Google Says Author Not A Direct Ranking Factor

Google’s John Mueller said a bit ago in a video hangout that the author of an article is not a direct ranking factor. He said this when he was asked if it matters if you have a recognized and authoritative doctor write or review your medical content when it comes to Google’s E-A-T recommendations.

John said no, there would be no “quantifiable difference” between using a doctor who is well known versus not well known in terms of SEO or ranking. John said “purely from an SEO point of view it probably doesn’t matter either way” to have a top doctor or lesser known doctor write or review the content. John added “I don’t think you would see an SEO ranking difference if you pick this other or a different author.”

Google has previously recommended that doctors review your medical content and have an expert write your content. But Google also downplayed renting experts names for this purpose even though Google has said before it tries to recognize the author details.

The question was asked at the 50:55 mark in this video:

Hi! I’ve already you’ve already answered one of my questions but I’ve got another one for you. It’s about E-A-T again, sorry about this. Google, you know, recommends that medical content should be written by clinicians. So for example if you have a page related to to acne, does it make a difference if you get like a top top dermatologist to, you know someone with like who’s got also profiles on a lot of medical journals, who’ve got a knowledge graph, who’s got like you know reputation in the community these type of things. Or if you get any general practitioner? Does it make any, in terms of ranking and SEO, does it weight somehow? Or as long as they are qualified doctor, it doesn’t really matter?

John replied:

I don’t know if there would be a quantifiable difference. Because it’s also not something where we say it’s a direct ranking factor. That we say oh we we look up the author and double check this and double check that. It’s more something that kind of comes into play when we look look at the bigger picture of the content of the website. So my feeling is purely from an SEO point of view it probably doesn’t matter either way. From a kind of a long term, kind of being seen as an authority point of view, maybe it does make sense to have a stronger author who’s associated with it. But I don’t think you would see an SEO ranking difference if you pick this other or a different author.

Here is the video of this segment, it should start to play at the correct position:

Here is how Glenn Gabe summed it up on Twitter:

More from John: So, from a purely SEO point of view, it probably doesn’t matter either way, but from a long-term standpoint (being seen as an authority), maybe it does make sense to have a stronger author associated with the site content. But… no ranking difference b/t authors. pic.twitter.com/3HgyyFS5Ua

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 29, 2021

Forum discussion at Twitter.