After over a year of sitting in relative obscurity, Google Profiles are finally getting their due. Beginning today Google search queries for names will now feature a section dedicated to Google Profile results at the bottom of every page. These profiles allow people to fill out their basic information, like current employer and links to various web presences, without having to maintain a personal website and try to struggle to maintain a high page-rank.
This is huge news for several reasons. For one, Google is beginning to encroach on a territory long dominated by LinkedIn. For years, when I’ve wanted to learn about someone’s basic information and web presences (assuming they weren’t in CrunchBase), I’ve generally looked at LinkedIn, where many people have at least filled out their basic background info, a website, and some contact information. Google Profiles may not have LinkedIn’s social graph, but as a web directory they’ll work just fine, and they’ll have the benefit of appearing on the front page of search results every time.
It’s also obviously huge news to the countless people who happen to share the same name as a popular athlete, celebrity, or business person. Take former TechCrunch writer Mark Hendrickson for example, who happens to share a name with Mark Hendrickson, a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles who dominates most of the front page of search results for the name. Under the new system, both Marks would be listed as thumbnails toward the bottom of the first page of results. Maybe.
Google is allocating four thumbnail spots to these profiles at the bottom of search results – anyone who doesn’t appear in those four spots can be found by clicking a link to show more results. Obviously, nabbing one of these four thumbnail spots is going to very desirable to some people. But true to Google form, the choices for the thumbnails are driven by a mysterious algorithm. Google wouldn’t offer too many details on how the algorithm works, other than that it will heavily favor profiles that are ‘complete’ – in fact, when you fill out your profile it will indicate if Google has deemed it ‘complete’ enough to appear as a thumbnail. But even if you get the OK, there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever get one of the four spots.
Unfortunately, there are some issues with the way Google profiles are named that may deter some users from taking advantage of them. Google is intent on using the same ‘name space’ as Gmail – that is to say, if my Gmail account was jason@gmail.com, my Google Profile would be found at http://www.google.com/profiles/Jason. This is primarily to prevent confusion, but it raises privacy concerns for anyone who isn’t too keen on having their Email address publicly available on the internet (you can always opt out, but then you’re forced to create a new account if you want to appear in the listings). Update: You can also choose to substitute a string of numbers for your profile URL instead of your account name, though this obviously wouldn’t be ideal for business cards or other methods of sharing.
You can register a new account and get a recently-launched vanity listing , but nearly all of the ‘good’ names have been registered by Gmail users over the years so your profile will likely wind up looking something like jason83472.
Despite these frustrations, this is a new feature that I suspect will prove immensely popular – and important. To help promote it, Google is going to start routing any queries for the name ‘me’ (a play on the phrase “Google me..”) to a link to create a new Google profile.
Nice, finally!!
Google using search monopoly to sell other products.
Wake up dude!
Love this! Though Google comes a little late, it arrives at the right place. Now, all of us can expect to have ourselves featured on G search results.
yup..google is one of the best companies in the world and immune to recession http://iamned.com/blog/ they are constantly innovating which is how they stay on top. Run by some of the smartest peopel in the world.
Guess I should spice my profile up. It’s pretty lame right now
http://www.goog...arkmhendrickson
doesn’t this give every1 a chance to know your gmail address?
You have privacy settings to allow only friends to view your email address and other information. I guess it looks up from friends in contacts.
To create your own Google Profile just search Google for “me”. Then click the promotion at the top of the page.
I’m constantly getting asked how to find the “real me” on Google. This could help create a canonical entry for yourself on the Web, but what about identity-jacking? Will every “celebrity” claim they own their name. Didn’t Spike Lee sue the Spike network? I think this will open up more problems than it solves. I do know that it won’t solve the problem of collecting all the mentions of your name online. For that you’ll still need a good monitoring tool, like Google Alerts. You’ll also need to know how to define a search that identifies the real you. Here are some tips for this:
http://www.aler...-google-alerts/
Google doesn’t require the use of that profile url. There is an option for a random one so that it is not obvious what your email address is.
-Marc
Very cool — my profile is now the only one featured for Todd Sharp. I’d have the top spot if it weren’t for a certain guitarist by the same name :-\
Wow… it won’t take long for Google to roll out a new social network on the back of their profiles to crush both LinkedIn and Facebook — vanity will lure people in.
You could actually choose to have your Google profile URL have a random string in the Profile URL section.
classmates?
Are you kidding me? I hope they’re forking over a ton of cash to Google, because that link sure isn’t useful to users.
This is an interesting and logical move by Google. A possible next step could be to roll out a “Google Profiles for your domain” feature like for Google Apps. People would identify themselves more with their own domain name instead of a vanity URL.
Hey Google, please also search my brain while you’re at it.
Just another profile for third party vendors like ReputationDefender to charge a fee for establishing.
hmmm, next move: google buys twitter to complement your profile. the media is at rage, the DOJ sues google for being a monopoly and we are all back to our plain old TVs watching the trial of the century
When I did a search it was way at the bottom under the section profile results. I doubt many people will even scroll this far. If they put it at the top then this can be huge I think but it would probably cause everyone from facebook to linkedin to whine.
they are clearly going after Linkedin here. Let’s see what happens. Plenty of Google products end up in the wastepaper can.
i don’t think monopolies should really be sued on the web. Thats ridiculous because if your service sucks people simply wont visit your site. Its not like google can take over everything and raise prices to whatever they want like with product suppliers. Any person can simply make a similar site and get people to use it.
Not really, think this way. If this profile page was created by some other company it would have not come in Google result so easily.
But Google gives special importance for all the links pointing towards their website. This will help them get lot of traffic to their sites and other companies suffer.
Search engine is something every internet user starts with. Google can lure any user easily to use its services over others.
So you are right in saying others can’t copy if they can and get people to use it but monopoly is the converse Google can easily copy others and get users to use it.
The problem with your logic is that Google wasn’t the first. There were other search engines before it. If it was so easy to monopolize everything, someone would have done it way before Google came out. There’s always room for one more if you can build a better product. There’s no difference in me being “hooked” on my Google Apps and Tmobile G Phone, and someone being stuck using all Microsoft products because their mail service uses outlook.
you can change your profile url to a number instead of your email address
Mine is already showing up for a search for Robert Scoble. Cool!
Google is going to build a huge social network this way!
Googling for “Michael Bauser” showed my profile, and three guys named “Michael Bauer.” I wasn’t even the first result. Ouch!
Also, I decided to check up on my profile, and discovered a blue message box suggesting (among other things) that I post the link to Twitter. Always with the twitter….
Robert, do you see anything when searching for "Meryn Stol"?
Mine’s showing up too
Meryn: not yet.
Hmm.. I wondered if it was because I’m in Europe (They say it’s for US-based searches only) Maybe I just have to wait. Thanks for trying though.
I have no personal use for this as I already own the number one spot in google for my name (domain). But I suppose it will help those out who are named John Smith.
Looks like it’s active for Google.com searches only (I’m in Aus and by default get the .com.au URL). So if you’re outside the US and change to the .com address, the profiles show (worked for me).
Google should purchase FriendFeed, before they grow large enough to demand a high price tag, and bundle FF’s activity aggregation functionality into Google user profiles. By doing so, they would avoid a head-on fight with Twitter/Facebook and collect the searchable (near) real-time data they are going to need to compete.
FriendFeed’s functionality is too easy for Google to duplicate for FriendFeed to be worth buying.
They’re already set up Google Profiles so that users can add links to profiles on other services. Throw in some feed-reading and commenting code (which Google probably already has laying around, considering they own Google Reader and Google Groups), and voila! — Google Profiles will do everything FriendFeed does.
It gave me the option of linking it to my Google Reader account when I signed up, as well.
Were they not indexed before?? I doubt that.
Garin: A new user signs up for twitter and their page is created (e.g., http://twitter....garinkilpatrick). How long does it take Google to add that to their indexing? What kind of algorithms do they have to create to find all the possible URLs for accounts? How frequently do they have to index each one of those URLs to keep it relevant? If I’m the developer tasked with that problem, I would recommend buying FF and using profiles to grow usage.
I know they can use the pipes supplied by Twitter and FF, but that seems like a possible point of contention when they start trying to monetize search.
Can everyone see this? It’s not showing up on my search results yet.
I don’t see it either. I’m in the US as well.
I don’t see these results for my name either.
What name are you trying? As the post says:
“the choices for the thumbnails are driven by a mysterious algorithm. Google wouldn’t offer too many details on how the algorithm works, other than that it will heavily favor profiles that are ‘complete’ – in fact, when you fill out your profile it will indicate if Google has deemed it ‘complete’ enough to appear as a thumbnail”
Try searching me – Todd Sharp – you should see my profile at the bottom of the results.
No sir, i tried it on google.co.in (the default for me), on google.com, signed-in, logged out, and in none of these scenarios do i see these results for “Todd Sharp”. Hell, i even tried the queries i can spot in the pics mentioned in the article and i can’t see it for them either. Surely a case of rolling it out gradually.
Sam: I’m in the U.S. and don’t see it yet.
ok
Manage your online identity by creating a profile using Google vanity URL. It will be one cohesive place for all your online profiles and it can get indexed by Google easily. Market your personal brand by verify your credentials using Free http://www.crederity.com/ account.
Great news and I can search my friends on Google based on its profile.
PeopleSearches.com
Very interesting to see if people will try to take advantage of the system and grab a hold of one of the four spots for famous individuals.
Great news, it was about time.
It is great news now I can search my friend of their profile Google should purchase FriendFeed, before they grow large enough to demand a high price tag, and bundle FF’s activity aggregation functionality into Google user profiles
Yawn. So useless that neither Sergey or Larry bothered to have a profile.
Google is getting boring.
The thing about the username isn’t entirely correct .. my “gmail” account is actually google apps with my own domain name. It let me pick out whatever username I wanted and that was fine. Thanks for the tip though … it was nice to consolidate everything I do in one place on Google.
Set up a Google account giving someone else’s name that you dislike. Steal a picture of them from their failbook or lolspace. Make a profile, tell everyone that you are an unemployed homosexual furry. Yay!
Google are awesome, aren’t they? Of course, this was always doable before, by setting up your own site in their name, but that’s inherently risky and you’d have to do some hardcore SEO to get into the first page of results, whereas now you can get onto the first page of search results for someone’s name with a few minutes of work.
Two points for the first person to do this for Google’s founders.
It’s okay though, because this will fail and Google will kill this a few years down the line.
I think it’s the next step to launch an API to provide a authentication service like OpenId. Just an other step to Google Epic/Grid
Just to remember the video:
http://idorosen...sloan.com/epic/
This is awesome news! I was hoping they would do something like this.
Does it already work? I have done it but i do not appear on any search result. Please let me know if it is just a question a time or if there is something special to do.
I’m showing up.
this good news i like it
Yet another great news of the day. had my set up a while ago but still not being displayed.
It will be interesting to see how these profiles and their listings develop. Thanks for the heads up. Will have to update mine.