Cannot find the true you on Google? Try this!

I am me!

Many critics of Google have complained about the lack of control users have about what people see about them on Google. This has been a bugbear of privacy critics for years now and finally a light went up for those concerned in the form of one of the founders of Excite, Joe Kraus now doing his thing over at Google. You can now use the Google Profile tool to give a little bit more of a sturdy reply whenever somebody Google’s you.

Visit http://www.google.com/profiles right away to put something online and preferably beat any people who possibly have your name and surname to the gold. Well, technically it should not be that competitive as it would defeat the purpose of the exercise. The idea is that you give Google just enough info on yourself to uniquely identify yourself in the drive to differentiate you from your clones all around the globe. One could grow some new privacy concerns from this but let’s be fair; at least Google is giving you the chance to give a more accurate depiction of yourself online.

The advantage of this seems to be greater for users in the United States of America at the moment with a specific reference to how it will appear at the bottom of search results in the US on the official Google blog, but as always the idea will be extrapolated elsewhere in time and I have already built and updated my profile on Google just in case. Control is better than nothing folks!

This won’t get rid of permanent information about your scandalous behavior at some party that has been ranking tops for years now whenever your name is typed, but at least you can put up a recent picture of yourself for folks who want to see what you look like without a beard and with clothes on. I am making light of this now, but the reality is, this is a step in the right direction.

Some things you need to remember about Google Profiles:

It is slightly in competition with other social networking efforts online and will probably in future become more so.

The results will not initially be top of page but might jump there over time.

Google admits that this is a drive to get closer to its users and get more input from them.

The more info you give the more accurate it will be when people Google you. Initially it will give four names corresponding to the search with the option to mine into even more results. This mining and subsequent click through will also affect the rankings.

It is not really functional outside the USA yet. In other words it is not yet of much use in South Africa.
You can link to profiles on socials sites like Facebook and more. It is actually interesting to see what the profile setup process associates with your online persona right off the bat.