Authoring

A new profile option for Google Profiles is available. Your Google Profile is your main Google account which is linked to Gmail, Google+ or any other Google service you use.

You can log into your Google account, or create one here:
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin

Now, here is a fancy little feature specific to Google accounts and Google search.

At the bottom of every spell page and new articles there is an authorship block which links to your profile on SoM. And if you have a Google Profile then you have a link from your SoM profile to your Google profile.

Google has the ability to link this all together if you give Google permission to; from within your Google profile. From with your Google profile click 'Edit Profile' and on that page, on the right hand side, there is a "Links" section, click that and your SoM profile as a link:

SoM Profile (First line is a title)
http://www.spellsofmagic.com/profile.html?profile=XXXX (2nd line is your profile on SoM)

And done.

Now, the profile page you link to on SoM must be your page, with the ?profile=XXXX part you need this so that no one can pretend to be you.

You may ask yourself, why would you want to do this? The reason is something called authorship. When Google shows search results, it can now link their search results with your Google Profile. Search results can then be augmented to show author photos of other relevant information.

Google is leading the way with this, but Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Twitter and others are all in line and working on similar features.

So to summarize:

You can now link to your Google Profile account from your SoM profile.

If you wish to enable authorship, you must add the link back to your SoM profile from your Google Profile. If you do not then authorship will not be enabled and your link to your Google Profile will just be another normal link.

I forgot to mention. If you want Google to link you as an author, when you enter this info:

SoM Profile (First line is a title)
http://www.spellsofmagic.com/profile.html?profile=XXXX (2nd line is your profile on SoM)

You also have to click the This page is specifically about me box. This will tell Google that you are linking to a Profile page on another website instead of just a content page.

And be sure not to enter http://www.spellsofmagic.com/profile.html?profile=XXXX as you url, you have to make sure that the XXXX is replaced with your SoM account number. If you click the PROFILE link on the top right of any SoM page you will get your profile page URL with your id in it, so be sure to use that one.

Also.....

When you set your link on the Google Profile page back to SoM, there is a visibility dropdown box with options like "Only You" "Your Circles" and "Anyone on the Web"

This allows you to select who can see your authoring information for each site you are an author on. For maximum visibility you would want to set this to "Anyone on the Web" but if you wanted more privacy you would set it to just your circles, or even just you.

But if you want anyone doing a Google search to see your authoring info then set it to "Anyone on the Web"

The Authoring/linking now works with Facebook as well. Edit your profile page and for Faceobok put your FB profile url... something like....

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=521088752

(but use your account URL, not mine)

(again, use your profile page, not mine)

You may then wish to edit the privacy settings in Facebook for contact info.

This sets the reciprocal links between SoM and FB./ I do not know how or if Facebook even uses this info, but it is there.

Same is now true and confirmed for Twitter.

Twitter only allows you to link a single website, so unless your Tweets are all about SoM, wiccanism, pagaism, new age or occult topics you probably don't want to set your website in Twitter to your SoM profile, but if you really want to you can edit your Twitter account and set your website link as your SoM profile, and the authoring info will be shared.

Same is now true fro Youtube. Like Twitter, Youtube only allows you a single link url.

Ive had a few questions about this, so to clear it up....

You don't need to link profiles between Google and SoM and Yahoo etc, etc, etc. You can if you want, most people won't get any benefit from it right now. What someone like Google or Yahoo or Facebook do in the future is unknown, but linking together does have benefits.

Assume you have dozens of Youtube videos about magic / wicca / occult / etc. And let's pretend you also have a blog about the same topics. Maybe you have some links between these two sites, the blog and Youtube. When search engines come along, they don't know that the Blog and the Youtube account are the same person. Sometimes they can guess but they don't know for sure.

By doing the linking you are telling Google / Youtube / Facebook / etc that all those accounts are acually the same person.

In the future Google and Bing and Yahoo and others will use this linking info. For example, let's say your name is "MagicDude" on Youtube and you have some videos. Someone may type in "MagicDude magic videos" in Google, and Google will have the #1 link be your Youtube channel, but Google will also use some knowledge and also show a link to MagicDude's blog and MagicDude's profile on SoM.

Google already does this to a small extent, check out this search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=rel%3Dauthor

Hopefully that works for most of you. You will see some search results have profile pictures next to them.

Now.... if you rarely post here then it really makes no difference, but for the few people who post lots here, have their own blogs, their own occult website / Facebook page and Youtube videos and so on there is a great advantage. Google will know that all these accounts are the same person.

You may wonder what difference that makes? If you don't like the Reputation levels we have on SoM then you really won't like this: Google ranks 'authors' by trust and knowledge on topics. This rank greatly effects placement in search results. Therefore your occult or new age blog will actually get a boost in ranking simply because it is linked to your SoM account, and all your posts, spells and articles you added here are now considered part of your knowledge by Google.

Now... to make sure I can't pretend to be Brad Pitt... or Brad Pitt can't pretend to be me (cause everyone wants to be me) you can't just link in 1 direction. To link your SoM account to your Google Profile you have to include a link on SoM to Google and a link on Google to your SoM profile.

This is simple, when you edit your profile page here, include links to your Google, Facebook, Youtube and any other profiles/account you want to. I would suggest that the more you do the better if you want the best effects, but Google is probably the most important because I believe Google is the only one who does this so far.

Then log into your Google Profile and edit your Links, and add a link to YOUR profile page on SoM, and click the This page is specifically about me box and set the visibility dropdown box to Anyone on the Web . And you are done.

What you can also do is link SoM <=> Google and link Google <=> Facebook and Google <=> Youtube for example, and Google will know that your SoM account is the same owner as your Facebook account and your Youtube account. You don't need never combination.