Will the end of Google Authorship affect PR?

In August, Google announced the end of Google Authorship. If you are unsure of what Google Authorship really was – it was a tool that allowed users to mark up web pages so that the authorship can be attributed to a particular individual. It was launched in 2011 with the intention of granting authors the opportunity to connect with their content on the web and at the same time enable a process of author verification and rewarding authority content.  In essence it seemed like a good idea for Google at the time back in 2007 to influence page rankings based on the reputation of its authors by using digital signatures.

Google’s primary goal was to make its search results meaningful to the end user – the searcher. Although early data indicated Google Authorship helped the end user, as more data was compiled, the Google team came to the conclusion that the searcher did not benefit from the authorship feature. Google’s team also determined the author images distracted the searchers and cluttered their mobile experience.  A recent survey also found that 70% of authors made no effort in linking their content with authorship. In addition to that figure, out of 150 pages sampled, 50 did not have author pages, while ¾ gave no attribution to an author.

The struggle for PRs in the digital age is how to balance corporate thought leadership with individual thought leadership.  The tech industry is highly mobile; with the exception of the founder, many organisations don’t really have guaranteed longevity for their spokesperson.  So in some ways, going back to leading with the thought rather than the spokesperson makes our lives easier.  In B2B tech PR we’d rather focus on the vision of the management team, conveying the brand values and picking those who have a natural flair for communicating rather than worrying about who needs the biggest profile on Google+.   Obviously if I was the PR for Simon Cowell I’d have a very different perspective, and many hugely successful companies are based on the CEO brand e.g. Virgin.  But for most brands, even the biggest, there are multiple faces of the company.

The focus for most of our clients is on building the corporate brand and delivering the company story via whichever spokesperson is most suited to the opportunity.  They don’t have the budget to create the stable of clichés that are parodied programmes such as ‘Silicon Valley’.   We could do without concerns about ensuring equal billing on Google+ and building personal brands for each of the spokespeople.