Google Moves Into Letting Search Subjects Write (Some) Search Results



I agree with John Battelle's comments in News: Google Lets You Put Yourself Into Results For..Yourself: this is, as he puts it, “a Very Big Deal.”


First, and most obvious, this is Google leveraging its might in search to get more people to sign up for Google profiles. I shouldn't have to explain why this is important, given the competition from Facebook and Twitter, but trust me, it's really important that Google 1. know who you are and 2. compel you to have ongoing relationship with the company.

Second, this move creates, for the first time ever, a new signal that is directly controlled by an individual but changes what everyone else will see in results. True, for now, the results are at the bottom of the first page of results, but that doesn't mean it won't move up once Google learns enough to make it truly useful.

There's more at at the Searchblog

I'd add one other reason why this may turn out to be important: it becomes a first major step towards a privately managed amelioration of the “bad people post lies about you and Google links to them” problem that motivated Danielle Citron and others to advocate throwing the right to anonymity overboard. Maybe even better than the one I was talking about at the CCR symposium the other day (see What is To Be Done?”).

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2 Responses to Google Moves Into Letting Search Subjects Write (Some) Search Results

  1. I had long hoped that Google would increase the importance and robustness of their profiles. It seemed like a ready-made social networking tool. However, they are now getting in very late in the game (Orkut aside). When you search for someone’s name in Google, you already get hits for LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., which many users already have and might be more likely to view. I am curious where Google will take this ‘new’ (read: re-vamped/re-launched) product. They would do well to find a way to integrate existing profiles/services. I am getting tired of all the net-clutter.

  2. I’ve heard about this. You can verify who you are to claim title to a particular name (too bad if your name is common and someone else has claimed it)

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