How long does it take for rel=author markup to show up in SERPs?

For my website, it took ~3 months for my author information to show up in the SERPs.

When I implemented rel=author back on February 13, 2012, I knew it would be troubling, and also disappointing, if I went to Google and queries site:jacksonlo.com everyday and see my author information not showing in the SERPs. So I didn't, and you shouldn't either. I did, however, check 1-2 weeks and nothing showed for 3 months (until today).

I discovered a few things while implementing rel=author on my WordPress site, but in the end, there may be factors that influence how quickly rich-snippets take to show up in the SERPs. For example, I think a fair assumption is that, the timeliness of rich-snippets showing up in the SERPs is dependent on how often your site (pages on your site) gets crawled per day. This means, how often does Google bots crawl yours site and how many pages they crawl. A lot of times, this also means the frequency at which fresh content is published on your site.

Why do I speculate that? 

  • My website traffic is ~5,000-6,000 visits per month = Rich-snippet appeared in SERPs ~ 3 months
  • Client website traffic is  ~100K visits per month = Rich-snippets appeared in SERPs within 1 week (wow!)
Other factors that may also influence how quickly author information shows up in the SERPs (ones that I haven't checked or have data on):
  • How active the author is posting updates on Google Plus (their Google+ account)
  • How often your site gets shared on Google Plus (links from your site shared on Google Plus)

Just remember one thing; Google does not guarantee that author information will show up in the SERPs:

If you want your authorship information to appear in search results for the content you create, you'll need aGoogle+ Profile with a good, recognizable headshot as your profile photo. Then, verify authorship of your content by associating it with your profile using either of the methods below. Google doesn't guarantee to show author information in Google Web Search or Google News results. (source)

This video dates back to 2010… where Matt Cutts asked their rich-snippet team how quickly they'd would show up in the SERPs, and a few things to keep in mind (something worth reviewing quickly): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=thS5ryMXN88

And this one on Authorship markup on August 9, 2011: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FgFb6Y-UJUI

Have you seen similar behaviour with author information showing up ranging between days and months with your site or your clients'? Would love to hear some comments down below!

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Jackson Lo

Jackson is the Analytics / SEO Manger at adjump media and MENU.CA. His expertise spans from digital marketing (search engine optimization, local search marketing) to digital intelligence (digital analytics, data analysis). Very passionate about what he does, he also has big interests in photography and travelling.

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Posted on May 17, 2012 by . This entry was posted in SEO. Bookmark the permalink.
  • José Antonio Escobar Alcobert

    For my site 24 hours. Incredible but really

  • http://www.rapidqueue.com/ Ryan Howard

    Just started the clock now. We shall see….

  • Chris

    less than 2 weeks for me

  • David Feller

    I tried this last Saturday (October 6/2012) with just a few pages, and they were all done by Monday. So, I did a whole lot more on Tuesday, and zilch so far.

  • 99TravelTips

    I have 150K visitors monthly and my photo doesnt show in serps still. I was implement authorship 2 months ago and still nothing. What you think guys? What can I do? My site have a great content that goes viral, great traffic and my new posts are crawled and indexed always in less than 5 minutes from publishing. I dont know what is bad.

  • http://www.onlinebackupservices.co Backups kid

    dont think it’s to do with visitors at all. It’s about how much authority you have on the subject. If you’re billy nobody who has a blog about what you had for dinner the day before. Chances are you’re not much of an authority about anything and your profile will not show. (unless of course, reading blogs about what someone ate the night before is a big thing which I dont know about)

  • http://twitter.com/McMendenhall Ryan Mendenhall

    Hey Jackson, I’ve been implementing this for clients for many months now. Without exact data, I’ve seen that clients with much more content and who post more regularly have a greater chance of getting this implemented. I don’t have much faith in implementing it for shallow content sites unless they plan on putting more content up regularly.

    One thing that’s interesting is that some have come to me thinking that will get them better rankings. I know in that second video Othar mentions that they’re looking into it being a ranking signal, but I don’t think he’s talking about the image itself, but rather the strength of that author’s content from around the web. Do you agree?

  • http://twitter.com/McMendenhall Ryan Mendenhall

    Hey David. I’m sure you’ve already noticed, but your authorship is showing up: http://www.google.com/search?q=11+Best+Shots+of+Natural+Art

  • http://twitter.com/McMendenhall Ryan Mendenhall

    I agree with you. I believe the purpose is so they can start to see who’s an “expert” or at least publishes content regularly around a subject. While I don’t think it’s about traffic, I do believe that it’s about content (quality, then quantity) and how that does against other similar content. Who knows though.

  • http://jacksonlo.com Jackson Lo

    Thanks for answering this Ryan – a few of these comments I think made it into my junk mail so I never saw them. As long as you’re verified, I think you’re good. Sometimes, it just takes time. Use the rich snippet tool to check your pages: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets?url=http://www.99traveltips.com/travel-tips/best-photography-of-natural-art/

  • http://jacksonlo.com Jackson Lo

    I think author photos will play a big part in attracting people to click on a result, more so than rankings. They are much more noticeable in SERPs than ones without a photo. All this is not to say Google may not integrate this into their ranking signals in the future, but I’ve see no tests on this specifically right now.

    We can see that there is a big emphasis on content and transparency. Google wants us to be transparent, be on Google+ and bring all our written content together under one identity. Mike wrote a great post here on AuthorRank: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-prepare-for-authorrank-and-get-the-jump-on-google (definitely worth reviewing if you haven’t read it).

  • 99TravelTips

    Yes, it is showing up now. I’ve made some changes, placed link to my g+ profile on every page, and woala, it is showing in serps now.

  • Eduard Kent

    For my site it took 7 days, My Google plus profile is only 2 months old and doesn’t have so much posts in it. the estimate reach of visitors to my site is about 1000 visitors per month.
    What I noticed is that only one of my site’s page was shown with the rel=author markup (not even my home page) In my opinion the reason is because this particular page gets a lot of traffic from the SERP (more than my home page)

  • http://www.nandobando.com/ Fernando Bernardino

    How often is your site crawled? I did mine recently and still nothing. Given my personal blog is pretty new.

  • http://www.nycmixing.com/ Ravi Jay // #nycmixing

    Just out of curiosity, if you upload a photo and Google claims it can’t recognize a face in the photo, but then you crop the photo to show the face and tag it. Will this count as an appropriate profile photo which will then lead to the author’s photo being shown next to their work in Google, or would this be considered a bad photo. So new photo zooming in on the face would have to be uploaded and detected by Google right away for the Authorship requirements?