Google Adds Profile Search Results: Narcissists Rejoice!
Have you ever been disappointed with results after Googling yourself? (Don’t even try to pretend that you never search your name. We all do. There’s no shame in it!) Maybe the results came back for someone else that share’s your name. Or maybe it showed a police log from your youthful indiscretions (gasp—there may be shame in that!). Whatever the reason for your disappointment, Google is trying give you control over these results.
As of today, Google is now showing profile results at the bottom of each U.S. name query SERP. These results are links to user-created profiles that contain About Me info, photos and contact info. Google has also included quick links to Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Classmates.com, so that you may easily search for people within those sites.
While I was never terribly disappointed in my own search results—my name is relatively uncommon so most of the results are truly for me and I was an angel in my youth, so no worrisome police beat blurbs (or maybe I was just good at not getting caught; I’ll let you decide)—I created a profile jut to see how it works. Here’s what I created in about ten minutes (click on image to enlarge):
And here are search results:
As you’ll notice, mine is the only one there. I’ve never run into a case of mistaken identity due to my name; however, I can see that this would be beneficial for those with more common names. As for SERP placement—I don’t see an issue with the results displaying at the bottom of the page. Typically, when I am searching for a person online (as opposed to searching for products or info), I am more willing to wade through a couple pages of results and see find the profile results as I moved onto page two.
With the continuous flow of new content on the web, everyone needs to take on the role of brand marketer. It’s an extremely important job, one that involves managing the most precious brand of all—their own name. Google’s new profile search results let’s you, the new director of brand marketing, do that just a bit easier.
Visit the Google Blog for more info and set up your own profile.
~Angie
on April 23rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I thought this was pretty interesting…do you think Google will use this to quietly slide into the social media space? (And I mean successfully – not Orkut)
on February 26th, 2010 at 10:01 am
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