At Search Central Live in New York, Google’s Danny Sullivan addressed concerns about how author reputation impacts site rankings.
Some SEOs believe in “negative author authority”—the idea that hiring authors who wrote for penalized sites could harm rankings on other sites where they publish. This concept suggests that if a content author is banned from one site, they might be banned from others as well.
However, Sullivan debunked this theory, stating that Google does not track author authority signals across different sites. If a writer has contributed to a manually penalized site, this won’t affect other sites they work with in the future. Freelancers and publishers don’t need to worry about an author’s past affiliations.
Google’s Stand on Author Reputation
Sullivan emphasized that Google does not use author reputation as a ranking signal, adds NIX Solutions. Hiring a freelancer or content writer based on their previous work should not be a concern, regardless of where they have published before.
This clarification helps eliminate confusion around SEO strategies related to author authority. Yet, we’ll keep you updated as more insights emerge from Google’s events.