Support for rel=?publisher? on hiatus?

[cdawg2610]

Ok so this one stumped me this morning - on phone with Google working through some verification/claiming issues on a new listing and they mentioned that the support for rel=?publisher? was on hiatus - I felt it odd, as the "recent posts" for the knowledge graph was working this morning for me.

Anyone else heard this?

 

[Linda Buquet]

Thanks for bringing up. That's interesting and the 1st I've heard.

Maybe this is why LOL!

I just searched G+ to see if there was any news about it.

Look what I found: rel=?publisher?

Spammed, misused and abused.

 

[cdawg2610]

Ok glad I wasn't the only one thrown for a loop on that one - he seemed very confidant about it, but until I see more its a bit of the grain of salt. We've always just used it to connect the site and plus page.

 

[Tim Colling]

For what it's worth, Google is still supporting it in their Structured Data Testing Tool, for example, here:

Google Structured Data Testing Tool

Enjoy!

 

[Margaret Ornsby]

Wow, Linda.

So disappointing to see all that spam in there. I suppose the obvious question of "why on earth would you do that" is simply "because we're spammers and we can".

Yuck.