Cooking Up an Authentic View of You
Searching for information about someone on the Internet is like searching for a long-lost family recipe in all your great aunts' ancient cookbooks, then gathering ingredients from five different stores in three cities just to make a stew.
To find online information about a specific person, you begin by typing his or her name into a search engine, which returns seemingly countless entries for people with the same name. You begin clicking pages and looking for clues to identify the person you know. You think you find a blog, social networking account, online photo album, posts on a family reunion message board, and two different e-mail addresses. But you aren't sure if it's all about the right person. And you don't know how old the information is.
You realize it would take hours to get what still would be a half-baked picture of this person, so you settle for what you find on the first three or four results pages. When people look for information about you, the one thing you really want them to see might not show up in a Google search until the 27th page, which they'll never read.
To solve this problem, Google created Google profiles. A Google profile is a "universal" information page that verifies who you are to the public — only if you want it to — where you can blend all of your online activities, profiles, forums, and albums in one big virtual kettle.
"Google profiles were created to make yourself more discoverable in a Google search," explains Google spokesperson, Victoria Katsarou. "If a person you're searching for has a Google profile page, a link to it shows up at the bottom of your first search results page." Links include basic information to make it easy to identify the right person. Results include similar names, in case you have the spelling wrong.
In addition to public information, profiles allow you to create groups and keep some information private for friends and family — a great way to keep an approved list of people updated. If you are, alas, not included in a friend's privileged group and can't see an e-mail address, you still can send a message through his or her profile page.
Today, Google profiles are much more than information pages. "Now that the Internet is evolving into a stronger social forum, participation on the Internet is really more about conversations than information. And it's important for people to be able to participate on different levels," Katsarou says.
Each Google profile owner can post links to his or her other online pages, such as social networks, blogs, and photo albums. In addition, Google automatically connects your profile to public posts and other profiles you've authorized in any number of Google applications, such as Gmail, Buzz, Picasa, Knol, Maps, and Reader. If you use one of Google's many other applications, you've probably already whipped up a Google profile by default.
Google continually looks for new ways to integrate applications. For example, if you have a profile page and then sign up for Buzz, a Buzz tab will automatically appear in your profile to make it easier for others to connect to you.
Google uses profiles to take the art of content searching to a new level with software called Social Search. It automatically gathers your connections with people in Google and non-Google online spaces, plus people who are contacts of your contacts. When you search for a topic using Google.com, in addition to Google's results, you'll see content generated by people in your social circle — again, at the bottom of the first results page.
Katsarou describes Google profiles as an ever-changing service that will continue to adapt to the way Internet participation evolves. She notes, "We consider Google profiles to be very important, so we want to develop it very quickly and there are a lot of exciting things coming up."
A Google profile is a meaty way to verify what's true about you, control the facts you share, and fold together all of the far-flung online information about you. Maybe it's time you got cooking on your own Google profile.
Dishing You Up: What's in Your Google Profile?
Below is information you can add to spice up your Google profile. The more you add, the easier it is for people to find you, and the better they'll know you from reading your profile.
- Description of you and/or your business
- Address, e-mail address, and phone numbers (only if you want to share them)
- Photos
- A list of your interests
- Your "super power" (just for fun)
- Where you grew up
- Other places you lived and where you live now
- Automatic Google Map showing places you've lived
- Companies you worked for
- Schools you attended
- Other names you've used (such as a maiden name)
Optional Ingredients
To see all of the other Google applications you can sign up for, some of which link automatically to your Google profile page, look at the extreme top left corner of your page. You'll see the following links: Gmail, Calendar, Documents, Reader, Web, More. Click on any of those links to learn more. Click on More to see more options. Then click on Even More to see ... you guessed it — even more options to add flavor to your profile.