This is an impromptu, unscripted episode with Dr. Marie Haynes, recorded because of a recent news headline from Search Engine Roundtable that said, "Google: Author Bylines Don't Help You Rank Better; Google Doesn't Check Credentials. Barry's article was prompted based on comments from Google's Search Liaison Danny Sullivan regarding yet another Verge article that does not look favourably on SEO. Are author bios a ranking factor? If you've followed my theories and teachings on Google's ranking systems, you know that I am indeed a proponent of using author bios in many situations. In the episode I share anecdotes of sites that did indeed see improvements after getting qualified authors and then doing more to share about their qualifications. Are author bios a ranking factor? No. Will having an author bio increase the chances that searchers will trust your site and find it useful. Sometimes, yes. We have recently learned from the DOJ antitrust trial against Google that user engagement signals are incredibly important when it comes to shaping the algorithm. In this episode, we go back to statements from John Mueller's help hangouts several years back to look at why the industry developed rules about author bios that most sites follow. They make so much more sense now that we understand how user engagement signals (called IS - likely information satisfaction) signals in the DOJ trial are used to train RankBrain. RankBrain is Google's AI that is used to re-rank the top 20-30 results and SERP features you see when you do a search. Hopefully this episode convinces you that both the following can be true: 1) Author bios aren't a ranking factor 2) Author bios can be a part of the entire package that helps improve user engagement and satisfaction signals, which in turn is what drives rankings. SER article: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-author-bylines-ranking-36684.html Verge article: https://www.theverge.com/c/23998379/google-search-seo-algorithm-webpage-optimization Danny Sullivan's comments: https://x.com/searchliaison/status/1744371735405772927?s=20

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