What is an author archive?
An author archive is a page WordPress creates automatically for every user with at least one published post. It lists that user's posts in reverse date order using the theme's author or archive template, often with the name and biography from the user's profile at the top.
Whether it is useful depends on the site. On a publication with many writers, it is the natural page for a search on a writer's name. On a blog with a single author, it repeats the blog index under a second address, which makes it a duplicate, low-value page for search engines.
Where it lives
| Address | What it is |
|---|---|
/author/jane/ | The archive, using the user's nicename |
/author/jane/page/2/ | Later pages of the same list |
/author/jane/feed/ | An RSS feed of that author's posts |
/?author=1 | The same archive by user ID, on any permalink setting |
The nicename in the address is usually the login name, which is one reason some site owners prefer to switch author archives off: the archive addresses reveal usernames.
When to index, noindex or switch it off
- Index when authors are known in their own right, such as journalists, columnists or recipe developers, and each archive has a biography that makes it more than a list.
- Noindex (
noindex, follow) when readers use the page but searchers would not, for example a single-author blog whose theme links bylines to it. - Switch it off with a 301 redirect when nothing uses it, such as a business blog where every post is published by one account.
Switching off has knock-on effects worth checking: theme bylines that link to the archive, and structured data whose author url points at it.
Author archives and E-E-A-T
Search engines and quality raters look for who wrote a page and what makes them credible. A good author archive helps answer that: a real biography, a photo, links to the author's profiles elsewhere, and a list of their work. Article structured data commonly links each post's author to their archive with the url property, connecting the post to the page about its writer. On sites where the archive is not worth keeping, an About page or a staff page can play the same role.
In WordPress
WordPress core has no switch for author archives. Hydrogen SEO 0.0.29 added one under Titles & Meta → Archives: Index, No index (the default) or Disabled, which redirects the archive, its later pages, its feed and ?author= addresses to the homepage. With author archives disabled, Article schema and the video sitemap link authors to the website in their WordPress profile instead, or leave the link out. Date archives have the same three choices. See author and date archives.
Common questions
Should I noindex author archives?
On a site with one author, yes, or switch them off, because the archive repeats the blog index. On a site whose writers are searched for by name, indexing them with a biography on each is usually better.
Does noindexing author archives hurt E-E-A-T?
No. Noindex keeps the page out of search results, but readers and crawlers can still open it and follow its links. What matters is that each post names its author and that information about the author exists somewhere on the site.
Can I remove author archives in WordPress?
Not from core settings. You need a redirect, a code snippet on the template_redirect hook, or an SEO plugin setting that disables them. Redirect them with a 301 rather than letting them return 404, so existing links still lead somewhere.