People behind the business

What this check measures

Three things on the homepage: a link to a team or bio page, Person entries in your structured data, and names shown with a role (for example "Jane Doe, Managing Partner" or "Dr. Lee"). Your people are visible when any of the three is present, and described when a Person entry also carries a job title, a url or a sameAs profile. We skip shop and listing pages, where named staff are not what a buyer looks for.

Why it matters

Google's helpful-content guidance asks "Is it self-evident to your visitors who authored your content?" and strongly encourages accurate authorship information. Its article markup guidance asks for an author url that uniquely identifies the person, such as a bio page, or a sameAs profile, so Google can tell people apart. It also warns that fabricating creator profiles, such as made-up names or false credentials, is a form of deception. Bing's guidelines ask for clear and consistent naming for people and organizations. Named, described people are how a buyer and an answer engine connect expertise to your business.

How we score it

Editorial, capped at medium. No people visible at all is the larger gap; people visible but not described in structured data is smaller. The finding never judges credentials; that is the credentials check, or the regulated-industry checks for law, medicine and accounting.

Confidence-flag rules

HIGH when your structured data describes people. MEDIUM otherwise, because a name and role pattern on a page is a reading of text, not a declaration.

Common mistakes

• A team page that is only photos, with names inside images.
• Person markup with a name and nothing else, so it cannot be told apart from anyone with that name.
• Stock photos or invented names on a team page, which Google calls deception.

How to fix it

Add a team or bio page for the people who serve clients, and mark each one up as a Person with name, jobTitle and url (their bio page), linked from your Organization as employee or founder. Use real people only.

Primary sources

• Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (last updated 2026-10-05, accessed 2026-10-07)

  Google Search Central

• Article structured data, author markup best practices (last updated 2026-09-08, accessed 2026-10-07)

  Google Search Central

• Bing Webmaster Guidelines, sections 15 (verified independently) and 16 (entities defined clearly and consistently) (no date shown on the page, accessed 2026-10-07)

  Microsoft Bing

Changelog

• 2026-10-07 · New. Replaces the homepage half of the author check, which used to fail firm homepages for lacking an article author.