Raise your profile with Google

Tuesday 21 April 2009 | By Heidi Scott, Gosh! Media Copywriter

Come on, admit it: we've all put our own name into Google to see what comes up! Many of us are disappointed at the results – either because someone with a dubious profile shares our name and hogs your favourite social networking account or, worse still, we finally make an appearance on page 342 in the SERPs!

All that is about to change in the US, however, as Google – the world's most popular search engine – has launched a new way for users to raise their profile.

On the company's official blog, Brian Stoler, Software Engineer at Google, explained the new facility: "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 US 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."

Anyone can create a profile with information about themselves, including links to social networking sites, and include any information that they choose to share, such as photos.

Some commentators are concerned that the new facility – currently only available to users in the US – will raise privacy issues. A spokesperson for Google confirmed that the service would soon be rolled out from the US to other countries.

To find out more, take a look at Google profiles.

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