Here's what I found. I know that sometimes Google finds the WWW. before the URL to be a separate domain altogether and it can mess up your results page on back links, traffic and so forth.
Well, it messed up the profile image on the results page as well.
Here's what I discovered:
When testing a URL you can go to Google's Rich Snippet page and test the domain. Works well if you want to see if you're set up is complete. But here's what I ran into:
When we set up the Google Plus Profile it showed two different domains - one with the www. and one without. When I tested a URL it couldn't match it to the profile because it said that we contributed to the non -www. and I had listed the URL WITH the www. So with a quick correction on Rob's Google Plus Profile page under the contributor section, we tested the URL again and now it shows as verified
So, if you are still stuck in this profile image on search engine thing, Follow these steps:
- Sign up for Google Plus
- Add your website in the "Contributor" area on your profile and make sure it's exactly the way your website displays it in the address bar
- Add your Google Plus profile URL to your ActiveRain profile to author every post you do on ActiveRain
- Make sure you have an authorship tag rel=author or publisher tag in the header of your website - just as a double precaution if you can.
- Test your URLs of different posts and articles on your website with the Rich Snippet Tool
One final thought, when linking to your site, try to keep it consistent. If you started linking with the WWW. keep it that way or check how your site shows up in the address bar and use that - all the time.
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