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Google feature now links authors to their content

The search giant has pushed out a new feature that allows authors to link profile pages with stories and other Web site content.

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Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
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Lance Whitney

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Authors and other content creators will now be able to link their stories to their profile pages on Google and other sites, giving them a better chance of showing up by name in search results.

Through a pilot kicking off yesterday, authors who link their Google profiles to their content can participate in the program. For those who want to join in, Google has put together a Help Center page with steps on how to set up your profile and author pages.

In certain cases, search results can now list your name and photo taken from your Google profile next to your content, allowing people to learn more about you as an author or content creator. Google also promises to add links to new content to your Google profile. But the feature is being rolled out gradually and selectively, according to the company, so your information may not yet immediately or always show up in the search results.

The new feature is based on an authorship markup tag available in HTML5 that Google started supporting a couple of weeks ago.