author-attribution 1.0.0

Author Attribution Check v1.0.0

Status

Version: 1.0.0

Check identifier: author-attribution

Input contract: [email protected]

Output contract: [email protected]

Scope: page-level attribution signals for editorial or article-like content.

Abstract

This check verifies that editorial content exposes a responsible author, creator, or publisher signal. It accepts attribution from Schema.org structured data, standards-aligned HTML signals, and visible byline text.

For Schema.org evidence, the check reads JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa through the shared structured-data parser. It remains isolated: it parses the scanned page input itself and does not consume the output of the general structured-data check or any other check.

Research Summary

Schema.org defines author as the author of a CreativeWork or Rating, and allows either Person or Organization values. Schema.org also exposes related attribution properties such as creator and publisher.

Google's Article structured-data guidance treats author markup as a recommended Article property and documents author best practices: include all authors visible on the page, use separate author entries for multiple authors, identify each author as a Person or Organization, provide a clean name, and add url or sameAs when possible.

HTML defines rel="author" as a link type for author information, and meta name="author" as a standard metadata name for the page author. These signals are useful supporting evidence, but for agent-readable entity extraction, Schema.org attribution is stronger.

Applicability

The check applies when the page appears to be editorial:

• Article-family structured data is present, such as Article, BlogPosting, NewsArticle, Report, Review, ScholarlyArticle, or TechArticle.
• An article element is present.
• Article metadata such as article:published_time or article:author is present.
• Visible text contains byline-like signals.

If the page is not editorial and no attribution signal is present, the result is not_applicable. Product, app, service, and utility pages can satisfy publisher identity through Organization/WebSite schema instead of a person byline.

Supported Syntaxes

This check accepts author, creator, and publisher evidence expressed as JSON-LD, Microdata, or RDFa. All three syntaxes are normalized into the same structured-data node model before attribution evidence is evaluated.

• JSON-LD may express attribution with properties such as author, creator, or publisher on Article-family nodes.
• Microdata may express attribution through itemprop="author", itemprop="creator", or itemprop="publisher", often with nested Person or Organization items and optional itemid identifiers.
• RDFa may express attribution through property="author", property="creator", or property="publisher", optionally linking to nested or referenced Person/Organization subjects with resource or about.

JSON-LD is the recommended default for new editorial markup because it keeps author identity, article metadata, and publisher identity in one maintainable graph. Microdata and RDFa remain valid when attribution is complete, truthful, and consistent with visible byline or publisher text.

Normative Requirements

• Editorial pages SHOULD expose an author, creator, or publisher signal.
• Article-family structured data SHOULD include author or creator where a specific author exists.
• publisher MAY be used as fallback attribution, especially for organization-authored editorial content, but publisher-only attribution is weaker than explicit author/creator attribution on individual articles.
• Author and publisher names SHOULD be visible or user-accessible on the page.
• Authors SHOULD be represented as separate entries when multiple people or organizations contributed.
• Author entities SHOULD include a clean name; the name value SHOULD NOT contain job titles, dates, marketing copy, or multiple merged names.
• Author entities SHOULD identify whether the author is a Person or Organization.
• Author entities SHOULD include stable identity signals such as url, @id, itemid, resource, or sameAs where available.
• meta name="author" and rel="author" are useful supporting HTML signals, but SHOULD NOT contradict structured data or visible bylines.

Evidence Model

The check records:

• editorial: whether editorial applicability signals were found.
• articleNodeCount: number of Article-family structured-data nodes found.
• schemaAuthor: whether structured data contains author, creator, or publisher evidence.
• contributors: normalized author, creator, and publisher entities.
• authors: normalized author and creator entities.
• publishers: normalized publisher entities.
• namedContributors: count of contributors with names.
• namedAuthors: count of authors/creators with names.
• identifiedContributors: count of named contributors with type, URL, ID, or sameAs identity evidence.
• visibleMatches: structured contributor names found in visible page text.
• mergedNames: author strings that appear to merge multiple people into one value.
• metaAuthors: HTML meta author signals.
• relAuthors: links with rel="author".
• bylines: visible byline-like text snippets.

Scoring Steps

1. Schema.org attribution: weight 0.40.
2. Author identity quality: weight 0.25.
3. Visible byline parity: weight 0.25.
4. HTML attribution support: weight 0.10.
5. Author field quality: weight 0; warning-only evidence for merged author strings.

The assessment suite owns category, maturity, and aggregate check weight. This package owns internal step weights and evidence definitions for this check version.

Pass, Warning, Fail, and Not Applicable

The check is not applicable when no editorial signals and no attribution signals are found.

The check passes when an applicable editorial page exposes named Schema.org author/creator attribution, has stable author identity evidence, and the author or byline is visible or user-accessible.

The check warns when attribution exists but is incomplete, such as publisher-only attribution, name-only author data without identity URLs, missing visible parity, or missing supporting HTML signals.

The check fails when an applicable editorial page has no usable attribution signal.

References

• schema.org/author
• schema.org/creator
• schema.org/publisher
• developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/article
• html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#link-type-author
• html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/semantics.html#standard-metadata-names
• html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/microdata.html
• www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-core
• www.w3.org/TR/json-ld11
• schema.org/Person
• schema.org/Organization

author-attribution v1.0.0 Changelog

Initial versioned package for author-attribution.

Migration pass:

• Parses JSON-LD, Microdata, and RDFa through the shared structured-data parser while remaining isolated from other check results.
• Scores Schema.org author/creator/publisher attribution, identity quality, visible byline parity, and supporting HTML signals.
• Records meta author, rel=author, visible byline, merged-author-string, and structured contributor evidence.