Authorship Markup Why So Important

In terms of Profiles appearing in search, Google is demonstrating why it can pay off in search visibility to be active on Google+ and develop a substantial following. Before it was clear that this was beneficial, but now, you can see directly where this will help you. Not only will Google show people you are friends with, but it will show people it thinks you would be interested in.

Google says it will show autocomplete predictions for “various prominent people from Google+, such as high-quality authors from our authorship pilot program”. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/search-plus-your-world.html

People can click on these results and easily add the person to their circles on Google+.  It doesn’t look like brand pages will be showing up as autocomplete predictions. When asked about this, a Google spokesperson said,

“For profiles in search, you will see an autocomplete prediction for people who have Google+ profiles. These are people you’re connected to or popular people related to the query. For Google+ Pages, there’s Direct Connect (launched back in Nov).”