Google Authorship on WordPress.org

UPDATE:  Google is removing author images from search results making this tip much less useful.

As you can see, when you search “wordpress stop emails plugin” on Google, in addition to my Stop Emails WordPress Plugin on WordPress.org, you are treated to my smiling face. Feel free to try it yourself, https://www.google.com/search?q=wordpress+stop+emails+plugin

Google Authorship

A great deal has been written about Google Authorship, which allows you to associate a webpage with your Google Plus profile.  In some but not all cases, this results in your Google Plus image showing up with the page in Google search results.  I was fortunate, that my profile image displayed in this case.

How I  Associated My Plugin with My Google Plus Account

I was able to do this by adding the following information to the description section in my plugin’s readme.txt.

<a rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/100823173217716320069">Sal Ferrarello</a>

Letting Google Know You Contribute to WordPress.org

In addition to pointing your plugin at your Google Plus profile, you need modify your Google Plus account to mark yourself a contributor to WordPress.org’s plugins.

Within Google Plus go to your Profile > About page, in my case I end up at https://plus.google.com/100823173217716320069/about.  Then go to the Links section, click edit and add “WordPress Plugins”, “http://wordpress.org/plugins/” to the Contributor to section.

Propagation Time

I wish I had some wise words about how long or if your profile picture will display, in my experience it took a couple of days.

Did This Work For You?

Have you tried adding your profile picture to your plugin on WordPress.org?  I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments.

Sal Ferrarello (@salcode)

Sal is a PHP developer with a focus on the WordPress platform. He is a conference speaker with a background including Piano Player, Radio DJ, Magician/Juggler, Beach Photographer, and High School Math Teacher. Sal can be found professionally at WebDevStudios, where he works as a senior backend engineer.