Does Google Authorship Helps to rank ?

Hi again
from last two months i have put the rel author tag in my category pages just to gain the benefit of authorship in google's serp. I saw other few guys of my niche who used this trick and some of them have gotten amazing benefits from it. They are ranking in very high competitive keywords which is a monetary keyword. the site who uses authorship has no good authority, links and is a new site but sill it dominates all other authority sites who are there from a long time and has pretty good links and social influence. So does author rank really does helps to rank and can people use authorship in eCommerce site such as in their category and product pages.
Please discuss it.

 

I think that it is likely that it does.
Up until very recently Facebook likes had a huge impact as far as social proof went, which was strange given that Google and FB comepte for the PPC market.
I've noticed FB likes have dropped a lot in significance ion the past 2-3 months and Google +1 likes, authorship and link shares have taken up the mantle.

Social overall about the same as it was 12 months ago (according to SEOmetrics last update), but FB dropped a little and Google now valueing its own network a lot more. Which makes sense to me.

Short answer - Yes - it is a more important factor than it was even 90 days ago IMO

Paul Rone-Clarke

 

Chhetain, thanks for the account, this is very good to know.
What I know:
Google registered a Patent for Agent Rank a while ago. That gave rise to rumors that Google may start using Agent (author) rank as a signal in the future.
Google has been pushing G+ authorship at different conferences, their main argument being not that it helps your search ranking, but that it drives more clicks because the author's image is shown in the search results.
Eric Schmidt mentioned that Google might start ranking content by distinguished authors higher in the future.
Now, connecting the 3 facts and what you said together , we get that the chances of Google already using Author Rank in its algorithm are rather high.

 

Thanks Kianu42

For your awesome explanation , actually i was not clear totally about authorship. by reading some blog i found that it helps to increase page authority . but now i am clear what is the main purpose of authorship.

 

Authorship has nothing to do with ranking improvements. It only helps in increasing the CTR due to authorship.

 

Answered well by Blogdun & Kianu42. It may indirectly help you get more connections, natural linkbacks because of authority and real author profile. That would push some ranks. It's basically for CTR so far.

 

author tag is always beneficial but you must have unique articles on your blog/website and good image in social media(like more followers etc.)

 

Agreed!