Google Authorship Markup Has Been Discontinued... But, Publisher Markup Remains
Approximately three years after Google introduced rel="author" markup to associate content with the Google Plus profile of the author of that content, and to deliver rich snippets in the search results, Google announced on 8/29/14 the end of support for Authorship mark-up saying that they will no longer support the feature or track any data related to rel="author". However, Google will continue to support rel="publisher" markup.
rel=”publisher” – This is used to link an article or any page on your site to the business profile of the company that should be credited for the content. To implement this, simply add the following tag to the “head” section of every page for which the company wants to claim ownership.
<link rel=”publisher” href=”https://plus.google.com/[Your Business G+ Profile URL]”/>
Implement Publisher Markup For
Improved Authority and Rich Snippets
Next In the next lesson we will take a look at how to improve the SEO and user experience for your content by adding