rel=author: its history, and what actually works for authorship in SEO today

From 2011 to 2014, Google actively promoted the rel="author" attribute — a way to link an article to a specific author via a Google+ profile. Author photos started appearing next to snippets in search results. SEO specialists were marking up content en masse. Then in 2014, Google scrapped the whole thing.

Ten years later, the idea of authorship is back — but under a different name and in a different form. This article covers what happened to rel=author and how authorship works in the E-E-A-T era.

What it was

In 2011, Google launched the Authorship Markup initiative. The idea:

1. An author creates a Google+ profile
2. Articles include <a rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/...">Author Name</a>
3. Google links the article to the profile
4. Search results show the author's avatar, name, and follower count next to the snippet

It worked. CTR on snippets with an author photo was 30–50% higher. Authors gained visibility; the search engine gained a trust signal.

In August 2014, Google completely removed author display from search results. The stated reason: difficult to interpret value, inaccurate data, little benefit to users. The real reason (reportedly): Google+ was dying, no one wanted to maintain it, and this initiative was part of its ecosystem.

Since then, rel="author" has remained technically valid HTML, but search engines do not use it. You can include it or omit it — it makes no difference.

What replaced it: E-E-A-T

Between 2014 and 2018, Google gradually introduced the E-A-T concept (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). In 2022, a second E — Experience — was added. The result: E-E-A-T.

This is not an algorithm. It is a set of signals that algorithms use to assess content quality. It is applied most strictly in YMYL niches (medicine, finance, safety). More detail in the post E-E-A-T in YMYL niches 2026.

The key difference from rel=author:

• rel=author was a technical marker for a single feature (showing the author in the snippet)
• E-E-A-T is a set of quality signals that the algorithm collects from many sources: author, domain, links, content

In other words, authorship became more important — but is implemented differently.

How to mark up an author in 2026

No special rel="author" is needed. Use Schema.org Article or BlogPosting with the author field:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "Article Title",
  "datePublished": "2026-06-15",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Ivan Ivanov",
    "url": "https://yoursite.com/about/ivan/",
    "jobTitle": "SEO Specialist",
    "sameAs": [
      "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-ivanov",
      "https://twitter.com/ivan_ivanov"
    ]
  },
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Yoursite",
    "logo": {
      "@type": "ImageObject",
      "url": "https://yoursite.com/logo.png"
    }
  }
}

This gives the search engine a lot of information:

• Who the author is
• Where their profile lives on the site (bio page)
• Their role and qualifications
• External profiles (sameAs) for identity verification

The author page on your site

author.url should point to a real page with the author's biography. That page should include:

• Full name
• Photo
• Qualifications, education, years of experience
• List of publications
• Contact details or links to professional profiles

This is what "author authority" means in 2026. Not a single attribute, but an entire infrastructure of pages and connections.

The more detailed the author page, and the more publications the author has on the site, the stronger the signal.

sameAs — external profiles

The sameAs field in Schema.org Person creates links to external identity confirmations. Search engines use these for verification.

What to include:

• LinkedIn profile
• Twitter/X
• Niche communities (e.g., GitHub for developers, Behance for designers, Habr for technical authors)
• Wikipedia page (if one exists)
• Yandex Zen profile
• YouTube channel
• ORCID for academic authors

The more matching profiles with consistent biographies and photos, the higher the trust score.

The Yandex equivalent

Yandex does not use Schema.org Person as a direct signal, but a similar logic operates through:

• Yandex Webmaster → Search Profile — you can explicitly register links between authors and publications
• Yandex Zen profile — if an author actively publishes on Zen, this creates a connection
• Yandex Webmaster → Authors — a dedicated section for registering experts in medical and financial topics

In Yandex, author authority is built indirectly through these tools, plus through E-A-T signals (the same logic as Google).

Common mistakes

1. Using rel=author out of habit

People add the attribute "because they learned to back in the day." It does no harm, but it does nothing either. Remove it and save the bytes.

2. Anonymous author "Editorial Team"

In YMYL niches, this automatically weakens the E-A-T signal. Each article should have a named author. If you have 1–2 people writing your entire blog, that is fine — each can have 50 publications to their name.

3. One author across articles on completely different topics

If "Ivan Ivanov" wrote articles on medicine, software development, cooking, and law, Google understands that one person cannot be an expert in everything. It is better to have several narrowly specialised authors.

4. Fake authors

Generating photos with AI and inventing names for non-existent "experts" is a ticking time bomb. Search engines will learn to detect this (if they have not already), and it will result in a penalty.

Use real people, or honestly sign content as "editorial team" (accepting the E-A-T hit) — but do not simulate identities.

5. Not updating the author profile when circumstances change

If an author has gained new qualifications (a degree, a certification), or published in journals, update their author page. This builds reputation and signals to search engines that "the expert is growing."

Connection to rich snippets

In 2024–2025, Google reintroduced author display in search results in specific contexts:

• In the News & Top Stories section — author and publication are shown
• In YouTube cards — the presenter's name is shown
• In Featured Snippets for informational queries — a source with an author is sometimes added

So authorship has not returned as a universal feature, but in certain niches it is critical for appearing in special result blocks.

Summary

rel="author" has been dead since 2014. The modern equivalent is Schema.org Author with detailed Person markup + an author bio page + connections via sameAs. This is not a single line of code — it is an entire infrastructure. But that infrastructure is exactly what forms the Authorship and E-E-A-T signals that matter in 2026.

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