Google authorship in search results
Your identity and trustworthiness as a publisher and author is fast becoming a vital part of your ranking with the lord of searches.
That’s why Google created authorship.
It’s yet another way that Google is putting emphasis on relevance and quality content.
NOTE: Even if your authorship verifies in the Google snippets testing tool it may not show up in search results straight away.
This feature is being rolled out gradually, and ranking will be implemented algorithmically, so author information will not always display in search results. ~ Google
What are the benefits of Google authorship?
1. Your profile image shows up in search results, which look more personal and increases click-through rates.
2. When a user clicks on an authored link, reads their content for about three minutes and then clicks on the back button on their browser, Google adds three additional links to articles underneath the initial one.
3. Users can click on more articles by the author just by clicking on their name within Google results.
4. Google are sure to progressively make authorship more important in the rankings, to help better determine relevancy.
Read the official page on authorship here.
How to setup Google authorship in WordPress
1. Create a Google+ Profile that uses your full name and a clear profile image of your face.
A clear portrait image. Not an awesome Astronomer (unless you are one!)
2. Click the Edit Profile button and complete your Google plus profile. Most of this is accessible in the About section.
Fill out your profile and contact information, including other social networks you’re connected to.
Help Google to see you have authority in your field
Add the sites that you author for into the Contributor to section.
Check your URLs!
Click the +1′s tab while in edit mode and tick the Show this tab on your profile box.
3. Sign-up for Google authorship here, by verifying your email address. It must use the same domain as your blog URL. e.g. name@yoursite.com.
Verifying that email will add it to your Google plus profile. You may want to change the visibility if that address to private here.
4. Make sure the SEO for WordPress plugin by Yoast plugin is installed and activated.
Not sure how to install a new plugin? Read more here. You can read more about on-page SEO and the Yoast plugin for WordPress here.
5. Add your Google+ profile URL to the Google+ field in your WordPress profile at Users >> Your Profile.
To find this, click the profile button on the left-side of Google + and copy the URL from your browsers address bar.
The Google+ and Twitter fields are added by the SEO for WordPress plugin
For this to work, the name on your Google+ profile must exactly match your profile page in WordPress.
Genesis Users!
If you’re using the Genesis framework you will already have an SEO system in place and have no need to install the Yoast plugin.
Log into your WordPress and go to Genesis >> Theme Settings >> Header and Footer Scripts
Paste the code below into the head section, replacing your Google+ Profile URL:
<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/XXXXXXXXXXXX/posts/">
Save
6. In WordPress go to SEO >> Titles & Metas and on the Home tab choose the main site author in the Author highlighting drop-down.
7. Check that authorship is working with the Google rich snippets tool by entering your blog URL home page, or a specific article link you have authored.
Don’t worry about error messages below this section, they’re unrelated to authorship.
NOTE: You can check, and edit the posts that authors have created by going to Posts >> All Posts in WordPress.
UPDATE
Three weeks after implementing this I’ve finally started seeing authorship show up in Google results. But only on some articles. Ahh the mysterious Google algorithm. 
If you had any trouble with this implementation, or just want to share your shiny new Google+ profile, please do so in the comments.
You can also join the WordPress Tribe Google+ page here.
I don’t see my photo when I search for my blog on Google, as you said may initially be the case, but I am also getting errors when checking it with the rich snippets tool.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107922101785639594131
In the extracted structured data area, below each post, it says:
Warning: Missing required field “updated”.
Warning: Missing required hCard “author”
Not sure what that means or how that might effect my photo showing up or my Google authorship in general. Do you have any idea?
HI Gail. Those errors are other rich-snippets elements that don’t apply to the authoring process.
Looks like you’ve done it all correctly to me.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdappledthings.me%2F&html=
Some people are reporting months before this starts actually showing up in Google results.
Like most blogging and business it’s a building process and at least you have reported yourself to Google as an author and publisher.
Well done!
Thanks! I always hate it when I see error code, so I feel better now.
I am really enjoying your web site, by the way. I never would have known about Google authorship if I hadn’t stumbled upon your blog. Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge!
Thanks for the feedback Gail. You have a beautiful and simple blog site by the way. It puts maximum focus on your personal writing style.
Keep going and finding the passion!
Hello Herrin,
I have a Genesis theme which already has its own SEO package. When I go in to copy the Google + link in my profile, Jabber/Google talk is listed not Google +. I’ve followed every other step and when check the rich snippet tool, it says I’m not authored. Help
Kaye
Hi Kaye
I’ve updated the article to include the Genesis framework.
Let us know how you go.
Cheers
Thank you!
Very clear instructions, thanks Herrin!
Worked like a charm!
I’ve been looking a bit for a tutorial on this, but none of the ones I found included anything on Yoast.
Long live Yoast:)
Yeah this being a WordPress focused site we can afford to incorporate the best plugins into the tutorials, and Yoast’s certainly is that. Thanks for dropping by!
Have followed everything to the letter – thank you, you are very clear in your instructions!
But wordpress isn’t giving me the option to add my google+ url
To get that Google+ option to show up on your Users Profile page you need to activate the SEO for WordPress by Yoast plugin first.
WordPress plugins: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-seo/
Once you have done that visit Users >> Your Profile and enter your personal Google+ profile link in there and you should be good to go!
Email us or reply if you have any other issues. cheers.
After trying three other methods for Google+ Authorship without success, I found your post. You have clear step by step instructions, but even after going through them several times the authorship testing result shows that my page does not contain authorship markup. Have any thoughts???
False alarm, it was only not working for my home page, but works for the rest of my pages.
On the Yoast plugin, If you go to SEO >> Titles & Metas and click the Home tab, look for the author highlighting section.
As long as the other parts are done first when you click that drop-down you can select the author data to show for the homepage as well.
Thanks for your comments!
Hi Herrin, I’m new to google authorship and I’m not sure if Ive set it up correctly. Everything seems to be ok when I check the rich snippets tool expect one error is showing:
Warning: Missing required hCard “author”
Will this affect it? What can I do to fix this,
Thanks in advance!
As long as you see that top author section green as shown in the screenshot above you should be good to go.
Those errors you mention are unrelated to the authorship process that we’re talking about here. It’s a bit misleading unfortunately. I get exactly the same errors and I am seeing authorship in Google search results now.
Thanks for commenting and happy WordPressing!
is there a way to verify for individual google pages?? rather than profile page
Every post on WordPress must have an author. It refers to that author to determine the authorship data, then presents that in the search results, after some time. You can have this setup for different sites – each one will need to be entered in the contributor section in Google +.