Author attribution - MetricSpot docs

Q: What if the article is written by the company, not a person?

Use "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Your Company", "url": "https://example.com" }. Person authors carry more E-E-A-T weight in YMYL topics, but Organization is the honest choice for technical guides or corporate announcements.

What this check does

Parses any JSON-LD on the page for @type: Article (or BlogPosting, NewsArticle) and verifies it has an author property pointing to a named Person or Organization. The author should have at least a name, ideally a url to a real author bio page.

Why it matters

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) became a documented ranking factor in Google’s December 2022 quality rater guidelines, and the helpful-content system explicitly looks for “clear sourcing, evidence of the expertise involved, background about the author.” Anonymous articles get pushed down; bylined ones with linked bios get pulled up — especially in YMYL categories (health, finance, news).

LLMs use the same signal differently: ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews preferentially cite content that has a verifiable author and publication date, because hallucinated quotes from anonymous sources are a known failure mode they’re tuned to avoid.

How to fix it

Add an author property to your Article JSON-LD. Minimum viable version:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "How to enable HSTS on nginx",
  "datePublished": "2026-05-11",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Jane Doe",
    "url": "https://example.com/authors/jane-doe"
  }
}
</script>

Stronger version (linked Person entity, sameAs):

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "How to enable HSTS on nginx",
  "datePublished": "2026-05-11",
  "dateModified": "2026-05-11",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Jane Doe",
    "url": "https://example.com/authors/jane-doe",
    "jobTitle": "Senior Security Engineer",
    "sameAs": [
      "https://www.linkedin.com/in/janedoe",
      "https://github.com/janedoe"
    ]
  },
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Example Corp",
    "url": "https://example.com"
  }
}

Multiple authors: use an array.

"author": [
  { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jane Doe" },
  { "@type": "Person", "name": "John Smith" }
]

WordPress: Yoast SEO, Rank Math, and SEOPress all emit author schema automatically when each post has a user with a filled-in profile (description, website, social URLs). Don’t strip it.

Next.js: generate metadata per page or inject via <Script type="application/ld+json">:

import Script from "next/script";

export default function Post() {
  return (
    <>
      <Script id="ld-article" type="application/ld+json">
        {JSON.stringify({
          "@context": "https://schema.org",
          "@type": "Article",
          headline: "…",
          author: { "@type": "Person", name: "Jane Doe", url: "/authors/jane" }
        })}
      </Script>
      <article>…</article>
    </>
  );
}

Astro: drop the JSON-LD in the <head> of your layout via a <script type="application/ld+json" set:html={JSON.stringify(schema)}> block in BaseLayout.astro.

Pair this with a visible author byline on the page — schema alone isn’t enough; readers and AI agents cross-reference visible markup against structured data, and a mismatch erodes trust.

Frequently asked questions

What if the article is written by the company, not a person?

Use "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Your Company", "url": "https://example.com" }. Person authors carry more E-E-A-T weight in YMYL topics, but Organization is the honest choice for technical guides or corporate announcements.

Do I need an `author` page for each writer?

Strongly recommended. Google’s “About this page” feature and AI agent citation flows both follow the author.url to a bio. A real bio with credentials, sameAs links to social profiles, and a published history of posts is the single biggest E-E-A-T multiplier you can ship.

What about `articleBody` or `mainEntityOfPage`?

Both useful additions but not what this check looks for. We’re testing only for the presence of a named author. Search Central’s full Article reference lists the optional properties worth adding.