This afternoon Google posted about a new feature which enables users to search for “me” to find their own Google profiles. Google recently upgraded their profile features but the company is now investing heavily in making profiles a more integrated part of search. Want to find somebody on the web? If they’ve set up their Google profile properly, they will show up in a box that displays profile results (as pictured below).
It’s a subtle change but one that could make a massive difference. Right now Facebook has a dominant position when it comes to people search. That position is so dominant that they actually rival Google when it comes to searching for people. Facebook provides additional value over Google by finding people based on how close you are to them in the social graph among a number of other factors.
Facebook’s search outside of looking for people is historically horrendous though. If you search for something non-people related and get it misspelled you can occasionally cause Facebook’s search engine to sputter to the point where it takes tens of seconds to respond. At that point you probably turned to Google to find the Facebook public profile you were looking for since most of them are already indexed by the search engine.
Google is known for their disdain of Facebook after at least one failed acquisition attempt during the company’s continued hype last year. Twitter has appeared at the perfect time to become Google’s knight in shining armor (there are even rumors that Twitter and Google are in serious talks). Google thinks so highly of Twitter that they even recommend you use the service to promote your Google profile (as pictured below by Orli Yakuel). Eric Schmidt even mentioned the company during their earnings call last week.
The goal is turn Google into a more effective profile aggregator. By doing so, the company could theoretically continue their pursuit of “out opening” Facebook despite the social network’s continued ability to attract almost a million users a day. While it’s still too early to determine how this will impact the battle to be the leader of the social web, Google is making it clear that they aren’t holding back, willing to use even their most coveted real-estate to fight the battle: Google search results.
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I agree, I think this is ultimately about google ID vs Facebook Connect. But, I just tried this out, and there seems to be a few bugs/issues.
1. when I'm logged out of my google profile, and search for my name, then my profile listing goes away. I can only see my google profile when I'm logged in and I search for myself.
2. I had a colleague search for me on his computer (while I was logged in). My profile did not display in the bottom result. What's the point of this if only I can see the listing when I'm already signed into my google profile (and nobody else can)?
Also, assuming that this ultimately works, what's to keep businesses from setting up accounts for relevant and highly utilized search terms that aren't actually their businesses name? Subsequently getting on page one of the listings, with an image, and for free…
Comment by Jack — April 21, 2009 @ 7:57 pm
Very excellent blog.Keep Rocking.
Comment by louisville — April 21, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
Google Profile rocks for maintaining an organized public interface for sharing your social network profiles (including facebook page)and web pages. Have recently started linking most of my profiles back to the google profile to offer friends and fans and clients a way to find out more about me beyond the context of a single web site.
Comment by Asia Grady — April 21, 2009 @ 9:43 pm
I think that linkedin is best for professional people searches. I think the challenge for internet users is to seperate personal and professional – I keep facebook for friends and linkedin for professional. Google could be too muich in between e.g. you can choose whether to display your picassa pictures on your profile.
Comment by Rob Barham — April 22, 2009 @ 1:05 am
Thats how i go by baby bash feauturing mario and lil jon
Comment by Jameson Buntin — May 14, 2009 @ 5:20 pm
images
Comment by Mohomad Askar Zuhair — June 1, 2009 @ 1:05 am
hi.i have a problem with my profile at facebook,i cant see my friends in my list.i'm pushing to all my friends and it shows me nothing.pls help me
Comment by thomas — June 1, 2009 @ 2:16 am
Hi, I used to have FB profile and somehow someone has messed with my profile. Can you fix this? Thanks
Comment by Peder Hall — December 7, 2009 @ 7:29 am
How do I stop harasment even if I have blocked the person
Comment by bernadette — January 9, 2010 @ 1:33 pm
hey everybody, what's up?
Comment by Md Abdus Sobur Raju — January 21, 2010 @ 8:24 pm
hi,how can I find some one in facebook?is it neccessarry that I become a member of facebook for this search or not?would you mind describe me each step level by level?thanks
Comment by lida — June 21, 2010 @ 2:00 am
ok then just visit http://www.foupas.com
search for information on facebook posts , groups, pages, profiles even friends wall and get ranked results with the power of google and foupas
So simple …. foupas.com
Comment by foupas — January 31, 2011 @ 5:22 pm
Enter text right here!
Comment by Ebow Charles — April 30, 2011 @ 3:54 pm
Very well written! Thanks for the info.
Comment by Kentucky — August 24, 2011 @ 8:36 am