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WordPress PLUGIN: Enable REL= and Other HTML in Author’s Field (for Google+ and Google Search Listings)

Avatar in Google Search Results
John P.

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Avatar in Google Search Results

Avatar in Google Search Results

Google is beginning to roll out the ability to have your Google Profile linked to search results. This is an awesome new feature that my friend Trey Ratcliff worked with them on setting up. Do a search for “HDR Tutorial” and you can see what I’m talking about.

In attempting to get this working with my various sites I quickly discovered that WordPress is stripping all of the REL= language from any Author field. In other words, you go into your USERS area and try and enter rel=”author” along with a link in one of the Author Bio areas, but WordPress leaves the link and removes the “REL=” part.

Now, it does this to try and protect you from users entering malicious code in their bio area. But if you have a blog where you implicitly trust all of your authors you might want to enable the ability for them to put in a link to their Google+ profile. For this reason I’m releasing a very simple plugin that will “fix the glitch”.

Allow REL= and HTML in Author Bios WordPress Plugin Download

You can download and manually install the plugin from the following link. Just drop it in your WordPress plugins directory and activate it:

Feel free to let me know if you encounter issues, but it should work with just about every version of WordPress still out there.

Have fun linking your Google Profiles to your search results! I can’t wait till there is widespread adoption of this as it will really assist with deciding whose link to follow!

EDIT: What to Do After Installing the Plugin

Since there have been a lot of questions about what you need to do after installing the plugin I’ll try and explain a little more of the process.

First, you need to go into your WORDPRESS ==> USERS area and edit your users Biographical Info areas to include a link to their Google profile. So, for example mine says:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/109938202835872364257/posts" rel="author">John's Google Profile</a>

Next, you need to go to your Google profile page and make sure that it has a link back to the domain that you are linking from. This ensures that the reference is circular. You claim to be that person… and that person claims to be writing on this blog.

Finally, you need to wait until Google enables this functionality for your site. It is in very, very, very limited release currently. I don’t know when it will be enabled for everyone, but if you aren’t seeing it yet I’d recommend leaving it and just waiting.

Hope that helps! And by the way, feel free to Circle me on Google+!

Comments

  1. Its not enough only install the plugin. First go to users profiles on your WordPress, and in you google + field insert you full address to your Google + profile page. Next I recommend to setup All in One SEO Pack edit it too and add in Google + you profile too. Now for every page and article you will have rel=author attribute that connected to your google profile.

    • Im not quite following you. Will this give me a meta description? Because running my site through a spider simulator my meta isnt showing up.

  4. Installed the plugin and activated it but don’t have the…

    “Google Profile URL”. Insert your Google+ profile id here (BOX)

    Where did I go wrong?

  5. I really don’t have any idea how to this , however I have come across a plugin for the same for 1st time. I will give it a try lets see if it works for me. Thanks very much , keep up the good work.

  8. I am already using Weasel’s HTML bio plugin, but is there any other way to allow use of only rel tag without plugin? As I allow guest blogger to post onto my blog, I want to be safe.

  9. Hi John,

    My “linked author profile” and “google profile” on the “Rich Snippets” screen both show my Google+ address. Google tells me authorship markup is correct but everyone else has their blog as their “linked author profile.” How can I have my blog be my “linked author profile?” I’d love to hear from you.

    Thank you.

  10. I don’t get it to work :-(
    I have rel=me link on every page (footer)
    I have a link to google+ on my author page (with rel=me)
    I have a link back from my google profile page to my blog homepage AND to my author page..
    And yet, the webmaster snipping test tells “Error: Author profile page does not have a rel=me link to a Google Profile” ..
    Why are they making in so difficult? *sigh*

  12. is it wrong, if i simplified all the nasty coding, and put the profile link code in my wp header section ?

    i think the plugin will work just nicely, if the blog author are more than 1 person or if we put author bio below the post. cmiiw.

  13. Noticed this and it may help a few people who’ve found they’re not displaying in rich snippets.

    The users>profile where you add the code only appears on my posts, NOT pages. Therefore if I use the rich snippets tool and direct to a page I get error reports and no author info displayed, but if I direct it to a URL of a post (which has my user info at the bottom) it’s there.

    See if that helps!

  14. If you are using the rich snippets verification tool, make sure to include http:// on the front of the url. I have seen a few comments on sites now saying it won’t work properly if you just enter the url without this, and whilst I haven’t checked it myself I must have come across the same comments from different people on 5 or 6 sites now.

  15. Hi John. I’ve also installed the plugins. But, I don’t understand how to successfully do it (enable google profile appear in google SERP). is there any other wp plugins to enable it easier? I don’t know much about script anyway.

  16. Hi John,

    installed the plugin, added the coding into the bio…but when i tried to verify using
    google.com/wemasters/tool/richsnippets it mentions author profile page does nit have a rel=me link to a google profile

    i’ve also changed it to rel=”me” as per the last comment but the same issue.

    in my google plus profile, i’ve added the website about us and the home page

    any thoughts?

    jason

  17. Working now.Hurray!
    The code for the author bio page needs to me rel=”me” NOT rel=”author” and there needs to be a link to the author page in your google profile links section.

    • Jean,

      Even if you install it correctly, you need to wait until Google enables this feature for everyone. So don’t uninstall it, but it may take a while before it shows up for you.

      Cheers,

      John P.

  20. Also, what does this mean for the biography section? What will it show when it displays the profile from now on?

    • I, too, want to know this. I installed the plugin, but what are the next steps. Thanks.

  22. Thanks for the plugin info.
    Can you help with the rel=me code that’s needed on my author page?
    Google doesn’t make sense of it for me and I don’t have any ‘ologies’

    This is the example they give but I just can’t relate it to my Google profile url which doesn’t have all those numbers in it……and what’s with the image src???…should that be a path to my image or a path to the G+ image?…..I’m going ga ga.

    Would appreciate any help.
    Peter

    • Peter,

      The link you need to use is simply a link to your entire Google profile page. So, for example mine says:
      <a href="https://plus.google.com/109938202835872364257/posts" rel="author">John's Google Profile</a>

      Hope that helps.

      John P.

  23. Google has just released +1 button, which is now available for everyone and you can add it easily using a small fragment of JavaScript code on your site. Like twitter tweet button Facebookkato button, this is an additional button that uses recommendations from friends and contacts in your Google search results more skilled, coming Google.