{"slug": "google-warns-against-deceptive-authorship-information-within-content", "title": "Google Warns Against Deceptive Authorship Information Within Content", "summary": "Google updated its helpful content search documentation to warn publishers against using deceptive authorship information, stating that fabricating creator profiles with AI-generated headshots, made-up names, or false credentials is \"a form of deception\" that makes a page untrustworthy to users and its automated quality systems and signals a low-quality page. The guidance, added to Google's \"creating helpful content\" documentation, reverses the company's earlier position that it was not worried about faked author information.", "body_md": "Around the same time Google updated its helpful content search documentation with [defining main content and the new EOT/SA sections](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-helpful-content-main-content-and-eot-sa-42218.html), Google also posted a warning to \"avoid using deceptive authorship information.\"\n\nGoogle [added](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content#ask-who-how-why) this paraphraph:\n\nHowever, avoid using deceptive authorship information. Fabricating creator profiles (such as by using AI-generated headshots, made-up names, or false credentials to make content appear as if it was written by human experts) is a form of deception. Any form of deception makes a page untrustworthy to both users and our automated quality systems, and is a signal of a low-quality page.\n\nGoogle previously communicated to us that it was [not worried about faking author information](https://www.seroundtable.com/google-spam-author-url-31913.html) but I guess times have changed.\n\nGoogle is now saying:\n\n- Don't use deceptive authorship\n- Don't fake creator profiles\n- Don't use AI-generated headshots\n- Don't make up author names\n- Don't fake author credentials\n\nIf you do these things, Google said it is a \"form of deception\" and makes the page \"untrustworthy\" and is a signal of \"low-quality.\"\n\nHere is a screenshot of this new section:\n\nForum discussion at [X](https://x.com/rustybrick/status/2107428482166734871).", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-warns-against-deceptive-authorship-information-within-content", "canonical_source": "https://www.seroundtable.com/google-warns-against-deceptive-authorship-information-42238.html", "published_at": "2026-10-06 11:11:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-06 12:47:51.767081+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "generative-ai", "ai-search"], "entities": ["Google", "Search Engine Roundtable", "X"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-warns-against-deceptive-authorship-information-within-content", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-warns-against-deceptive-authorship-information-within-content.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-warns-against-deceptive-authorship-information-within-content.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/google-warns-against-deceptive-authorship-information-within-content.jsonld"}}