Google__ The Missing Manual - Kevin Purdy [9]
The answer, in part, is that the whole point of social networking sites—like Google+ and Facebook—is defining who you are, what you’re into, and how you’re doing to people you know and people you’re just meeting. But another big reason is because the profile you’re filling out in Google+ is the same one people may find when they search you out on the Web. It’s just a fact of modern life that people are likely searching for your name on the Web (probably via Google.com).
In the past, the answer to the question “How can I control what people see when they Google my name?” was “You can’t,” or perhaps “It requires a lot of work and/or a lot of money.” Your Google+ profile (which is the same thing as your Google profile) gives you a kind of official response when someone Googles your name—a specially marked link to your profile. For example, someone searching out Devon Kurdy might see mentions of him in blog posts, his Facebook profile, and perhaps an unfortunate reference to him in a police report from his confused punk-rock period in the late ’90s. But they’d also see a somewhat differently marked link to Devon’s official Google profile, as shown here, so they can at least see what he has to say about where he’s at these days before they read about his part in that 1998 Dead Kennedys after-party.
Your Google profile may not always be the first search result when someone Googles your name, especially if your name is very common, but it usually shows up on the first page of results.
Once you’ve entered what you want on your profile screen (it’s all optional), click “Continue to my profile.” If you’ve already clicked somewhere else, you can quickly jump to your profile from any page in Google+ by clicking the aptly named Profile button shown on Fleshing Out Your Profile. It’s one of the buttons at the top of every page, to the left of the search bar.
Your Profile page includes your name, your tagline (if you entered one), and your profile photo. Below your name and tagline are five tabs you can check out: Posts, About, Photos, Videos, and +1’s.
Editing Your Profile
The section you care about right now is About, which is the first page people will see when they find you on Google+. If the word “About” below your name isn’t in red text, click “About” to select it and see the information you’ve already provided. Then, click the blue Edit Profile button in the page’s upper right to get cracking.
A red bar appears near the top of the page to indicate that you’re editing, and when you move your cursor around the screen, whatever you’re pointing at gets highlighted in light blue. When you click, a box pops up so you can edit that particular bit of info. Exactly how you edit each of these sections differs slightly, but there are a couple of aspects they all have in common: A text box (which is usually filled with some italicized placeholder text to provide inspiration) where you enter your info, and a gray box with the visibility options described back on Fleshing Out Your Profile where you decide who can see each bit of your profile.
With these tools, you can create different versions of your profile for different contexts. For example, you might fill out just a few boxes of very basic information—current employer, a generic tagline—and make those visible to “Anyone on the web.” You can then add other, more personal bits—like “Bragging rights,” places you’ve lived, and your relationship status—and make them visible only to “Your circles” or “Extended circles,” which you can think of as “friends” and “friends of friends,” respectively. Because you can control who sees which portion of your profile, you don’t need to fill in generic, “safe” information that’s boring and unhelpful to people who might be interested; just restrict the juicy bits to the people you trust. But you might want to hold off on entering things like your home and work contact information until you have a few contacts and circles in place (see Chapter 2); then, you can use the “Custom” visibility option