Read the full article and watch the video: http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/authorship-and-author-rank-huge-signal-most-people-are-missing/

Long gone are the days when Google could rely on backlinks only to rank web pages. Nowadays they are using a variety of signals and one the most powerful signals is how trustworthy and influential the author of the web page is.

Google is using different signals to determine the author of the page and then draw connections to the existing author profile they have.

Authorship stands for all those flags Google uses to identify the author and Author Rank is the algorithm behind determining how influential that author is.

If your brand is cited by influential and trusted niche authors, Google assumes your brand is trusted as well!