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Agent LighthouseAgent Lighthouse

    Searches the text of every published page. The evidence sources themselves are not in this index — search all of them on the trusted sources page.

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    answer-readiness/meta-author

    Meta author tag (no AI reader)

    What it checks

    Whether any sampled page, of any page type, sets <meta name="author">. A missing tag is not a finding.

    State Result
    a non-empty meta author tag on at least one sampled page pass
    no meta author tag notApplicable

    The pass message says that no AI vendor documents reading the tag and that Google ignores it.

    Why it matters

    Mechanism: a meta author tag would let a search engine or agent attribute a page to a person. The claim this audit tests is that no AI vendor documents reading it, and that Google ignores it.

    Evidence

    • Google lists the meta tags it supports; author is not among them. Google: “Google will ignore meta tags that it doesn’t support.” — Meta tags and attributes that Google supports (verified 2026-10-18)
    • No AI vendor documents reading the tag. Google documents reading author in Article structured data instead.

    Limits

    HTML defines author as a standard metadata name, so the tag is valid, live markup. It is harmless, and the message says so.

    How it scores

    Grade: C — author is a live HTML standard with no documented consumer. Google never supported the tag, so no consumer withdrew it; that makes it informative, not obsolete (docs/evidence/policy.md, “Informative or obsolete”). The audit carries weight 0 and an unconsumed notice, never warns or fails, and does not move any score.

    Example finding

    An article sets <meta name="author" content="Jane Smith">. The report says no AI vendor reads the tag, that Google ignores it, and points to schema.org author markup and a visible byline.

    Sources