Personally I prefer the first title for this post, but that’s mainly because I think I will forever cherish my teenage crush on X-File’s David Duchovny. But that’s another story entirely… or is it? What if you could affect the google result when people did a name-search on you? What if you could bump all those fan-posts you made to the http://more-david-duchovny-in-y-fronts forums in the 90s to at least the second page of your Google name search, or at least head them off at the pass with the info they’re looking for at the beginning? Apparently Google Profile will give me this option – stay tuned to see if it actually works.

At some point around April in 2009, the Google blog announced the release of another one of it’s many products: Google Profile. My friend Rory was telling me about this yesterday because he uses it with his Android enabled smart phone to great success. I say great success because, a.) he has an android smart phone (see Chris H’s posts for more on netsafe staff smart phone lust) and, b.) he has ’starred’ certain contacts on his android phone, and those contacts get special entry to his google profile. This means they get more information about him because they’re trusted viewers that he has decided to share more info with (kind of like friends on Facebook as opposed to network members).

You can include, for example, links to your blog, online photos, and other profiles such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and more. You have control over what others see. Your profile won’t display any private information unless you’ve explicitly added it.

Sounds promising. So with due scientific rigour A-B testing blah de blah I took a screenshot of my current google digitial footprint:

It’s a bit small here but, it’s pretty standard – NetSafe links on my name for the two entries, then a zoominfo aggregate of me, Facebook and LinkedIn portals, another NetSafe and then a report from my research project on sexual violence. So on the whole, I’m doing pretty well anyway, with Facebook and LinkedIn high up the list. Time to see what happens after I do my Google Profile.

So, as I go through it’s all pretty obvious. I’m not sure why Google wants to know where I have lived and what Universities I went to, but whatever. There’s a mildly annoying condescending geek question “what is your super-power” – which I think is totally unnecessary (everyone already knows I am ginger). Google, also found my youtube login associated with my account and put that on there for me to keep or remove. I could supposedly add other accounts, but I had to go back to my google search on my name to get the specific URLs for my facebook and linked in pages (as Facebook hides the URL once you’re on there). Anyway, done all that. Uploaded my photo and submitted and I am on the web! Again. University info and all. It turns out the where have you lived bit, is for the pin-up map thing – and somehow to make it easier to find you when there are multiples of your name.

Then I get to part 2 of this where I can add all the ’scary’ bits (actually it turns out I could have done that before but it was just on another sheet of the sign-up page – not overly intuitive). Anyway, email, phone all added in – and I am given the option to share this info with all my contacts on gmail or a subset of them. So this only makes this part useful for people with a gmail account (and with contacts on their gmail accounts). Anyway, I’ve done that and made a customised group who can view my contact details (Note to self – ask Rory about ’starring’).

Now it’s time for the test. I re-enter my name on google and get Chris H to check too:

BaaBow. Fail. Nothing changed on my Google name search. Perhaps it will take a while to populate through the web. Back on my profile page, clicking on the “your profile may be featured” link, I am given another page on with tips on making my profile more useful, including this wee gem:

When you or others search for your name on Google, a link to your Google profile may appear at the bottom of the search results next to your profile picture.

I love the “may appear” caveat! I will report back as soon as the situation changes. In the mean time at some point hopefully I will have a profile on Google that will give my friends my contact details and give others the opportunity to email me directly without knowing my email address. That’s cool.

The challenges will come when people set up false and/or abusive profiles about other people. Google offers the ability to verify your profile, but this seems more about giving a profile a bit more credence than another – and actually just going there gave me absolutely no direction about what I was supposed to do there – so points off for not easily finding how to report abuse of the google profile, finding ways to actually authenticate it, not actually being there when finished, but kudos for enabling people to author their own contribution to the web – well on Google anyway.