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I just performed a Google search for the words "Google Analytics" and noticed half way down the page that there was an image next to one of the results:

Google search

How can I achieve this? Having used Yoast's plugin I know how much of a genius he is!

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2 Answers

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Here's how he did it: http://yoast.com/highlighting-wordpress-authors-search/

To do this, you need to apply the authorship markup Google announced a couple weeks back. This basically means adding rel="author" to a link to the authors page on the same domain. My author link for this post, for instance, looks like this: 

<a rel="author" href="http://yoast.com/author/admin/"
  title="Posts by Joost de Valk">Joost de Valk</a>

According to this discussion on Google+ they only like real photos though, not cartoons.

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Thanks. Ah, I was hoping to add our company icon. Ok, works well though, the search result instantly jumps off the page with an image next to it. – Rob Jul 27 '11 at 8:17
I applied for the authorship markup a while ago and still have nothing. I set up all the links properly with my website and google profile (confirmed using webmaster tools). Is google enabling this on a preferential basis or is it based on the popularity of the website? – Michael Butler Aug 26 '11 at 15:03
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Paul is right, this is accomplished via the new rel="author" markup offered by Google.

Joost has a great technical write up on the topic but I did want to clarify that you usually need a set of three links.

  • A link from the content to the author page using rel="author"
  • A link from the author page to your Google Profile using rel="me"
  • A link from your Google Profile to your author page using rel="me"

There is actually a streamlined way (with two links) but it seems to be less reliable at this stage, in part because the Rich Snippets Testing Tool had a bug that would produce a false negative.

For more details, including how long it may take from implementation to display, you can visit my own post on How To Implement Rel=Author.

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how long does it take to implement? Its been a week and no results – Somesh Mukherjee Mar 9 '12 at 4:25

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