San Francisco — Search engine titan Google on Tuesday unveiled a tool called “Google Profiles” that empowers people to exercise some control over personal profiles that people read about them that appears on the bottom of search results pages when someone looks up a name.
Google profiles consists of basic information and images that people do not mind sharing. Concise profiles are shown along with results of searches on people’s names to allow a little control of one’s online image.
Brian Stoler, a Google software engineer, wrote in a blog post this afternoon that the Google search engine is starting to offer profile results at the bottom of U.S. name-query search pages. They offer up shortened versions of user-created Google profiles and a link to the full profiles.
“When searching for yourself to see what others would find, results can be varied and are not always what you want people to see — whether it is someone else with your name, or the finishing time from that 5K you ran back in 2002,” the company wrote on its blog. “We want to make that better and give you more of a voice.”
Google has a very complex algorithm for evaluating which Web sites show at the top of its search results, presenting the top 10 picks on its results page. However, that amounts to an admission that this does not completely satisfy all the needs of people searching for a specific name, Google now will show a separate 11th result–a special “onebox” that presents links to people with a particular name and links to their Google profiles.
Google “is offering people more of an option to have greater presence and to come up with the most relevant content about themselves in a way they have some say about,” said Joe Kraus, director of product management in Google’s apps group.
Google now can show special results when you search for people. (Credit: Google)
There is a quid pro quo, though. The service, which is open only to those who create a Google account, allows users to build what is essentially a mini Web site with information, photos and links to Facebook profiles or other Web sites. To appear in Google’s special people-search results you must set up a Google profile.
However, the profiles would not replace the regular search results.
“Once again, Google is delivering an innovation to the Web that is noteworthy and helps promote Google, if nothing else,” said Robert Kubey, director of the Center for Media Studies at Rutgers University. “Before long Google will control the planet Earth.”
He added that many people will likely find the service useful, as often search results do not reflect the most important part of someone’s life or work.
To add even more visibility, Google is beginning a “Google Me” promotion in which people who search for “me” will get an opportunity to see their profile or sign up for one.
On the Net: More information about setting up profiles is available at : http://www.google.com/profiles.