Google’s John Mueller said a bit ago in a video hangout that the author of an article is not a direct ranking factor. He said this when he was asked if it matters if you have a recognized and authoritative doctor write or review your medical content when it comes to Google’s E-A-T recommendations.

John said no, there would be no “quantifiable difference” between using a doctor who is well known versus not well known in terms of SEO or ranking. John said “purely from an SEO point of view it probably doesn’t matter either way” to have a top doctor or lesser known doctor write or review the content. John added “I don’t think you would see an SEO ranking difference if you pick this other or a different author.”

Google has previously recommended that doctors review your medical content and have an expert write your content. But Google also downplayed renting experts names for this purpose even though Google has said before it tries to recognize the author details.

The question was asked at the 50:55 mark in this video:

John replied:

Here is the video of this segment, it should start to play at the correct position:

Here is how Glenn Gabe summed it up on Twitter:

Forum discussion at Twitter.