterwards?

Excellent study. As others say, I think that there are several factors at play here that may also have affected the results. Particularly, updating the post and getting Google to re-crawl it.

Even if it’s not authorship that is directly responsible, a lesson we can learn here is to update your content over time to keep it fresh/crawled/relevant to Google. That is something that we can all learn from regardless of whether author rank exists in our minds or in reality.

Hey Jeff, thanks for stopping by, good points, as you say it’s important to look though old content and see whats driving traffic and update accordingly to make it stronger. I’m gonna keep my eye on the page and see what happens. Rand is also going to be doing some more tests over at Moz so hopefully something more conclusive will come of this

Hi Craig,

Interesting post. However I’ve not got it showing up at spot #7 not-signed-in to Google+ and at the same spot again when I’m signed-in here in Minnesota in the U.S.. I agree that it could be related to the ViperChill scenario where it get’s a freshness bump. Another scenario could be that Google began to trust the page and then algorithmically awarded it Authorship. Even another scenario that could affect where it’s ranking is the location of the searcher (i.e. UK vs. US vs. others) and the Google country specific search engine that the search is done (i.e. google.co.uk vs. google.com). We often see rankings shift based on search location.

Nice post, thought I’m finding myself with more questions.

Cheers,

James

Hey James,

Yes all valid points. Too many variables to pin down. Glad it has you thinking

This is a good thing to test – I don’t think Google is walking away from ‘Agent Rank’ – it’s just too good to pass up – thanks for sharing Craig

It jumped 8 positions for just one week. This is pretty interesting. Did the query include Rand’s name?

Does Authorship Affect Rankings? A Rand Fishkin Study

The Back Story

The Results

Conclusions

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