Google makes ego-searching even easier with Google Profiles

Google quietly introduced a new feature yesterday. If you have a Google Profile — which you probably do, if you use one of Google’s free services — you can now set it to turn up in Google searches for your name. To get started, search Google for the word me and scroll to the bottom of the page. If you’re like me, you’ll see your photo (maybe) and a link to your profile. Click the link to edit your profile. If your profile doesn’t show up, I believe you can click this link to edit it, or go to My Account in Google and look for the link to Edit Profile.

You have to opt in to get your profile to show up in Google searches by entering your full name into your profile. You can also make your profile more visible in search results by linking to it, such as from your blog.

Now that everybody Googles everybody else before hiring them, admitting them to college or dating them, Google Profiles promise to make the process a little more controllable. At least there is now one place on the search results for your name where you can direct searchers to the information about you that you want them to see. For instance, you can add links to your social networking stuff, such as to your blogs, Twitter page or LinkedIn page, on your profile. And if there are multiple people with the same name, the Profiles feature makes it a little more likely that you can find the right one.

Google is probably going to integrate Profiles with their other services, which will make them even more powerful. For instance, Gmail users can already send one another email through profiles without having to know the other person’s email address. I’m sure more integration is to come. This is probably Step #742 in Google’s master plan to take over the world, or at least, the Interwebs.