Posted by With over 1.5 billion people online (and more coming online each and everyday), the search results that show-up when you do a simple search on your own name can be confusing.
What do you do if there are other people with the same name as you? as you What do you do if the majority (or even some) of the content is old, outdated or, simply, wrong? Not everyone can be fortunate enough to have their own and constantly updated Wikipedia entry. Well, Google has something for you.
Have you created your own Google Profile yet? You should (here’s a peek at mine: Google Profiles – Mitch Joel).
According to The Official Google Blog yesterday on the post, Search for "me" on Google, you can fill out your own personal profile and have it actually rank on the first page of search results for your own, personal, name:
"To give you greater control over what people find when they search for your name, we’ve begun to show Google profile results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. These results offer abbreviated information from user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles. We’ve also added links so it’s easy to search for the same name on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn."
You get quite a bit of functionality when filling out your profile, including the ability to add as many professional links, your photo, it seems to be pulling a mini-photo stream from Flickr as well, and you can even connect to those that may be interesting to you. No, it’s not quite as robust as LinkedIn. The point is not for this to be J.A.O.S.N. (Just Another Online Social Network). The point is to make people more searchable and findable in the Google engine.
Having your professional links and a full-on profile on a Google page can’t be a bad thing for your search engine optimization.
If some of the smarter search engine folks have an issue with this content being on Google, please do share your thoughts in the comment below. Other than that, what are you waiting for… go fill in your Google Profile!
Never another podcast episode or article 
Oy, another profile to create, update, and maintain 😉
These Google profiles have been around a while, but I wasn’t aware that GOOG was pushing them to the top of the SERPs. Is that even ethical? I mean, my blog holds that spot right now, and I’m kinda loath to give that up. In the same vein, I have to register and hold my UN as soon as possible. [sigh]
It’s “peek”, not “peak”, unless you’re suggesting it will be a mountaintop experience ;->
I get the idea, but you still get the fact that people with the same name ‘steal’ your Google Profile?
Thanks for finding the typo. Shows me for trying to bang this post out from an airport lounge and not take the time to re-read.
And yes, we have another profile to set-up. When we get the whole OpenID thing ubiquitous, life will be easier.
I like the new profile because as CT Moore told me the other day, I’ve a very American sounding name, which is true. I come up 1st if you search Google.ca but I’m 8th for my freelance site if you search Google.com.
My profile is starting to show up on page one for my name on both, which will be nice.
Thanks Mitch. Just tweeted about this – as always you’re on top of what’s ‘cool’. It’s nice to see someone write about tools for the everyday google-user as opposed to the snazzy social-media specialist tools.
Will create a profile soon. But, it makes me wonder, this is yet another tool that eventually will follow the first-come-firt-serve rule. The first ‘Jack Smith’ to sign onto gmail got lucky. The rest of the ‘Jack smith’s’ in the world have to adopt a cryptic variation of the username. Wouldn’t Google Profile eventually be a victim of the same. The first Mitch Joel, comes up top. What happens when 100’s of Mitch Joel’s sign up?
I’ve been helping my son and some of his friends (juniors in high school) build their personal brands on the internet in terms of getting attention from college and scholarship boards. I think the Google profiles will be perfect for them.
Great post. Thanks for the info on google profiles. I’ll have to register asap.
My name “Rob Abdul� for the last 3 years has been my brand name.
I was so proud when my name appeared in Google’s suggestive list.
It may not sound like much but at least 60 to 80 people goggle me a month.
It is nice for the Ego, I must admit!