Lily Ray asked Google’s John Mueller what to do if a content author doesn’t want their name on the content for fear of harassment or worse. Should you omit the author byline or this will damage this page in terms of ranking.
Here is Lily’s question, and it’s sad to see some people fearful of putting their name on content they believe in. But this is the world we live in.
Next question for @JohnMu as I have been asked many times by customers:
How should publishers deal with EAT best practices for author name and bio disclosure if doing so puts the author at risk?
Some authors receive death threats and prefer to publish anonymously.
– Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) September 15, 2021
John replied that basically it is best to cite the author in the articles because users trust him more, but you can do what you have to.
There is no need to add author names, but it is a best practice. If you can’t do this for all content, then so be it. If you can’t do it for any content, and it’s basically just “trust us” then I don’t know how to handle it for users.
– 🧀 John 🧀 (@JohnMu) 16.09.2021
Some could invent a pseudonym for the author to protect them, but would that help or damage trust?
Forum discussion at Twitter.