What is Google AuthorRank & How exactly it works?

Google has gone a long way into streamlining their search results and delivering quality and relevant information to users. If you have been active lately and been following the news from the industry, then you would have heard about Google's AuthorRank. Even if you haven't heard about it, you'll most likely catch on pretty quickly, since the basic idea isn't unfamiliar. Google is working on a new system of ranking content and returning better search results to users, aka Google AuthorRank, which is a bit like PageRank really, if we strip down to the very basics. And this is what we are going to talk about today.

What exactly is AuthorRank?

Everyone knows what PageRank is, right? Google takes a lot of factors into account when ranking pages, so that high quality pages are given a higher rank is Search Results. For a page, it is easy to calculate the incoming links, the quality of those links, traffic, page hits, and so on, and these are some of the factors that determine page ranking. But what about the people who write that content on those pages?

Before Google Plus, Google had no solid way of identifying who the author of a webpage is. Google Plus, together with Google Authorship helped overcome the problem by assigning a digital signature to piece of content. Since that difficulty has been overcome now, Google is now looking to rank people, or Authors, just like it ranks Pages. And this is what AuthorRank will be all about. 

An Author's (Agent's) rank will effectively influence a content's search results performance. So your reputation as a content creator will influence how well your content ranks. The better the reputation, the better the performance. Google will essentially use this information to pluck out spam from its very root.

How will it effect you as a content creator?

So far, we have established that this will be a new ranking system. But it won't be an algorithmic update, and won't be replacing anything. Nothing as big as Panda. You can think of AuthorRank as more of a supplement. AuthorRank will inform PageRank, which means that an Agent (author) with a high AuthorRank will now also effect a site's performance in SERPs.

This suggests that some of the emphasis might now shift towards individuals who create good quality content. And when you look at Google's constant efforts to measure site trust, and their emphasis on going social, it all makes sense. People trust a site when they can connect and communicate with the author. So going social might just be the key here. How good content you write, how well you interact, everything will contribute towards AuthorRank.

Justice Vs No Justice

From Mohammad: 

"AuthorRank if implemented in 2013 would be the biggest relief for already established web owners and content publishers. With billion of pages uploaded each day, quality stuff is badly ranked well by search robots because its tough to pick the best among too many competitors. How would the robot know which article deserves more weight and credit then the other?  Here at MBT, each tutorial that we publish is duplicated several times by new comers that badly effect our traffic momentum, as a result we suffer both in traffic and revenue. With AuthorRank, we can expect true justice from Google, where real authors will receive true credit for their efforts. I am demonstrating this entire concept with a simple image shared below, which would give your a clear picture of how this new algorithm would work and do justice between authors."

Click the image to enlarge it. 

What will effect AuthorRank?

Once again, AuthorRank alone will not effect a site's ranking. It will only be a factor. Google considers more than 200 factors, some of which will contribute towards your AuthorRank, which, in turn, will contribute towards your site's ranking in organic search results. That being said, let us look into some of the factors that might effect AuthorRank.

• Google Plus engagement - How many circles an author is in on Google Plus. This indicated how popular an author is and what is the level of his engagement on Google Plus.
• Social activity regarding the content - How many +1s and shares does an author's content gets. This will also take into account the social activity on other major social media, such as Facebook, Twitter etc.
• Other sites the author has contributed to - This will take into account the number of sites that an author has contributed to, and their integrity, along with things like average PageRank of his content etc.
• Number of posts to Google Plus, and other social media.
• The number and nature of the connections on Google+ an author has. For example, connections with high AuthorRank authors will be considered good, just as high quality backlinks are considered good for a webpage.
• On-site engagement - Number of comments an author's content gets, and the number of author responses.
• YouTube engagement - Number of subscribers, activity on videos, engagement on YouTube etc.
• Other authority indicators - Such as published works on Google Books, having a page on Wikipaedia etc

Google hasn't yet unleashed this ranking system, so no one knows exactly what factors it will consider. This list just serves as a rough sketch, the granular detailed of which will become public once this update takes place. Also, we don't know yet when it will take place. Google is working on it, and might just release in next week, or maybe after a month, or even an year. All we can do is, wait and prepare for it. Sites that have prepared for it will have a clear advantage over sites that haven't. So it's most probably time you started preparing too. We will cover more on how to prepare for it, along with some tips in our third part in this series. Until then, stay tuned. Shoot any questions you might have, because we're here to help. Good luck :)