Display clear author bylines
Checks for visible author names on content pages to establish transparency and trust.
- Ensure every article has a visible author name prominently displayed
- Link the author's name to a detailed bio page to establish expertise
- Include the author's credentials or professional role near their name
Rule Details
Identifying the creator of the content is essential for establishing the credibility of your website.
Code Example
<article>
<header>
<h1>The Impact of Web Performance on SEO</h1>
<div class="author-byline" style="display: flex; gap: 10px; align-items: center;">
<img src="/images/authors/jane-doe.jpg" alt="Jane Doe" width="40" height="40" style="border-radius: 50%;">
<div>
<span>By <a href="/authors/jane-doe" rel="author">Jane Doe</a></span>
<br>
<small class="role">Lead Performance Engineer • Nov 15, 2023</small>
</div>
</div>
</header>
</article>Why It Matters
- E-E-A-T: Directly supports the "Expertise" and "Authoritativeness" pillars by naming the responsible individual.
- Transparency: Users are more likely to trust content when they know who wrote it and what their qualifications are.
- Accountability: Signals to search engines that the content is being stood behind by a real person.
- Author Identity: Helps search engines build an "Author Graph" which can benefit your rankings if your authors are recognized experts.
Exceptions
- Necessary utility or compliance pages can be intentionally brief and should not be judged by the same editorial-depth expectations as ranking-focused content.
- AI-assisted drafting is not a failure by itself; flag unsupported claims, missing editorial review, or low-originality output instead.
- When a page has both trust-signal issues and crawl/index problems, make the page eligible to rank first and then improve the content quality signals.
Verification
Automated Checks
- Inspect rendered HTML and HTTP headers to confirm the expected metadata or crawlability signal is present.
- Test the affected URL with Google Search Console or equivalent tooling where relevant.
- Re-crawl a representative page set after deployment.
Manual Checks
- Confirm the change does not create conflicting canonical-url, robots, or structured-data signals.
Use with AI
Copy these prompts to use with your AI assistant, or install the MCP server to use directly from Claude, Cursor, or Windsurf.
Check
Verify implementation
Verify that all articles and blog posts have a clearly visible author byline.
Fix
Auto-fix issues
Add an author section to the article header that includes the author's name, role, and a link to their profile.
Explain
Learn more
Explain why author transparency is a key factor in Google's Quality Rater Guidelines and how it affects trust.
Review
Code review
Review metadata generation, rendered HTML, structured data, and response headers related to Display clear author bylines. Flag exact routes or templates where search-facing output violates the rule, and describe how to verify the final page output.