Google Author Rank, just a brilliant way to promote Google+?

Lately  I have run in to a lot people talking about Google+. Most them seems to think that Author Rank will have a major impact on the search results. My thoughts though differ a lot. The idea of Google implementing author rank can seem rational at first, but if you give it some thoughts, you'll might get the feeling that Google just using Author Rank as a way to promote Google+.

What happen is that you'll have all these consultant running around telling companies, media corporations etc. that they need to focus on author rank. Why? Well Google will in the future depend on author rank when ranking webpages in the search results. Just to be clear, Google spreading a rumor that they in the future will implement something, doesn't really make it true. But the consultant seems to forget this and rather promote a way to work with SEO based on a prediction. Obviously it's a lot easier for the consultant to keep delivering something that will rather have a great impact in the future. i.e. he doesn't really need to deliver any results just yet, only keep up the idea of that this will work.

Because as of today there aren't any signs at all of Google actually using Author Rank as a signal in their algoritm. Some "SEO-experts" have tried to prove that Google use Author Rank, but when it all comes forward he hasn't really proven anything. Because the expert is so biased, that he forgets his very very bad sample size and all other variables that could have explained the result he saw.

If you are familiar with nash equilibrium, you might understand that Google need those persons that actually have authority to start using Google+.  We have to remember that the main task for Google is to deliver great search results to their users. Implementing Author Rank as major signal could be catastrophic if it's happen to be so that person with a "high" Author Rank is just very good at building his fanclub on google+. Google will never at the expense of a better search result implement author rank.

So while consultants can't look at things clearly they instead choose to run Google's matters (promoting Google+). If Google succeed, we probably soon will see media corporations moving in to Google+ and even if they wan't or not. They probably will have to promote their pages/profiles on Google+ to achieve even greater author rank.

All in all, well played Google, well played.

This is more or less just a translation of previous post I did at kaugesaar.se (the original post).