Are the “author” and “publisher” link types still relevant for Google+? (2016)

Question

I was searching a lot regarding rel=publish and rel=author but got some doubts because most articles are from 2013 and 2014.

First, I understood that Google is not showing author's picture in SERPs since 2014. I also read that it simply ignores the author link type. From the search engine standpoint I got it, but is the author link type still used by G+ in any way? I think the answer is no, but would like someone's confirmation.

Second, Google said back in 2014 that authorship was dead but that the publisher link type was still being used. Is this still valid? I put the rel=publisher attribute in my page but Google's Structured Data Testing Tool did not show anything about it (seems to be ignored). Again, is this still being used by G+ in any way?

The question can be put as: Shall we still add rel=publisher to a site? And rel=author?

In time searching I found this question, and based on it I see that at least Schema.org name property is being used by Google. So I guess that publisher property might be too.

Answer 1

The tag attributerel="autor" is not relevant for Google anymore, the preferred way to specify the authorship is through the proper schema.org snippet.

Authorship in web-search

Authorship markup is no longer supported in web search.

To learn about what markup you can use to improve search results, visit rich snippets.

Regarding the publisher markup, it also has changed the way to specify it, now it is suggested to link the G+ page with the website, this can be done through the Search Console:

1. Verify your website in Search Console. So you can connect the website with the brand page

2. Go to the G+ website profile and in the "About" tab, then link it to the website.

These is what it looks like:

• Google plus About section:

• Google Search Console with the linked brand (publisher) page

Answer 2

The short answer is no, adding rel publisher is not going to provide any kind of silver bullet in terms of Google search engine rankings, nor is it going to enable rich snippets. However I would still enable the publisher meta property on your site since a number of Google employees (post author/publisher demise) have said that something may become of it in the future. What that means is still up for debate.