If you’ve Googled your name in the past few weeks then you’ve likely seen the changes to the SERPs. Profiles with corresponding images are now shown at the bottom of search results; up to four profiles are shown. The search result includes your Google profile listing, and gives you a one-click search option to find the person in question on MySpace, Facebook, Classmates, and LinkedIn.
"When searching for yourself to see what others would find, results can be varied and aren’t always what you want people to see — whether it’s someone else with your name, or the finishing time from that 5K you ran back in 2002. We want to make that better and give you more of a voice," says Google’s Brian Stoler.
Branding yourself, not only your business, has been made easier with Google’s recent change. Over night celebrities, like this fall’s Joe the Plumber, could have likely benefited from Google’s change. When curiosity seekers tried to find more about Joe the Plumber, they’d likely Google his name, and they would have probably come across his social networking pages. The voyeuristic tendencies we all have would have led us to peruse his social profiles, friend him, and maybe leave a joking remark on one of his pages. Overnight, Joe the Plumber could have feasibly had insta-celebrity status on Facebook, MySpace, Classmates, and LinkedIn. Before the change, he would have had to plan a full fledge social media marketing campaign to provide the same results.
Wouldn’t you rather be prepared in advance for your one in a million chance at overnight internet stardom? Well, for some of you that is. Check out Barry Schwartz’s listing below. His profile only comes up when searching for "Barry Swartz", a misspelling of his name. This is because his name, spelled correctly, is shared with several others. So if you have a very common name, be forewarned that your insta-celebrity status might be compromised.
The constant shift in Google’s algorithms to allow for weighting of social media pages, like I wrote about a few weeks ago, is proof positive that social media is where it’s at. It also tells me I should be a little more cautious with those comments and surveys I do on Facebook and MySpace!
Google your name, what results did you find? Our friends David Wallace, Chris Hooley, and Barry Schwartz are listed below, along with Arnie and my smiling face.
Tags: Google, internet marketing, Social Media
This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 3:00 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:45 am
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May 8th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
So, if I rank #1 for my name, and I have my google profile pop up on the first page, this means that I'm prepared for stardom?
BRING IT ON WORLD! BRING… IT… ON…
May 8th, 2009 at 8:35 pm
So, if I rank #1 for my name, and I have my google profile pop up on the first page, this means that I'm prepared for stardom?
BRING IT ON WORLD! BRING… IT… ON…
May 8th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
[...] was reading a blog post earlier today about google profiles and preparing to be an internet celebrity. It was a great article, but I wanted to add my 2 cents about the topic. I didn’t want to be [...]
May 10th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
The only real problem I have with my insta-celebrity status on Google is that my father is a very big celebrity in the tube guitar amplifier world and we both have the exact same name. So I am competing with my father for Google front page lol. But in the end it’s ok because we both seem to come up on the first page several times when queried.
May 10th, 2009 at 9:36 am
The only real problem I have with my insta-celebrity status on Google is that my father is a very big celebrity in the tube guitar amplifier world and we both have the exact same name. So I am competing with my father for Google front page lol. But in the end it’s ok because we both seem to come up on the first page several times when queried.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:48 am
yes this is really very useful feature google introduce for People search.. this will enable to search old friends who are not in contact
May 12th, 2009 at 12:48 am
yes this is really very useful feature google introduce for People search.. this will enable to search old friends who are not in contact
May 13th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
The new Google profile is really great way for people to brand themselves even further in the search engines.
May 13th, 2009 at 8:49 am
The new Google profile is really great way for people to brand themselves even further in the search engines.
May 16th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Too bad I haven’t created a google profile yet, I will add more details to it and see the results.
May 16th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Too bad I haven’t created a google profile yet, I will add more details to it and see the results.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I haven’t created a google profile yet. I can creat it now.
May 18th, 2009 at 11:31 am
I haven’t created a google profile yet. I can creat it now.
January 6th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
In my opinion , one potentially harmful thing that is concern with Google profiles I noticed is that they don’t encode email addresses. Not to be too hypersensitive, but since they’re just listed as mailto: links they are easily harvested by spam bots.
Other than that, this is a great idea, thanks Kaila!
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