Google authorship rich snippets are everywhere these days and they supposedly do help increase traffic to your web site by improving the visibility of your listing in the search results. But can they help you rank higher? Maybe…

In a recent video by Matt Cutts, as I reported at Search Engine Land, Matt implies pretty directly that using the rel=author data can help Google understand the authority and credibility of the individual who posted a piece of content.

Here is a summary of what Matt said, I pulled out the snippets:

Here is the video:

Do you think Google should use rel=author to improve search quality? Do you see issues with that?

Either way, if you are not on Google+ or using rel=author on your content site, get to it!

Forum discussion at Google+.