Roll out onto the wrong side of bed this morning? Rich snippet photos got you down (not showing for you yet and you’ve been wondering why)? I can’t really help you with rolling out of bed thing but the latter we’ll take a crack at today…
Google has a couple of methods for getting author photo rich snippets to show in search results, but one way appears more effective than the other.
I’ve heard some people speculate (gripe) about how long it takes before being able to have their image display next to their posts, and rightfully so!
Google says it takes about a month to get rich snippets in going (and, by the way, also has a guide if you are getting stuck) but what if you’ve done all those things and still no luck?
We sort of had this same problem, but after a little investigation it looks like images are starting to show for us now (see screenshots).
Google’s method works–but right now, apparently only if you link to your Google+ profile from your post vs. simply adding your site to the “contributor” list within your profile, even though Google says that latter method is all you need.
At first when I wanted our blog author’s photos to appear in Google search results I had everyone do the contributor thing only–within about a week Google did start to show rich snippet photos but were the incorrect image and often for the wrong author.
See these screeshots
Alan is an author (he’s our Director of SEO) but his image was appearing for almost all posts that had rich snippet instances (for any author at bestrank.com).
What was frustrating was that Google’s own rich snippet testing tool was showing the correct author on the preview it gave, so we thought we were all good ahead of time. Nope.
My theory: I think Google was looking at the “author” block on our site’s right-hand sidebar and simply picked up the first user it found–Alan Bush. That block appears on all blog posts.
A confused bot? Me thinks so.
So, I had all our authors link to their Google+ profiles directly from each of their posts since Tim had pretty good success by manually linking to his Google+ profile from a couple of his posts.
Tim, you are a genius!
And like magic we started seeing the correct photos appearing after pages were re-crawled.
Right now as I’m writing this blog post I’m still seeing some pages showing the incorrect author photos, but it looks like those pages haven’t been crawled since we starting linking.
Happy rich snippeting!
This is something that every author on the web should take the time to figure out. Content is still being stolen and this helps prove who the original source was.
You know you’re right about one thing Nick. Seems there are still some “SEO experts” out there who prefer to steal/spin content without attribution.
http://screencast.com/t/XARxMm86BseG
Unfortunately having author photos doesn’t always help.
http://screencast.com/t/DuyP2G6o
Calling them out on twitter does though.
Thanks a lot, I am also going through same problem, i hope your article will help me
If I have done everything correctly, (and there is no guarantee I have) should my photo show immediately on the richsnippets tool test, link below?
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=www.myleswebdesign.co.uk
Bruce, that’s a little up in the air. I say that because, yes if you have done everything correctly you should see your photo on the preview tool, however I was able to see my photo in the preview tool (this was after I had added my site to the “contributor” list within my profile but before adding the Google+ link on my blog posts) yet in Google’s SERPS the wrong author photo was displaying. So something is not syncing up 100% between the live SERPS and the preview tool.
Note, I had to edit this to get things to display
————————
Thanks for the quick reply. Found my fault, I had
a href=”https://plus.google.com/112876791410431816733?rel=author” rel=”nofollow”
rather than this.
a href=”https://plus.google.com/112876791410431816733″ rel=”nofollow”
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the article. I was wondering if you had any idea on how to fix the issue with Rich Snippets when it comes to an error I am getting that states the following:
Warning: The information will not appear as a rich snippet in search results, because the marked-up content does not appear to be the main focus of the page.
How should I mark up my content? I am an owner of a website selling services and want all of my posts and pages to show my name on all of the posts and pages to show credibility, etc. What should I do? I have been reading a lot but feel really confused about this.
Any help would be appreciate.
Doing a google search I found this
http://www.cellcircuit.com/2011/10/27/fix-wordpress-and-google-rich-snippets-markup-content-error/
Thank you!
Hi thanks for your post. I have integrated everything fine but it
i still cant get my photo … I have to further verify my google ID for the photo to appear every time.. any ideas..
see below
author
linked author profile = http://www.nicheadvice.co.uk/author/admin/
secondary profile = http://www.nicheadvice.co.uk/about-me/
google profile = http://profiles.google.com/114436252374717465436/about
author (extracted from page content)
author name = Payam Azadi
Are you the author? If you have an email with nicheadvice.co.uk and verified it with Google+, please enter your G+ profile to verify your authorship here
Why am i still getting the verify message when my email has already been verified.. any ideas
Have you tried linking to your G+ profile from each post?
In case anyone is having problems with the author tag to work… I had a problem because the about.html page, which was linking to my Google profile page, was market as nonindex,nofollow. I have changed that now and it works great.
Hi Mike I havnt tried that option will give it a go and let you know how I get on
thanks !! i hope it works !! ive been trying for a while now but no luck …ill try linking every post
xx
All of my posts “Author: Caroline” links to my sites “About Me” page with the rel=”author”.
The thumbnail appears in the rich snippets tool and authorship are verified etc etc, but the thumbnail does not appear in google search results. Am I doing wrong? Will the thumbnail appear in the searchresults in a month, maybe weeks?
Thanks for replying!
Hello Carro, will appear in just few days. you have now only to wait, 4-5 days!
Marius
Thanks for the post. I have been wondering about rich snippets. I have rich snippets on my main site, but it does not show on all of my blog postings. So you are saying that I would have to link them individually or would linking specifically to my blog be sufficient?
We had to link from each post to the author’s Google+ profile to get the photos to appear; we did that by creating an extra field on the user account and displaying that at the bottom of each post.
Please help me I am trying to get this image on search since the past 6 months but failing to do so.
My image is appearing when I test it in the rich snippets tool but not in the actual search.
This is the link to my website – techishtv.com
and here is the link to the rich snippets tool – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=techishtv.com&html=
Please reply fast!
Please help me!
Please help me I am trying to get this image on search since the past 6 months but failing to do so.
My image is appearing when I test it in the rich snippets tool but not in the actual search.
This is the link to my website – techishtv.com
and here is the link to the rich snippets tool – http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=techishtv.com&html=
Please reply fast!
Hello Everyone,
I think I have managed to follow the directions provided and also the rich snippet tool work perfectly with the right image. Its been 2 weeks and still no luck, any suggestions?
Mike,
I am new to rich snippets and am in the process of installing them on a client’s site (www.solondentalexcellence.com)
I have her google+ profile showing her as a contributor to this site, and the correct code for authorship.
Do I need to put a link at the bottom of each page of her site she wants to show authorship on?
ex: Connect with Dr. Kalaf on Google+ (with “Dr. Kalaf” as anchor text linking to her google+ profile?
That’s what we had to do.
Thanks Mike. I will give it a try.
I don’t know if you can answer this, but I also have code for marketing with review snippets to show 5 stars in the description of the same client’s site. Do you have any idea how to get those to show regularly just like the authorship snippet?
Hey ! My image successfully appears on rich snippet tool but fails to appear on google saerch
It is very apparent that Google has been having major issues with authorship and proper attribution. Lately it seems like they have been pulling author photos from the SERP altogether (not 100% of the time). Anyone have any additional insight into this as of late?