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Yes, Google's head of search spam, Matt Cutts did say rel=author can help search quality but he did also say Google is currently not using it.
John Mueller, a Google web trends analysts confirmed this one more time during a Google Hangout a few days ago. He said:
We don’t use Authorship for ranking
Mark Traphagen transcribed that part of the question. Which you can see in the video at 48 minutes and 24 seconds into the video.
Q: Why can't Google+ authorship prevent scraper sites from showing up above us in the search results?
John Mueller: Well, we don't use authorship for ranking, so it's not... because it's written by a well-known author, or it looks like it might have been written by a well-known author, that we'd show it higher up in the search results....
Q: Could you repeat that once more...
JM: We don't use it for ranking, at the moment. If you're seeing a situation where scraper sites are showing up above you, that's something that I would treat separately from any authorship markup that we have on your pages....
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Sandeep Malviy
10/01/2013 01:41 pm
What if competitors are still getting ranking on first page using spam link profiles? A huge number of blog comments with high PR sites where we can see flood of links/comments. We cannot follow those links because they might get hit in future by Google but what for now? Shouldn’t Google include one more section for SPAM Link Profile of a website on its spam report page? https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?pli=1 or we can report in Paid Links section?
ELMConsulting.org
10/01/2013 03:01 pm
Key phrase "at the moment." The angle I take is that it verifies the site, and allows for the search results on the pub side to be more authoritative in presentation, thus gaining more clicks. I think the value is there, but again its another piece of the ever changing pie.
Durant Imboden
10/01/2013 05:34 pm
"The angle I take is that it verifies the site, and allows for the search results on the pub side to be more authoritative in presentation, thus gaining more clicks." Maybe, if rich snippets are being shown (which isn't always the case). But John Mueller was talking about rankings, which are a different issue entirely.
Jitendra Vaswani
10/01/2013 05:39 pm
Sandeep I agree that competitors are ranking on google first page but we cant do anything, these all results are in hands of seo, all is we can do is follow proper google guidelines and work according to seo latest updates
Sandeep Malviy
10/01/2013 05:59 pm
Yeh! but the concern is, we cannot wait until Google hit those sites. Barry, you must be running too busy but would you also like to comment something?
Barry Schwartz
10/01/2013 06:04 pm
Not sure what you want me to add here. Yes, very busy. At SMX East now.
vitrum dubey
10/01/2013 06:14 pm
In the edge where google is just trowing up to minute updates, the future is not itself predictable. While the spam profiles are concern, they are going to be dumped in a sequence but not just in one time. :)
Sandeep Malviy
10/01/2013 06:55 pm
Just looking for your views on my first comment in this thread. Please check. And my best wishes for SMX. :)
Jitendra Vaswani
10/01/2013 07:40 pm
Barry is busy guy , bary why google nt penalizing those sites which are in top pages, still spam results are popping, what hummingbird will do in that case, please answer barry
incrediblehelp
10/01/2013 07:56 pm
Google = Obtuse...so tired of it.....
phaithful
10/01/2013 09:34 pm
lulz ... they don't NEED to be transparent. They're actually way more forth coming than any other engine or online business for that matter. It sure beats years ago where it was only "Google Guy".
Jellyfish Agency
10/02/2013 07:23 am
Okay...The fact that they keep deigning any impact on ranking NOW, means they are secretly working on something to deliver on all the assets that have enabled us to utilize up to this point. Authorship tags, Google+ integration will be for something within a bigger picture that they have just chosen not to inform us of yet. The Hummingbird Update is testament to the fact that they are still able to deliver advances that you, me and joe public are not aware of until they choose to make it public. Be patient, we will know when they choose to tell us.
Gregory Smith
10/03/2013 02:45 am
Who ever thought that author stats was a ranking factor must've been drunk!
Graciousstore
10/03/2013 04:59 am
Could that be true? Why the buzz on authorship in many SEO blog forums?
incrediblehelp
10/03/2013 06:36 pm
I disagree. Misinformation is worse than no information.