Business identity, control 2 of 10
E-02 Show real authorship and accountability where expected
Provide truthful responsibility and relevant experience where readers reasonably expect authorship information. Not every product or contact page requires an individual byline.
- Priority
- High priority.
- Hard gate
- Yes. A FAIL stops publication, whatever the score.
- Change class
- EVIDENCE_REQUIRED: Authoritative facts must be supplied.
- Quality bucket
- Business identity
Why it matters
When an article or review has no clear author, or one called 'admin', readers cannot tell who stands behind the advice or whether they have relevant experience. Google's guidance on people-first content encourages making it clear who created the content. A real byline with a checkable profile gives users and search systems something concrete to trust.
Evidence to review
- Authorship workflow, relevant profile facts and review records.
How to implement
- Match bylines to actual work and review roles.
- Link to useful author or organisational context.
- Replace meaningless inherited author names without inventing a person.
- Do not assert expert review unless it occurred.
How UltimateSEO checks this
Partly automated. The scan records page signals, but a passing signal is kept as information: contextual or account evidence is still needed to establish the control.
The check looks at: the crawler detects bylines on article pages and links to author profiles; whether the named person is real and responsible is confirmed by the business.
States used: PASS, FAIL, UNKNOWN, NOT_APPLICABLE or BLOCKED. UNKNOWN is never shown as a pass. How states work.
Sources
Part of The UltimateSEO Framework v4.3, catalogue dated 2026-10-14. Evidence states, control states and the publish gate are explained on the hub.