An author page is the one place a site can answer "who is this and why would they know" without interrupting an article to do it. Most sites either do not have one or have a name and a sentence. The scores here reflect that: this is a page type nearly everybody publishes and almost nobody finishes, which makes it one of the few remaining places where a small amount of work produces a visible difference.
Here is where that sits. The median is 54/100, which ranks it 16 of the 25 measures in this dataset. The middle half of results falls between 24 and 68 — a band 44 points wide. That is wide: sites genuinely diverge here, which is to say getting ahead is still possible.
How the scores are distributed
An average on its own misleads. The chart below splits all 1,388 scans into five score bands, totalling 100%. The spread is wide and fairly even, which is what a measure looks like while it is still being adopted unevenly.
- 0–19
- 20–39
- 40–59
- 60–79
- 80–100
| Score band | Author Page |
|---|---|
| 0–19 | 21% · 287 |
| 20–39 | 15% · 207 |
| 40–59 | 24% · 335 |
| 60–79 | 24% · 330 |
| 80–100 | 16% · 229 |
| Total runs | 1,388 |
The grade mix
The same data as letters: A+ 95–100, A 85–94, B 75–84, C 65–74, D 50–64 and F below 50.
Where your score stands
A profile that is just a name and an avatar scores near the floor, and correctly so — it establishes that a person exists, not that they know anything. What moves the score is specificity: stated credentials, a real bio, links to what they have written and to profiles elsewhere that corroborate the claim. Each of those turns an assertion into something checkable.
| Tool | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th | Mean | Lowest | Highest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Author Page | 0 | 24 | 54 | 68 | 81 | 46.9 | 0 | 100 |
How to read it: 24 is bottom-quartile, 54 is a typical page, 68 starts the upper quartile and 81 or above is the top 10%. These thresholds apply to this tool only.
The checks that fail most
The checks are asking whether a stranger could verify the claim. A photo and a bio make the person real. Credentials say why they would know. Links to their articles show the body of work. Person schema and sameAs links connect the profile to identities elsewhere, which is what turns a self-description into something a machine can corroborate.
| Check | Did not pass | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Person schema | 92% | Hard fail |
| Credentials / expertise stated | 77% | Partial |
| Links to authored articles | 64% | Partial |
| Social / professional profiles (sameAs) | 37% | Partial |
| Substantial bio | 34% | Hard fail |
| Author photo | 25% | Partial |
| Outbound authority links | 21% | Partial |
“Hard fail” means the check’s full weighting is lost; “partial” means only part of the score is. Rates are the share of scans in which the check ran and did not pass.
The weakest areas
This tool groups its checks into categories. The chart below shows how often each category was the lowest-scoring one in a scan — which area is most often the weak link. It is not the average score in that category; it is how often it came last.
“Identity” was the weakest area in 74% of scans.
What to fix first
Add Person schema with sameAs links to the author's professional profiles. It is a ten-minute change and it is the difference between a page that claims expertise and one that connects to a verifiable identity — which is the distinction both quality raters and generative engines are actually drawing.
A typical scan passes 3.5 of 7 checks and leaves 3.5 open items behind. What drags a score down is usually not one catastrophe but accumulated small omissions.
Run the Author Page Audit on your own page
Month by month
The figures on this page are replaced at every refresh. At the end of each month a permanent edition is published for that month and never edited again — which is the only reason this series can be compared at all. One edition has been published so far; when the second lands this section will set the two months side by side.
| Edition | Median | vs. previous | Scored 80+ | Issues/run | Runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 2026 | 54 | baseline | 16% | 3.5 | 1,388 |
Frequently asked questions
Does every site need author pages?
Any site making claims a reader would want to check does. That includes advice, analysis, reviews and anything touching health, money or safety. A purely transactional site needs it less — though even there, knowing who stands behind the business is a trust signal that does no harm.
What should an author bio contain?
Enough to answer why this person is worth reading on this subject, specifically. Years in the field, relevant qualifications, notable work, and where else they publish. A biography that could describe anybody in the industry establishes nothing; the useful parts are the ones only true of this person.
Do author profiles on external sites help?
They are the corroboration. A profile on your own site is a claim; the same identity appearing on a professional network, a conference programme or another publication is evidence that the claim holds up. Linking them with sameAs is what tells a machine these are the same person rather than a coincidence of names.
What is a good score on the Author Page Audit?
In this dataset the median is 54/100, so scoring 54 puts you exactly in the middle. 68 is the start of the upper quartile and 81 or above is the top 10%; below 24 is the bottom quarter. Those thresholds are specific to this tool — the 25 measures in this dataset have very different medians, so 70 here and 70 elsewhere do not mean the same thing.
Which check fails most often on the Author Page Audit?
“Person schema”, which did not pass in 92% of scans. The costliest failures, though, are the ones scored as hard fails — this tool has 2, the most common being “Person schema” at 92%.
Questions that govern the whole series — how the sample is collected, how sites are anonymized, how often the figures are refreshed — are answered in the methodology on the hub.
Using this data
The figures, tables and charts on this page are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0; the only condition is a link back to this page. Suggested citation: SeoMods — Author Page Audit benchmarks, 2 September 2026, https://seomods.com/seo-score-benchmarks/author-page-audit. If you need to cite by date, use the August 2026 edition instead: this page changes at every refresh and that one never does.