In an update on October 1, 2026, Google added a clear warning to its official notes about fake authors:
“Fabricating creator profiles (such as by using AI-generated headshots, made-up names, or false credentials to make content appear as if it was written by human experts) is a form of deception. Any form of deception makes a page untrustworthy to both users and our automated quality systems, and is a signal of a low-quality page.”
Source: Google Documentation: Creating Helpful, Reliable, People-First Content
If you want to build authentic trust with both your readers and search algorithms, an audit is the first place to start.
Use this step-by-step checklist to review your site, remove fake details, and set up your authorship signals correctly for Google.
Step 1: Author Image
- Audit existing author images: Check every author photo for AI generation flaws, such as strange-looking ears, blurred eyes, or distorted backgrounds.
- Delete fake images right away: Remove any faces made with Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, or other AI image generators.
- Find missing images: Look for author boxes and articles that do not have a photo at all.
- Add real photos: Upload genuine pictures of your real writers.
- Use brand name as a fallback: If you do not have a real writer photo or if the team wrote the article together, credit your company (like Brand Editorial Team) and show your company logo instead.
Step 2: Names, Bios, and Credentials
- Verify author names: Make sure every author name belongs to a real person.
- Check real-world credentials: Remove fake degrees, job titles, or certificates, especially for topics like health, finance, and legal matters (YMYL).
- Be clear about ghostwriters: If a freelance writer or agency wrote the post for a company, state clearly that a real expert reviewed and approved the content. Always include a direct link to that reviewer’s full profile, showing their real bio, verified credentials, and professional background.
- Disclose AI writing: If you used AI to draft or research the content, say so openly in your editorial note instead of making up a fake human persona.
- Add a credible reviewer: If AI or a general writer drafted the post, add a separate byline showing the verified expert who checked the facts (for example: “Drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and fact-checked by [Reviewer Name, Title]”), with a link to their complete profile.
Step 3: Author Bio and Social Proofs
- Create a unique author URL: Give each active writer their own profile page (for example: /author/john-doe/).
- Link to real social proofs: Add links to the writer’s real public profiles, such as LinkedIn, X, or their personal website.
- Show all articles: Make sure the author page lists all the articles written by that person.
Step 4: Schema.org Structured Data
- Use the Person type: In your Article or BlogPosting schema, make sure the author property is set as a @type: “Person” entity, not plain text.
- Fill in the sameAs array: Add links to the author’s official social and web profiles:
JSON
“author”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Jane Doe”,
“url”: “https://example.com/author/jane-doe/”,
“sameAs”: [
“https://www.linkedin.com/in/janedoe”,
“https://x.com/janedoe”
]
}
- Use reviewedBy schema: For posts drafted by AI or a freelance team, add the expert reviewer into the schema markup:
JSON
“reviewedBy”: {
“@type”: “Person”,
“name”: “Dr. Sarah Smith”,
“jobTitle”: “Cardiologist”,
“sameAs”: [
“https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsarahsmith”
]
}
- Keep Company and Person separate: Set publisher as your business (Organization) and author as the writer (Person).
Step 5: Verification and Clean-Up
- Test with validation tools: Paste your author and article URLs into Google’s Rich Results Test to check for search feature eligibility and syntax errors. Then, run the same URLs through the Schema.org Validator to verify that your nested Person, author, and reviewedBy entities follow official structured data standards.
A Quick Note on Schema Validation Tools:
- Schema.org Validator: Confirms that all your code follows official standards. It fully recognizes and checks Person, author, sameAs, and reviewedBy entities without any issues.
- Google Rich Results Test: Checks if your page qualifies for special search features. It reads Article and author directly for rich snippets. While reviewedBy and sameAs do not produce a visible badge in Google search results, Google’s systems still read and store this data to understand real-world entity connections and verify who reviewed the content.
