Google created a bit of a stir recently in the search marketing industry when they began to show Google profiles at the bottom of US search results. Some are seeing the Google profiles as another great way to brand yourself, while others are just finding it to be another intrusion into our privacy by the search giant. I couldn’t quite understand why there was so much debate and excitement about this change on the SERPs, but there are some markers that are loving it.
After reading several posts about the new profile listings and thinking about it myself, I stll don’t see a lot of value in it for me. If you happen to be one of those people with a very common name like Jennifer Smith, having your profile show up for a name search could be more powerful. I still don’t see it becoming a huge marketing opportunity, but we’ll see how it plays out. Matt Cutts did make it clear that profile links to your websites wouldn’t provide any sort of PR boost since the link resides on Google itself.
In case you aren’t familiar with Google profiles, you can set up your own profile here. Google will allow you to enter as much or as little information about yourself including:
- First and last name
- Nicknames
- Other names you’ve gone by in the past
- Where you grew up/live
- Work information
- School information
- A short Bio
- Links to personal web pages
There are a few other pieces of information you can include also, but those are the main ones. You do have to fill out a good portion of the items in order to “rank” in the search results, but I wasn’t able to figure out exactly which items were required. If you really want to get serious with your profile, you can actually verify your name and have a nice little “Verified name” badge show up in your profile. It is a little tough to find out how to do the name verification, but Jennifer Lopez at SEOmoz was nice enough to explain exactly how to verify your name in a blog post.
If anyone else knows of some secret power or opportunity I’m missing with these profiles, please let me know. There was a lot of chatter about the changes, but I still haven’t figured out how this will affect the vast majority of internet marketers.
