AuthorRank, what is it? Well if you’re a blogger, writer or journalist and haven’t heard about it, it might be a good time to look it up.

What is AuthorRank?

Many years ago Google filed a patent for “Agent Rank”, a patent that seems to allow the high-ranking of popular “agents” content. Those “agents” with less authority or content that hasn’t got an “agent” potentially could rank lower.

Introducing Google +

Very little happened for while because there was no way of associating content to “agents”. That all changed with the introduction of Google + and now it seems Google are beginning to push authorship tagging, pointing us towards the introduction of “Agent Rank”.  The concept has since been labelled “AuthorRank” and AJ Kohn wrote an insightful article on the subject. Soon after I  wrote about whether “AuthorRank solves the journalist vs blogger debate” and about “Google turning the screw on publishers to join Google +”.

Things went a little bit quiet for a while, until yesterday when Google sent me (and a whole host of writers and bloggers) this email.

Strange Update

I found it a little strange because I was already appearing in the search engine results next to my own articles and have been for a long time. So why send this email?

I’m guessing that Google are pushing ahead with their AuthorRank metric and many of use could be part of their early experiment. Whether they are or not, it highlights the of potential importance of setting up Authorship tagging and AuthorRank for writers, bloggers and journalists online.

Authorship Stats

Interestingly after checking some basic Webmaster Tools stats it seems that I’ve had a recent increase in the number of impressions and clicks via my authorship details appearing in the Search Engine Results. Coincidence or a change in Google search?

Update:

Since writing this post (2 days later) there has been some reporting of an added benefit of authorship tagging. Google has since confirmed this themselves.

Have you received the Authorship email from Google?