I came across rel=me and rel=author from joost's blog. I don't know how much value they're going to be in future for SERPS as they look more of eye candy in search than anything beneficial to surfers. It is difficult to use rel=me and rel=author on wordpress blog. Most of the plugins are working with all the themes. I'm using thesis and genesis frameworks and plugins seems to be not working for some of the themes on these frameworks. My Question - Is there any theme-agnostic plugin that does the job for rel=me an rel=author ?Another question- what are the benefits are there for webmasters ?
rel=author and rel=me in Wordpress
seo;wordpress
From rel=me And rel=author Attributes:Google wants to make it clear what the difference is between rel=me  and rel=author. Thats why on June 7  just a few days ago  Google  added an explanation page to its Webmaster guidelines defining the  difference. Its really pretty simple, but I think it bears some  discussion and how small business owners can use the site for  improving their own search engine rankings.rel=author Defines AuthorshipLets say that Small Business Mavericks has a staff of five writers,  all of whom write content for the blog. If each one has an author page  with a bio, then each author could have a byline on every blog post  they write. The name in their byline could be linked to each authors  author bio page with a rel=author attribute as a part of the link  markup code. In other words, it would look something like this:`<a href=Small Business Maverick URL rel=Caroline Melberg>Caroline Melberg</a>` This code tells the search engines that  Caroline Melberg is the author of the article linking to the authors  page. Its important to point out that this markup must be used only  on content that exists on the same domain. In other words, you  wouldnt use the rel=author tag to link from an article on one  domain to an author bio on another domain.rel=me Defines The PersonWhile the rel=author attribute is new markup, rel=me is not. In  fact, for a number of years now Google has encouraged its use. It  should be used in links that point from a social networking profile  back to your website and vice-versa. This tells Google that the same  name and bio information on separate websites is actually the same  person.Why The Distinction?I think what Google is getting at here is that there could be some  user confusion over who persons are between social networks,  especially if several users share a common name, whereas authors on a  website might be better found  and their names more searchable  if  links included a rel=author tag.The rel=author attribute is clearly encouraged for news sites where  several authors might write pages on a regular basis, but it doesnt  mean that small businesses with several writers cant also use the  same markup strategy. I think you can.Google will use rel=author to show a profile image for the author when a relevant search result written by them is shown. Example.updateApparently this feature is coming in Wordpress. Until then you can use a hack to get it into your Wordpress blog now.