According to new research, 13 per cent of Google UK searches at least one of the top 100 results incorporates new author profile information, including an author thumbnail image and links, but most of these are US based authors, meaning the UK publishers are losing out.
Google rolled out the authorship feature last year. It allows online writers to show their photo next to their content in the search results, because of the increased visibility, theses results usually see an increase in click through rates.
What the authorship looks like in the SERPs
The research carried out by search and social analytics company, Searchmetrics, analysed Google UK search results relating to 1 million popular keywords. Journalists and bloggers who write about technology, medical and food topics are among those that are most visible authors in the UK Google search results.
UK writers in Searchmetrics’ list of the top 20 who most frequently appear in Google.co.uk author integrations (see table underneath) include Charles Arthur, the Guardian’s technology editor and Edward Chester, reviews editor at TrustedReviews.com.
*The number of times a writer appears in author profile integrations displayed on the first page of Google.co.uk search results in Searchmetrics’ study
**The total number of times a writer appears in author profile integrations displayed in Google.co.uk search results in Searchmetrics’ study
“More writers from US based sites are appearing in the top 20 because authors generally need to have a profile on the Google Plus social network to be displayed in author integrations – and we assume more writers for US sites are on Google Plus and also Google has possibly encouraged some US sites to set up their articles for author integrations,” said Marcus Tober, founder and CTO of Searchmetrics.
Looking at the demographics, there are certainly more US Google Plus users compared to the UK. In the US there are approximately, 28m Google Plus users whereas in the UK there is only around 3.5m (taken 30/4/12 from http://www.plusdemographics.com).
To appear in the author integrations, the authors’ articles need to be linked (using specific web tags) to the authors’ Google Plus profiles.
“In an increasingly competitive market, author integrations are an opportunity for media sites, blogs and content creators to generate better visibility and traffic because more people click on a result when they see the author’s image in this way. This feature also introduces searchers to more content by the same author and allows them to connect with the author on Google Plus,” said Tober.
“It was surprising to see more than one in ten of the results tested are showing author integrations because this is still a new feature – it’s much higher than I expected,” added Tober.
The dominance of writers from US based sites in Google UK author integrations means there is a big opportunity for UK journalists and sites to get onto Google Plus and make themselves more visible using this new type of search entry suggests Tober.
