iAcquire's General Manager, Tom Rusling, spoke at AZ Tech Beat on the importance of Google Authorship.

1. GOOGLE TRUST SIGNALS
GOOGLE+, AUTHORSHIP, AND SHIFTING PUBLISHER POWER
@iACQUIREiACQUIRE.COM

2. trusling@iacquire.com
@tomrusling
https://plus.google.com/+TomRusling
General Manager, iAcquire
TOM RUSLING

3. About iAcquire
FOUNDED 2009
Hurray! We’re turning four!
LOCATED IN AZ & NYC
Coming to San Diego in 2014
1 EMPLOYEE / CLIENT
95 content marketing specialists
@tomruslingiacquire.com

4. @tomruslingiacquire.com
Overview
• Context on Google+
• Authorship: Authority at the page level
• Authorship: Authority at the domain level
• Power shifting back to creators

5. @tomruslingiacquire.com
The early days of Google+
Question One
When Google + launched in 2011 who here felt it was a
lame attempt for Google to compete with Facebook?

6. @tomruslingiacquire.com
The early days of Google+
Question Two
Who here today still feels that Google+ is more or
less a failure for Google?

7. DOCUMENT
AUTHORITY:
THE OLD WAY
* Publisher Authority historically has been based strongly on links to
the page + links to the domain
iacquire.com @tomrusling
Document
Ranking Authority
Publisher Authority

8. It Has Been all about the WHERE
and not at all about the WHO

9. Google filed in 2005 with a
filing for continuation in 2011
GOOGLE
AGENTRANK
For some information sources, all of the content is
under the control of a single agent. In such cases, the
reputation of the agent can be directly correlated with
the content of the information source. In other cases,
however, control may be delegated among several
agents, each controlling a partition of the information
source. To the extent that these partitions can be
identified, agent reputation can be calculated at the
partition level.
“
”
iacquire.com @tomrusling

10. QUOTE TIME
iacquire.com @tomrusling
Within search results, information tied to
verified online profiles will be ranked higher
than content without such verification,
which will result in most users naturally
clicking on the top (verified) results. The
true cost of remaining anonymous, then,
might be irrelevance.
“
”The New Digital Age by Eric
Schmidt, Chairman of Google
(April 2013)

11. @tomruslingiacquire.com
What is google+ ?
Google+ is a social networking
and identity service that is
owned and operated
by Google
- Eric Schmidt at the Media Guardian Edinburgh
International TV Festival (August 2011)
So the solution of course that we’ve
come up with is called Google+,
which is in essentially early beta, and
it looks like it’s doing very well so far.
It essentially provides an identity
service…
“
”

12. @tomruslingiacquire.com
The new document authority
Publisher Authority
<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/103327559741952477457/"/>
Agent AuthorityDocument Authority

13. @iacquireiacquire.com
In Late 2013 Matt Cutts Told Us
to Expect To See Agent Rank This
Year and Also A Reduction of
Authors in SERPs.

14. @tomruslingiacquire.com
Authorship In Flux
Via Moz Cast data

15. @iacquireiacquire.com
True to his word, Authors in the serps Were reduced
but does this mean
authorship is less important?

16. Domain Authority
Definition: The overall level of trust a domain has in the eyes of a search engine and
it traditionally driven by factors including domain age, popularity (links), size,
freshness of content.
• It’s important because search engines prefer to highly rank content on sites that
are considered trustworthy and authoritative.
• It traditionally has been tied to volume, type, and quality of links from documents
on other trusted domains.
@tomruslingiacquire.com

17. Domain Authority: SEO MOZ 2013 SURVEY
@tomruslingiacquire.com
Domain level authority link metrics
Page-level Link Metrics
Page-Level Keyword & Content-based
Page-level, Keyword-Agnostic Features
Domain Level Brand Metrics
User Usage & Traffic/Query Data
Page-level Social Metrics
Domain Level Keyword Usage
Domain Level Keyword-Agnostic Features

18. @tomruslingiacquire.com
Domain Authority
MOZ 2013 Search Engine Ranking Factors Survey
*Listed as less of a factor than page load speed!
FACTOR Importance Rating
Page Level Keyword-Agnostic Features Mid Level Factor*
Overall Algorithm Not Mentioned
Domain Level Brand Metrics​ Not Mentioned
Domain Level Keyword-Agnostic Features​ Not Mentioned

19. iacquire.com
Domain Authority
Question:
Could a collection of diverse highly trusted authorship
contributions act as a key trust indicator of a domain, rather
than just a page-level trust signal?

20. iacquire.com
Domain Authority
The Future of Building Domain
Authority?Feature a collection of authenticated posts from a collection of
highly trusted author ‘agents’ who create engaging content
which garners social interaction, comments, and links.

21. @iacquireiacquire.com
Authenticated Digital Signatures Are
Superior To Links. Google is moving
from “Strings” to “Things”.

22. Print Journalism
@tomruslingiacquire.com

23. Print Journalism: An Economy In Shambles
@tomruslingiacquire.com

24. Print Journalism: An Economy In Shambles
@tomruslingiacquire.com

25. Trust
Distribution
TWO TRADITIONAL
KEY FEATURES OF
NEWSPAPERS
iacquire.com @tomrusling

26. POWER IS
COMING BACK
TO THE HANDS
OF THE
CREATORS
iacquire.com @tomrusling

27. @tomruslingiacquire.com
But What Does that mean?

28. Internet Graphs
@tomruslingiacquire.com
Publisher Graph Social Graph Author Graph
(early 2000’s version)
+ +
?

29. @tomruslingiacquire.com
VoiceRank™
iAcquire’s agent graph and scoring system created to evaluate the authority and trust of
established authors on the web.
• Frequency posts by the writer ‘agent’
• Authenticated article metrics
• Publisher authority metrics
• Links and citations to authenticated articles
• Social interaction and comments
Engagement Factors & Signals

30. @TomRuslingiacquire.com
VOICERANK VOICEGRAPH:
To Date:
• Top 70,000 Digital Publications
(blogs, magazines, news sites)
• Analyzed last 30 days of posts for use of Google+ Authorship
• Discovered over 25,000 unique Google+ authenticated author
profiles
EARLY FINDINGS

31. @tomruslingiacquire.com
Top 70,000 Sites Top 2,500 Sites Top 500 Sites
16.4%
G+ Usage
24.8%
G+ Usage
37.8%
G+ Usage
11,459
sites 620
sites 189
sites
VOICERANK EARLY FINDINGS

32. @tomruslingiacquire.com
A New Writing Economy
• Marketers will place great value on the “who” and not
just the “where”
• Writers become part of the value chain
• A newly defined economy and career path for
established writers

33. “Those who tell the stories
rule the world”
RECREATING THE
WRITING
ECONOMY
iacquire.com @tomrusling
- Plato
A platform to connect
publishers with trusted,
high authority writers
Publishers of all kinds will
open up their purse strings
to attract high authority
writers
Authors with higher
VoiceRank™ will be
significantly rewarded

34. SO WHAT?
Change the way you
approach content
development for your
business website
Affect how you develop
your personal brand and
thought leadership in
your category
21
Photo Courtesy of Mike Arnesen
Look for authorship to
be a key trust signal for
your entire domain in
the future
3

35. THANK YOU!
@iACQUIREiACQUIRE.COM

36. iacquire.com
Resources
• Moz – “How to Prepare for AuthorRank and Get the Jump on Google”
• Search Engine Land – “What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Count?”
• Google Patent App
• SEO By the Sea – “Agent Rank or Google Plus as an Identity Service or Digital Signature”
• Core PHP – “Complete Guide to Google Authorship for SEO”
• Wikipedia – “Graph Theory”
• Wikipedia – “Open Graph”