I said I would report back when I saw some progress in my epic, Game of Thrones-like journey toward attaining Google Authorship, and I am happy to report that there has finally been some! I’m putting this in the “In the Lab” section so you can refer back to it to make yourself feel better if your Google Authorship verification is taking a long time. I’m a multiple-times published author with a strong byline, and it’s taken me NINE WEEKS (and counting) to work this thing out.
First signs of life: my site, LoriCulwell.com, and all of its articles now appear with my face next to the link. Check it out!
I also tried Googling individual articles on my blog, and was able to verify that while my photo is not appearing on the main link of my blog (Funny Strange), individual posts are displaying the photo, which is actually more important. Here’s an example: five years ago while I was living in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, so many people asked me for directions to the various OJ Simpson murder related landmarks, I decided to make a blog post out of it. My post “Do This: the OJ Simpson Murder Mystery Tour” has been on Page 1 of Google for “OJ Simpson Murder Tour” (don’t ask me why people are still Googling this), for some time, and now that my photo appears next to the article, it is # 1 on Page 1, over even the Wikipedia listing for the case. That alone should get you motivated to get your Google Authorship in order, people!
In case you’re dying to read that OJ Simpson article (see what I did there?), you can find that right here: http://www.funnystrange.net/2008/02/do-this-the-oj.html.
If you want to start the Google Authorship verification process, you can do that here: https://plus.google.com/authorship
