Google’s People Cards allows you to ego-search yourself on the internet
Have you set your browser to incognito and tried Googling yourself to see how you appear? I do that so often but being a digital author, I always find my articles from Kachwanya.com, Chetenet.com, and my random viral tweets that get published on blogs. If you search for famous people on Google, it’s easy to find information about them from trusted sites such as Wikipedia or mainstream media websites that publish news content about them almost daily. But what happens when you search for people who aren’t famous – or even search for your own name? It’s not always easy to find the right information, chances are you will that ‘Did you mean this’ and it gets worse because there are many people who share the same name, and it’s always hard to know who’s who on the internet.
Google has now brought its People Cards to Africa that wasn’t available in the region before but had been rolled out in other countries. This is a user-created public profile system that allows you to create your own profile with details about you (job, links to their social media platforms, a brief bio, and more) that will appear directly on Google search results when someone searches your name. Content creators, business professionals, and people looking to build up their own online presence as well as those ones getting started and may not have a website or much of an online presence at all now have a virtual card, where they can highlight their existing websites, social profiles and other information about themselves.
Google says the purpose of Search Engine is to always make sure people can find helpful and reliable information. Creating a People Card is easy. First, you sign in to your Google Account on your mobile phone, then simply search for your name or “add me to Search” and tap the prompt that appears. To start building your card, you can choose to include the image from your Google account, add a description of yourself, links to your website or social profiles, and, if you want, a phone number or email address. The more information you provide, the easier it is for people to find you.
It is important to note that only one People Card is allowed per Google Account, and a phone number is required to authenticate the account. Of course, there are those that have more than five Gmail accounts and might want to create many profiles or fake cards of other people. Google assures that there are a variety of protections and controls in place to maintain the quality of information on People Cards and mechanisms to protect against abusive or spammy content.
“If you’re trying to find someone on Search, these new cards make it quick and easy to find the right person. When you search for someone’s name and there’s a card available, you’ll see a module with the name, profession, and location, which you can tap to see their card. For people who share the same name, you’ll see multiple modules, and the information can help you distinguish between the different individuals to find who you’re looking for,” Google wrote in its Africa Official Blog.
For people in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa searching on mobile phones, people cards have started rolling out in English.
See: Google is bringing light-speed internet to Kenya
EMAIL: [email protected]
