This community thread discusses the feature or improvement: Enable Google Authorship step by step.
Feature Details
In order to enable[html] Google Authorship for your forum,[/html] you need perform the tasks below:Sign up a Google+ account using an email on your domain (i...
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Enabling Google Authorship for APG vNext Forum Posts
Google Authorship (when active) linked forum content to a Google+ profile, allowing Google to attribute posts to their authors in search results with a rich snippet including the author's photo. Although Google+ is now discontinued and traditional Authorship is no longer supported, the underlying principle - structured data linking content to authors - continues via schema.org Person markup, which achieves similar SEO benefits in modern Google Search.
Modern Replacement: schema.org Author Markup
<!-- Add to APG vNext thread post template -->
<article itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/DiscussionForumPosting">
<span itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Person">
<a itemprop="url name" href="/community/profile/{MemberSlug}">{MemberName}</a>
</span>
<time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="{PostDateISO}">{PostDateFormatted}</time>
<div itemprop="text">{PostContent}</div>
</article>JSON-LD Version (Preferred by Google)
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DiscussionForumPosting",
"headline": "{ThreadTitle}",
"author": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "{MemberName}",
"url": "https://yourforum.com/community/profile/{MemberSlug}"
},
"datePublished": "{PostDateISO}",
"url": "https://yourforum.com{ThreadUrl}"
}
</script>Enabling Structured Data in APG vNext
<add key="APG.SEO.StructuredData.Enabled" value="true" />
<add key="APG.SEO.StructuredData.ForumPost" value="true" />
<add key="APG.SEO.StructuredData.Author" value="true" />Author Entity Pages for Forum Members
To maximise the SEO value of author attribution in APG vNext, create a well-structured member profile page that functions as an author entity page. An author entity page includes the member's display name, a brief biography, their areas of expertise, links to their most-contributed threads, and an avatar image. This page should have a stable URL (/community/profile/{memberId}-{memberSlug}) and include schema.org Person markup. When Google's Knowledge Graph builds a relationship between your forum threads and the authors who wrote them, the author's entity page becomes the anchor for that relationship — improving the trust signals associated with your forum's expert content.
OpenGraph and Twitter Card Author Attribution
Social media shares of forum threads benefit from author attribution through OpenGraph and Twitter Card meta tags in the thread page HTML. Include the author's name and profile URL in the thread page meta tags to ensure that when a thread is shared on social media, the preview includes the author's name as part of the attribution:
<!-- Thread page: author OpenGraph meta tags -->
<meta property="article:author" content="https://yourforum.com/community/profile/{MemberSlug}" />
<meta name="author" content="{MemberName}" />
<meta property="og:type" content="article" />Verifying Structured Data Implementation
After implementing schema.org author markup or structured data in APG vNext, verify the implementation using Google's Rich Results Test tool (search.google.com/test/rich-results). Paste a forum thread URL into the tool to see what structured data Google can extract from the page. The tool shows any errors or warnings in the structured data, including missing required fields, incorrect property types, or malformed JSON-LD. Fix all errors reported by the tool before the implementation is considered complete — errors prevent rich result eligibility and may suppress the structured data in Google Search entirely.
E-E-A-T and Forum Author Credibility
Google's quality rater guidelines emphasise Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) as key signals for evaluating content quality. For forum content, E-E-A-T is closely tied to the credibility of the post author. Structured author attribution in APG vNext helps Google understand who is contributing forum content, which is particularly important for technical or health-related communities where author expertise matters for content quality assessment. Well-structured author entity pages with clear descriptions of the author's background and expertise — linked from every thread they contribute to — build E-E-A-T signals for both the individual author and the forum as a whole.
Moderator vs Member Author Attribution
For moderation-heavy forums where much of the knowledge base content is created by a small group of expert moderators, consider featuring moderator author profiles more prominently than regular member profiles. A dedicated moderators page listing each moderator with their specialisation, post count, and member since date acts as an expertise signal for the entire forum. Link from this page to each moderator's profile using schema.org Person markup. Google is more likely to trust and prominently display forum content when it can identify the expert authors behind it, rather than presenting it as anonymously-generated community content.
Monitoring Author Attribution in Google Search Console
After implementing schema.org author markup in APG vNext, monitor the results in Google Search Console over 4–6 weeks. The Performance report shows which forum threads are appearing in rich results and their click-through rates. Threads with validated structured data that includes author attribution typically see higher click-through rates than unattributed threads on the same topic, because the author byline in the search result adds credibility and encourages clicks. Track the change in average click-through rate for threads with versus without author markup to quantify the SEO impact and justify ongoing maintenance of the structured data implementation.