Typing your name into a search engine is a great way to find out what the Internet thinks of you--at least until the first page of results shines a spotlight on that embarrassing episode from your misspent youth. Now Google, though, is offering people who share their profile information with the search giant more control over how they appear in its results.
Google has a complicated algorithm for determining which Web sites show at the top of its search results, presenting the top 10 picks on its results page. But in what amounts to an admission that this doesn't fully satisfy all the needs of people searching for a specific name, Google now will show a separate 11th result--a special "onebox" that presents links to people with a particular name and links to their Google profiles.
Google "is giving people more of an opportunity to have greater presence and to surface the most relevant content about themselves in a way they have some say about," said Joe Kraus, director of product management in Google's apps group.
Google now can show special results when you search for people.
(Credit: Google)To illustrate the utility of the feature, Kraus brings up the example of Brian Jones. If you happen to share the name of the Rolling Stone's deceased founding guitarist, you don't have much opportunity to show up high on Google's search results for that name. That changes with the new people-search feature, he said, though it doesn't affect the regular search results above.
There's a quid pro quo, though. To appear in Google's special people-search results you must set up a Google profile. The more information you include on your profile, the better your odds that your profile will appear among the four names that can appear in the special result, Kraus said.
At least for now, Google profiles are a collection of information you are willing to share publicly--photos, interests, Web sites about yourself. Through integration with your Gmail contacts, which lets you identify people you trust and share contact information with them, Google's profiles are gradually becoming a deeper reflection of ties called the social graph.
Kraus wouldn't comment on how the profile page fits into Google's social strategy, though he did say in general that Google's strategy in general focuses "not on how you make any one site more social, but how you make the entire Web more social."
One thing is sure, though: spotlighting profiles this directly in search results, given Google's immense search clout and people's concern about their self-image, extends much greater power to the profiles site.
To lend even more prominence, Google is beginning a "Google Me" promotion in which people who search for "me" will get an opportunity to see their profile or sign up for one.
Identity management service Telnic, which runs the .tel domain, announced on Tuesday that registering for a .tel domain has gone from its initial "land rush" phase into general availability.
Tens of thousands of domains have been sold so far, communications director Justin Hayward told CNET News, and the company will be having a launch event on Tuesday evening in New York to start spreading the word.
Telnic is sort of hoping that a .tel URL will become the online equivalent of a business card or, as Hayward put it, "one permanent point of contact, a bit like a telephone number." A .tel domain aggregates a list of chosen contact points--Web site, e-mail, telephone, social-network profiles, location data, etc.--and aims to be both flexible (if your telephone number changes when you go from one country to another, for example) and ironclad when it comes to privacy controls.
In conjunction, the London-based Telnic has announced that News Corp.-owned social network MySpace is now a .tel vendor and that MySpace users can purchase .tel domains directly for $19.99 per year, starting on Wednesday. This is part of .tel's strategy to make its domain-purchasing process more consumer-friendly than the norm.
"We're delighted that MySpace will be offering .tel domains to its community, enabling them to more quickly and easily manage all aspects of their online life," Telnic CEO Khashayar Mahdavi said in a release. "MySpace is exactly the type of partner that has the foresight to see the .tel (domain) as a complementary product, providing choices as social networkers adopt new modes of communication while they continue to enjoy the benefits of MySpace."
The .tel domain originally launched at the Demo conference last September. Right now, one of the most promising opportunities for the space is on the mobile front--using these electronic records as a way to exchange contact information in a meet-and-greet context.
A lot of this will depend on third-party developer activity (think iPhone applications). But Hayward said one of .tel's resellers, IWantMyName.com, can enable prospective users to complete the registration process entirely on an iPhone.
The other company generating buzz in this space is Chi.mp, a San Francisco start-up that offers members their own .mp domains. Both Chi.mp and .tel allow members to divide their profiles up into public and varying degrees of friends-only access.
While we're not yet about to see Facebook let people log on to its site with their MySpace ID, or vice versa, we are starting to see more cooperation among sites. MySpace ID product lead Max Engel speaks with Larry Magid about MySpace's efforts, including collaboration with AOL.
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On the Internet, nobody except perhaps Google Profiles knows that you're a dog.
For those who want to endow their self-description with an extra layer of authenticity--helping put doubts, for instance, over whether their Profiles page may have been created by a scuzzy ex-boyfriend to rest--Google has carried over a feature from its Knol sites that let people verify that they are who they say they are. People who go through the process--Google executive David Glazer is one--get a green "verified name" tag on their profiles.
Google executive David Glazer is among those who have verified their names via Google Profiles.
(Credit: CNET News)The name verification procedure comes from Google's Knol site, where people can create their own Web pages to inform others about various subjects.
"Profiles will display a 'verified name' badge, if the user has verified their name through Knol. Any user can go through Knol's interface to obtain the verified badge," Google said in a statement.
Upon user request, Google verifies names by checking them against phone or credit card records. It's an experimental feature available in the United States, and there are limitations.
Here's how Google describes the process:
We believe that letting authors verify their name helps increase their credibility and trustworthiness in the eyes of their readers. You are not required to verify your name to use Knol, but if you choose to do so, you will be asked to provide some personal information, which we will use in an effort to authenticate your name.
Today, this experimental (beta) service is only available for U.S. accounts. We currently are also limited to verify names where we have available data, so if one verification method doesn't work, please try the other. Over time, we will add additional verification methods.
For verification by phone number, we will securely pass your name and phone number to a telephone directory database, and if your information matches their records, we'll give you a unique Personal Identification Number (PIN) for use in the verification process.
You'll get an automated phone call on the phone number that you gave us, asking you to key in your PIN, and that's it--you're verified. You must have a phone number in your own name to use this option. Please note that rotary phones, VoIP numbers, and extensions may not work with our PIN verification system.
For verification by credit card number, we will securely pass your verification information to a third-party credit bureau, which will confirm that your information matches a record in their database.
Your credit card will not be charged, this process will not result in an "inquiry" to your credit profile, and no one will look at any credit-rating information or specific financial information in connection with this verification. Google will not see or have access to your credit profile or other credit bureau information. Instead, the credit bureau will simply provide us with a status indicator to let us know whether or not the information matched their records.
Google Profiles pages are mostly dashboards where people can control settings for various Google properties such as Gmail and Google Maps, but the company just gave its Profiles new prominence by letting them be discoverable by search engines. Google also added a "search profiles" box at the bottom of the Profiles page that lets people confine their queries to the Profiles pages.
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