Your name is your brand. A Google Profile gives you one more place to promote your personal brand online. This gives “self-Googlers” the satisfaction of seeing a picture link to their own Google Profile.  Using Google Profiles, you can control what people will be able to read about you, because you control this content.

Try entering my name Doug Williams into a Google search and scroll down to the bottom of the first page. You should see the link to my Google Profile with my photo.  That gets your attention doesn’t it?

Since 2007, Google has allowed people to create Google Profile pages as part of certain Google services such as Blogger. Early in 2009, Google began promoting these separate Google Profile pages that are being displayed in Google’s main search results.

Similar to the local business listings for companies, the Google Profile displays four thumbnail spots to these profiles at the bottom of search results. Capturing one of these four thumbnail spots is going to very desirable for some. Just like all other Google searches, the thumbnail selection is driven by a mysterious algorithm.

A Google Profile is a way to create a personal bio that will show up when someone searches for you. Google is beginning to encroach on a territory long dominated by LinkedIn.

What is Google going with this? By gathering this personal information will they lever this into some sort of super social network? Will they figure out a way to serve customized ads as we do searches? In any case they are continuing to build their information base.