Author profile page

Definition: An author profile page identifies a content creator and provides background about that person's work. Google's ProfilePage structured data describes the person or organization that is the page's main subject, while article markup can link the author to that profile.

Key facts

• As of 17 October 2026, Google's ProfilePage documentation accepts author pages on news sites and "About Me" pages on blogs as valid uses.
• Google's Article documentation defines author.url as a link to a page that uniquely identifies the article's author and recommends profile markup for an internal author page.
• Google's people-first content guidance encourages accurate authorship information, including bylines where readers expect them.

What belongs on an author profile page?

A byline is the visible identification of an article's author. Google's people-first content guidance asks whether bylines lead to further information about the authors, their background and the areas they write about. This gives an author page a concrete editorial purpose: explaining who creates the content and what they cover.

The same guidance describes fabricated creator profiles, including made-up names and false credentials, as deceptive. The profile therefore needs accurate authorship information.

Google's ProfilePage content guidelines require the page to focus primarily on a single person or organization affiliated with the website. An employee page on a company website is another accepted use.

How does ProfilePage identify the author?

Structured data is a standardized format for describing a page and its content. Google's ProfilePage property definitions require mainEntity, the person or organization the profile describes. For an individual author, that entity uses the Person type.

The entity's name supplies its primary identification. Google recommends real names here and social handles in alternateName; a handle can serve as the name when that is the site's only identification. The documentation also accepts alternateName when name is unavailable.

This reduced JSON-LD example, a structured data representation, uses the sample person in Google's documentation:

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "ProfilePage",
  "mainEntity": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Angelo Huff"
  }
}

Additional properties have specific roles: description supplies a byline or applicable credential, and sameAs links to external profiles or home pages. An identifier can retain the site's internal identity when a handle changes.

How does the profile connect to published work?

Google's Article author guidance recommends an author's type and a valid url or sameAs URL to help identify the author. For an internal profile, the documentation recommends marking up the author with profile page structured data. Every author shown on the article belongs in the markup, with a separate author object for each person.

A profile can also show the creator's recent work. Google's ProfilePage technical guidelines demonstrate hasPart containing an Article, its URL and an author reference. The reference uses the same @id as the profile's main author, connecting that listed work to the person. The article URL points to the page containing the full content and markup.

How is the implementation checked?

Google's ProfilePage implementation instructions call for the Rich Results Test to validate the code and identify critical errors. After deployment, URL Inspection tests how Google sees the page. The page needs to be accessible without a login and free of blocking robots.txt rules or a noindex instruction.

The same documentation recommends monitoring structured data after template changes, since a new template can introduce invalid items or remove existing markup.

Related terms

• Author byline
• Person structured data
• Article structured data
• JSON-LD

FAQ

Can an organization have an author profile?

Yes. Google's ProfilePage documentation accepts a Person or Organization as mainEntity. Use the type that matches the subject of your profile.

Can I link to an external author page?

Yes. Google's Article documentation gives an author's social media page, "about me" page and biography page as examples for author.url. The URL needs to identify your article's author uniquely.

Sources

1. Google Search Central, "Profile page (ProfilePage) structured data", updated 8 September 2026
2. Google Search Central, "Article structured data", updated 8 September 2026
3. Google Search Central, "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content", updated 5 October 2026

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