Author Rank Tool FAQ

Virante AuthorRank is our proprietary system that scores the aggregate average search engine ranking strength of the Google Authorship connected content of authors. In other words, the higher an author’s AuthorRank score, the more likely her or his content is to be able to rank well in search engines. However, the ranking power of any individual piece of content will vary. Our tool gives a reading of the average strength across all the domains on which the author has published.

No, Virante AuthorRank is not the same as Google AuthorRank.

First, “AuthorRank” is not a Google term. Google has never officially used it. The term was invented by members of the SEO and web tech community as a convenient shorthand to describe Google’s stated intention to eventually evaluate authors by perceived authority in various subject areas, and to use that to boost in search results the content of high-authority authors. This was first described in a series of Google patents known as the “Agent Rank” patents. Read more about Google Agent Rank.

Virante AuthorRank does not use the same data or signals as described in Google’s Agent Rank patents. Agent Rank was to be largely based on social signals, indications from other people that they value an author’s content. Virante AgentRank is based almost entirely on link-based signals, those things that are the primary signals to a search engine of authority for a piece of web content.

In order to qualify for a Virante AuthorRank score, an author must have at least the following:

1. A Google+ personal profile.
2. At least one link in the Contributor To section of the Links in the author’s profile that is to a domain recognized by Google Authorship.
3. Content on that domain (or those domains) that actually shows up in Google Search associated with the author’s Authorship. At a minimum, that meant Google Search displays results for that content with that author’s byline in the search result.

To get the author’s score you need his or her unique Google+ ID, which is either a  21-digit number or a custom +name.

Go to the author’s Google+ profile and in your browser’s address bar, copy just his or her ID number or custom +name.

If they have the older digital URL, the portion you should copy will look like the yellow highlighted segment below:

If they have a newer custom +name, copy it like thus:

For a custom +name, be sure to capitalize the same as the displayed URL, and to include the + !

Now go to our beta AuthorRank tool and paste the copied ID number or custom +name into the box:

Click the “Go” button to get the author’s AuthorRank score. Please note that it may take several minutes to accumulate and process an author’s data, especially the first time he or she has been scored by out tool.

Once our tool has calculated your AuthorRank score, you can display it as a widget on any site that can display javascript code.

Find the section of the AuthorRank tool display labeled “Add this Widget to Your Site” and click in the text box just below that label.

All the code in that box should now be highlighted. If it is not highlighted, highlight all of it now. Copy it by right clicking your mouse on the highlighted text and selecting “copy,” or on your keyboard hold down the CTRL key and tap C (Windows PC) or the Command key and tap C (Mac).

On the web site where you want to post the badge widget, go to an editor that can receive code (such as a Text widget in WordPress) and paste in the code. To paste, right click and select “Paste,” or your keyboard hold down CTRL and tap V (Windows PC) or hold down Command and tap V (Mac).

Virante’s AuthorRank tool gives a series of scores that measure the general search ranking “power” of an author’s published web content. Factors that are used in assessing this score include:

• Use of Google Authorship
• Diversity of sites to which an author contributes
• Link value of sites to which an author contributes
• Volume of content produced by author
• Link value of content produced by author

Using that data, Virante AuthorRank returns a series of scores. The meaning of each of these scores is described in its own section in this FAQ. The scores returned are:

• AuthorRank
• AuthorTrust
• AuthorExternalRank
• Avg Page Authority
• Avg Domain Autority

The data used by Virante’s AuthorRank Tool come from several sources, but the primary sources are Google+ and Moz.com.

The data are analyzed and combined by Virante’s proprietary algorithms into the scores given by the tool.

AuthorRank is the primary score returned by the Virante AuthorRank Tool.

AuthorRank is the author’s overall Virante AuthorRank score. It is a combination of all the factors we assess. Use this to compare the overall search authority of the author’s content to other authors.

The AuthorRank score is on a 0-10 logarithmic scale. That means that as the scale goes up, it becomes more difficult to rise to the next level. So an increase from 4 to 5 is much more difficult than an increase from 3 to 4. So we should expect to find a greater number of authors scoring in the lower numbers, and an decreasing number as we move up the score scale.

AuthorTrust is based on Moz’s MozTrust metric. MozTrust measures the “link ‘distance’ between a given page and a seeded trust source on the Internet. Think of this like six degrees of separation: The closer you are linked to a trusted website, the more trust you have, yourself.” So a higher AuthorTrust score indicates that the link graph of an author’s content tends to contain and be closer to more of the kinds of sites that search engines trust, and thus give more weight to their links.

The AuthorTrust score is on a 0-10 logarithmic scale. That means that as the scale goes up, it becomes more difficult to rise to the next level. So an increase from 4 to 5 is much more difficult than an increase from 3 to 4. So we should expect to find a greater number of authors scoring in the lower numbers, and an decreasing number as we move up the score scale.

The AuthorExternalRank score evaluates only the strength of links from external websites to the Author’s content. So it excludes other factors such as diversity of content sites, domain authority of those sites, and volume of content.You can use this score to evaluate how well regarded and/or how often cited the author’s content is by other sites.

The AuthorExternalRank score is on a 0-10 logarithmic scale. That means that as the scale goes up, it becomes more difficult to rise to the next level. So an increase from 4 to 5 is much more difficult than an increase from 3 to 4. So we should expect to find a greater number of authors scoring in the lower numbers, and an decreasing number as we move up the score scale.

Avg Page Authority assesses the average search authority of the pages of content published by the author, isolated from any other factors.

It is based on Moz’s Page Authority metric, and is on a 100-point, logarithmic scale. Thus, it’s easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 than it would be to grow from 70 to 80.

Avg Domain Authority assesses the average search authority of the domains (publishers or sites) on which the author’s content is published.

Avg Domain Authority is based on Moz’s Domain Authority metric, which “represents Moz’s best prediction for how a website will perform in search engine rankings.” Domain Authority is scored  on a 100-point, logarithmic scale. Thus, it’s easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 than it would be to grow from 70 to 80.

If the Virante AuthorRank Tool returns a score of zero (0) (or a lower than expected score) for an author, it is usually because of one of the following reasons (from most to least likely):

• The author has no sites linked in her or his Contributor To link section on her or his Google+ Profile.
• The author has sites linked in Contributor To, but they are not valid Google Authorship sites (i.e., sites on which Google Authorship would recognize valid content by the author).
• The author has no identifiable content on sites to which he/she linked in his/her Contributor To.
• At the time our tool crawled the author’s linked-to site(s), we were blocked for one reason or another. The site may have been down or experiencing unusually heavy load times. Or some sites may throw up a captcha or other machine-reading blocker if too many read attempts come in in too short a time.

Because the Virante AuthorRank score is on a relative, logarithmic scale, it is difficult to say what is a “poor” or “average” or “good” or “best” score.

It is better to use an AuthorRank score as a point of comparison to other authors. This will be most useful if you compare to other authors in your niche, or to authors you admire and want to emulate.

You can also use your AuthorRank score as a benchmark for future growth and improvement. As you continue to create great content, build a following for it, earn valuable links and social signals, and find opportunities to write on more and more authoritative sites, your AuthorRank should improve. Check back from time to time to see how your score is doing.

At some future point we may offer a service where you can track your AuthorRank over time.

Things you can do with your Virante AuthorRank score:

• Post it on your site as a badge. See that topic elsewhere in this FAQ.
• Get the scores of other authors in your niche, or authors you see as competitive with you, and compare.
• Compare the various components of your AuthorRank score to assess strengths and weaknesses of your content strategy. For example:
  • Low AuthorTrust may mean you should seek to write on sites that attract higher quality links, and/or that you may need to try to attract better quality links to your own site.
  • Low AuthorExternalRank may mean that your main problem is with the link profile pointing to pages and sites where you publish. Seek to do things that encourage more links to your content, such as getting it shared more broadly on social networks.
  • Low Avg Page Authority or Low Avg Domain Authority may mean that you should seek to publish more on higher authority, better quality sites.

How can you improve your AuthorRank score? The simple answer is: write better quality content on better sites!

If the Virante AuthorRank Tool is not showing in the “Confirmed Contributor Domains” section all the places where you know the author has published content, it is usually because of one of the following reasons (from most to least likely):

• The author does not have all publishing sites linked in her or his Contributor To link section on her or his Google+ Profile.
• The author has sites linked in Contributor To, but they are not valid Google Authorship sites (i.e., sites on which Google Authorship would recognize valid content by the author).
• The author has no identifiable content on sites to which he/she linked in his/her Contributor To.
• At the time our tool crawled the author’s linked-to site(s), we were blocked for one reason or another. The site may have been down or experiencing unusually heavy load times. Or some sites may throw up a captcha or other machine-reading blocker if too many read attempts come in in too short a time.

We will at some point be opening up an API access to our tool’s data, which may provide data that can be utilized in third-party tools or apps. If you are interested in being considered for such access, please contact sales@virante.com.