Bing Jumps On Board with Authorship

billhartzer on Tue, 2013-03-19 07:17.

Search marketing

4 comments

Bing.com has jumped on the authorship bandwagon and is now showing author photos in their search results. They're not only showing knowledge graph data on the right side of the search results, they're also showing the photot--which is new.

Comments

Wondering what they are using

annsmarty on Tue, 2013-03-19 10:31.

Wondering what they are using to verify the authorship? Google Plus? :)

SubjectRank :)

annsmarty on Tue, 2013-03-19 16:42.

Here's a good insight into that: http://searchengineland.com/is-bing-testing-subjectship-rather-than-authorship-in-its-search-results-152224

Aw, no, Bing - try and be

Brian_Turner on Thu, 2013-03-21 03:41.

Aw, no, Bing - try and be original and stop trying to copy Google. Google is getting more and more shit - you don't want to follow them into the mire.

No one gives a shit about authorship except Google and marketers. Publishers only do it because they feel forced, and readers have no idea who this pretend wannbe internet personalities are.

They're people snippets, not author snippets

Aaranged on Fri, 2013-03-22 11:02.

Check out AJ Kohn's response piece to this, "Bing People Snippets." AJ argues convincingly that the resemblence of these snippets to Google authorship snippets are superficial:

The new faces (for the most part) showing up in Bing search results are not authorship snippets per se but are people snippets derived from entities. It’s about who the content is about rather than who created the content.

This is further borne out by Bing's Snapshot update announced on 21 March, where personal entities now play an ever bigger role (I contend) in Bing's SERPs, though as Snaphot verticals rather than as linked authors.

I think things will start to get really interesing in the authorship world if we see either Google or Bing take authorship results to the Knowledge Graph or Snapshot area, respectively. E.g. rather than just an "about" panel for John Doe - what now appears in Snapshot results for a wide range of individuals - that panel with a list of resources (and "more" link) authored by John Doe.