I managed to ping Google’s @mattcutts after the announcement of rel=”author” support from Google on Twitter and he clarified the use case a little.
As Twitter’s search is still so terrible at finding things I am adding the conversation here.
@AndyBeard
Andy BeardNew rel=”author” support http://goo.gl/FCK3l ( @mattcutts is this suitable for cross domain attribution too for syndicated content? )
21 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
@mattcutts
Matt Cutts@AndyBeard for now it’s same-site, just to be safe. My (personal) guess is we’ll see if that can be expanded over time in a trusted way. 20 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
@AndyBeard
Andy Beard@mattcutts thanks for the clarification & intended current use 20 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
@mattcutts
Matt Cutts@AndyBeard sure thing. Remember, rel=canonical also started as same-site only, then as we trusted it more, it became cross-site. 20 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
@AndyBeard
Andy Beard@mattcutts I can’t sneak a rel=”canonical” into an author bio link, or ask content partners such as @WebProNews to include it 20 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto
My last point is at least partially related to Google’s Panda update because it is quite frequently seen, possibly more than before, that original content doesn’t rank yet scraped copies of it does.
There are reasons why that happens, but a microformat rel=”author” and possibly something new… rel=”original” for a link to the canonical source would be useful.
Something like this would be easier to implement than the metatag alternative currently in testing with newspapers . ( original-source & syndication-source )
This is something really easy to get implemented in a number of CMSs, though in most cases it would be theme dependent not something that is part of core.
Originally published at Internet Business & Marketing Strategy
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