How should an article identify an individual author?

Definition: An article can identify an individual author through a visible byline, a line naming its writer, and matching structured data, machine-readable information about the page. Google recommends an author object using Person, the person's name, and a link that identifies them.

Key facts

• As of October 2026, Google's Article documentation lists author, author.name and author.url as recommended properties and lists no required properties.
• Google's helpful content guidance encourages accurate authorship information, including bylines where readers expect them.
• Google's structured data guidelines require marked-up content to be visible to readers and accurately represent the page.
• Google's ProfilePage documentation includes author pages on news sites and employee pages on company websites as valid profile page uses.

What should readers see?

The byline names the person responsible for the article. Google's helpful content guidance asks whether authorship is self-evident to visitors and whether bylines lead to background about the authors and the areas they cover. A linked author biography supplies that context. The same guidance treats fabricated names and false credentials used to present content as the work of human experts as deceptive authorship.

The visible attribution and the machine-readable author information describe the same person. Google's general structured data guidelines prohibit marking up content hidden from readers. They also prohibit impersonating a person or misrepresenting an affiliation. Adding an author object therefore calls for checking the actual page as well as the code.

What belongs in the author markup?

Google's author markup best practices recommend Person for individuals and a valid url or sameAs to identify them. The following JSON-LD, a format for structured data, adapts Google's illustrative Willow Lane example into an Article object:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Willow Lane",
    "url": "https://www.example.com/staff/willow_lane"
  }
}

The example name and URL are placeholders. author.name contains only the name. A job title belongs in jobTitle; a publisher belongs in publisher. Every visible author appears separately in the markup, with multiple authors represented as separate objects in an author array.

What should the profile link and checks cover?

An author URL identifies the person through a biography, an about page or a social media profile. Google recommends profile markup for an internal author profile. Its ProfilePage guidance requires the page to focus primarily on a single person or organization affiliated with the website. For an individual author's profile, mainEntity identifies the person described by the page.

The profile's required identity information includes name; the same documentation permits alternateName to fulfil that requirement when name is unavailable. This is a separate profile-page requirement from Article's recommended author fields.

Google's Article setup instructions call for validation with the Rich Results Test and inspection of deployed pages with the URL Inspection tool. A manual comparison of the byline, author objects and linked profiles checks the authorship consistency described above.

Related terms

• Author byline
• Author profile page
• Person structured data
• Article structured data

FAQ

Can I put several authors in one name field?

Google's Article guidance specifies a separate author object for each person. Include every author presented on the page.

Can I use a social media handle on an author profile?

Google's ProfilePage documentation recommends real names in name, but permits a social media handle when that is the only way the person is identified on your site. It also provides alternateName for handles.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, "Article (Article, NewsArticle, BlogPosting) structured data", 8 September 2026
2. Google Search Central, "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content", 5 October 2026
3. Google Search Central, "General structured data guidelines", 10 July 2026
4. Google Search Central, "Profile page (ProfilePage) structured data", 8 September 2026

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