Google is now showing Google+ logos and icons for company profiles in the rich snippets portion of their search results listings.
Ross Hudgens spotted the Google+ icon displayed next to the search result for the company’s listing. Rel=publisher markup is not required for the logo to show up. I believe all that is required is for the company to have a Google+ page that has their website verified in their Google+ profile.
For example, travelstart.co.za ranks for [flights] in Google South Africa. Notice the Google+ logo:
They clearly have no rel=publisher markup code on their home page. In fact, if you analyze the page with the structured data tool, you will notice there is no schema on the page at all. However, if you look at their Google+ profile page, you will notice they have a verified website listing.
Less than two months ago, Google told us that publishership isn’t coming to Google anytime soon. In fact, they told us they had “no plans” to bring it to the search results. While it’s true that this is not using publisher code, it does look like the concept of author snippets are coming to Google’s search results as publisher snippets.
You can see the same even in Google.com for [Phoenix East Aviation]:
They happen to have rel=publisher markup on the page but also have a verified website in their Google+ profile.
If this does happen to be coming to Google’s search results, you better expect to see more and more adoption of rel=publisher markup and Google+ adoption by businesses, non-profits and other organizations in the near future.
Postscript: This seems to have stopped working so perhaps this was a test or a bug? Google has not given us an official comment.
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