The way Google treats authorship is changing and it’s going to change a lot more in coming years.
Don’t believe me?
It’s already started and Matt Cutts, Head of Antispam at Google has confirmed it’s likely to change even more over the course of the next decade.
So where are we coming from, what are the changes that have already been made and where does it appear Google is moving forward with this?
We use the example of David Beckham to explain.

Where did David Beckham used to stand when writing on our website?

We’re going to start at the beginning.  Previously search engines held authority at a site level.  It was the site that was important in terms of Google and not the individual writing on the site.
So if David Beckham wrote about football on our site then Google would have seen it as another blog post on the MiHi Digital website.  They’d have said it’s great that they’re adding even more fresh content to their blog but that’s where it stops.
It wouldn’t have recognised that David Beckham the individual was writing on our blog and he’d have got no personal benefit.
Well, actually because it’s Mr Beckham we’d have let him have a link back to his own website for his troubles!

What changes have been made and what happens if David Beckham writes on your site now?

Along came a much-maligned social network called Google+.
With it came something called Google Authorship and headshots began to appear against certain search results across the globe.
They were met with jubilation by the people that implemented them, (reported increases in click through rates by up to 15%) and to a large extent confusion as those that didn’t have them wondered what they were and how they got their own.
Don’t mistake it; this was a big change and it wasn’t just a headshot.
What Google did for the first time was to realise and understand that individuals within certain areas had big followings and were experts in their fields.  With that they wanted to move toward a world where individuals writing on topics in which they had knowledge and expertise were understood as coming from that person rather than just the website they were publishing on.
So lets suggest for a moment that we weren’t the only website that David Beckham had been offered a guest blog post from!
Difficult to believe I know but lets just go with this…
He would write on our blog and many other blogs but Google would then want to understand that it was him writing it, no matter what site he was writing with.
They’d moved the authority from the site toward the individual.
It’s a big change, particularly if you’re an expert in a certain area or blog frequently about a specific topic area, which many people within businesses will be doing.

So where does it appear this is going and what will happen to David Beckham?

This is still early days but as Matt Cutts from Google has said, it appears that individual identity and authorship is going to get more and more important for search and for the internet as a whole.
Going forward Google isn’t going to be burying David Beckham’s content on a website blog, they’re going to know it’s him publishing it and the gravitas of that will flow accordingly.
Interested in learning more about online marketing and how we can help your business?  Why not give us a call on 01566 784860 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk