Google Turning The Screw On Publishers To Join Google +

Google seems to be ramping up their efforts to attract publishers to Google +.

Last night Chris Richardson (theaussienomad.com) tipped me off with information that his authorship tagging on his blog was finally being shown on Google’s SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Having previously verified my own and other travel writers (on TravMonkey.com) articles via Google’s rich snippet mark up testing tool I was interested in seeing whether our own articles had the authors profile photo and information alongside them in the SERPs.

Sure enough there it was, but unlike Chris’s profile information mine also had information about how many people had circled me on Google +. The only conclusion we could reach is that I’m currently more active on Google + than Chris.

Authorship Tag Rolled Out To A Wider Audience?

The authorship tag has been around for a while but this is the first time I’ve noticed my own profile consistently appearing as well as fellow travel bloggers profiles. I was also surprised to see information about how many people have circled me in Google +, perhaps my efforts are baring fruit already. It will be interesting to monitor authorship stats via Google webmaster tools to see exactly what impact this has on traffic.

Google + Profile in Search Results

In the search for “how to travel the world” you can see my profile appearing next to the result. Although Matador Network is ranking no.1 the profile photo on TravMonkey’s result draws attention and hints at authority, this is likely to make click through rate higher.

Google Profile Search

In the US version of Google (Google.com) users are also presented with a “more from Paul Dow” link that performs an profile search. You can test out Google’s profile search for yourself.

It all indicates that Google seems to be slowly turning the screw, pulling users into Google +. After all, if other results in the SERPs have a profile photo and information about the author, their click through rate is likely to be higher.

I also checked to see if other authors from our site had been included in the search results but they hadn’t as of yet.

Google’s advantage lies in the power of their web search and numerous products available from which to leverage. Engaging, building authority and audience in Google + has a direct impact on your presence on the worlds most popular website. Other social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc don’t have this power at their disposal.

It’s only a matter of time before you can’t afford to ignore it in favour of social networks with less external reach.

*Update

After having a look into Google Webmaster tools it seems that my authorship tag was picked up on the 10/02/2012.

Here you can circle TravMonkey.com and Editor Paul Dow on Google + for regular updates.

Has your authorship information appeared in Google’s search results yet?