How is this check scored?
Every threshold on this page comes from one source: the citation-readiness scorer Gadex publishes. Per Gadex's own build, the weights below are read directly from that scorer and a test fails the build if the documented figure stops matching the applied one. A pass earns the full 8 points, a warning earns half, a fail earns none.
| Result | How it is decided |
|---|---|
| Pass | A recognised byline pattern appears on the page. |
| Fail | No byline pattern is found. There is no warn band — either attribution is present or it is not. |
Why does this check exist?
Accountability is what separates a claim from an assertion. A named author is someone who can be wrong in public, and that is precisely why the signal carries weight.
It is also the cheapest failing check to fix on most sites. Unlike sourcing figures or restructuring an opening, adding a byline is a template change.
The check accepts "Reviewed by" as well as "Written by". Who verified a page is often the more useful fact, particularly where the drafting was AI-assisted.
How do you fix it?
- Add a byline to the page template, not to individual pages. A signal that depends on remembering is a signal that will be missing somewhere.
- Name a real person or a real team. Both are defensible; an invented person is not.
- Where review is genuinely collective, attribute to the team and say what the team is responsible for. A named team with stated responsibilities beats a fabricated individual.
How often do pages fail this check?
Per Gadex's own measurement across the 91 content pages on this site, using the checker published at /tools/ai-search-visibility-checker/: 86 pass, 0 carry a warning, and 5 fail. Per that same run, 5 per cent of Gadex pages have something to fix on this check alone.
Those figures include the pages Gadex fails. A checker whose author exempts itself from the checking is marketing rather than measurement, so the numbers are generated from the built site on every deploy and the build fails if the published figures stop matching what Gadex actually scores. When Gadex fixes pages, the numbers move on their own.
What does this check miss?
- The check matches patterns, not people. "By Our Content Team" passes; it cannot tell whether the name refers to anyone real.
- It reads the page text, not structured data. An author in JSON-LD with no visible byline fails this check — deliberately, since the visible claim is the one a reader can act on.
- A byline in an image is invisible to it.
Where does this guidance come from?
The scoring rules are Gadex's. The reasoning about why these properties matter draws on the platforms' own published guidance:
- Google Search Central: creating helpful, reliable, people-first content — on self-evident expertise, sourcing, and who the content is for.
- Google Search Central: Article structured data — on author and date fields, and what they are used for.
- OpenAI: bots and crawlers — on how ChatGPT fetches and attributes pages it surfaces.
How we measured this
The counts above come from running the Gadex scorer over the built HTML of every content page on this site, reading each page's main content region only — nav, header and footer links are excluded, because a visitor pastes an article rather than a whole document. Legal boilerplate, the 404 page and generated tool result renderings are excluded as pages where the score would be meaningless. Per that run, the 91 pages counted are the ones a reader could plausibly ask an assistant to summarise.
The scoring thresholds on this page are read from the same module the tool runs, and a test fails the build if the weight documented here stops matching the weight the scorer applies. What none of this can tell you is whether an answer engine will cite a page: citation depends on the model, the prompt, the index and the competing sources, none of which is visible in your markup.
Common questions
Should we invent author personas to pass this check?
No. A fabricated byline is a fabricated credential, and it is the kind of thing that damages a brand far more than eight points are worth. If no individual owns the page, attribute it to the team that does.
Is a team byline really as good as a named person?
For this check they score the same. For a reader they differ by topic: on medical or legal content a named expert carries weight a team cannot. On process documentation, a team is the accurate answer.
Why is there no partial credit?
Because there is no partial byline. Attribution is present or absent, so a warn band would be inventing a middle state the page cannot occupy.