In the summer of 2011, Google announced the support of authorship markup as a way for authors to verify content they’ve created and become authorities on specific topics. Early adopters quickly realized the benefits of the new tag and implementation has continued to grow since its release. Google says authorship is here to help searchers find great content which will improve the searcher experience.
Recently, Google officially announced updating its algorithm to look at signals including authorship markup to help it provide searchers with in-depth articles in their results.
To listen to what Matt Cutts has to say regarding how Google will evaluate the use of authorship markup moving forward you can watch this YouTube Video.
#1. Improving Search Quality
In the Webmaster Help Video, Matt said that while he continues to support anonymity, “if we know who the real world people are who are actually writing content, that could be really useful as well and might be able to improve search quality.“
Matt’s comments lead us to the question….”should we use a pen name to anonymously represent an author, and how could this decision affect authorship as a signal? ” 
#2. Content Marketing: Anonymity & Authorship
Modern online marketing campaigns continue to recognize and adopt content marketing as an integral part of an online marketing strategy which has increased the amount of content created and published every day. For some, this is a confirmation of long-held theories – for others, it’s a new starting point.
According to 2013 research study by the Content Marketing Institute, 86% of B2C marketers use content marketing and on average, 55% of consumer marketers plan to increase their content marketing spend. This upward trend also applies to B2B marketers, which on average are spending 33% of their marketing budgets on content marketing – up from 26% last year.
Moreover, the majority (54%) say they will increase their content marketing spending in the next 12 months.