Add your Profile to Google Search with ‘People Cards’ now available in Africa

Google’s People Cards is a tool that allows people to add themselves to the Search Engine, in a small profile kinda manner allowing others to search your name on the Search Engine and see what you do, find your social media profiles, email, phone number and more.

The unique new tool has been available in India for a while, and has finally gone live in Kenya, and the rest of the African Continent.

“For those without a formal website, or for people who share a name with many others, this is an easy way to create or distinguish their presence on Search,” Oluminde Bologun, Head of Consumer Apps, Sub Saharan Africa at Google says, “We see that people in Africa want a search tool that reflects their real environment and also supports them to succeed as they go about their everyday hustle which is why the People Card creator is in full control of their information at all times; they choose what they would like to make public and if they would like to remove it”

Adding a profile is easy. Here’s my Public Profile which I just added:

As you can see I have shared publicly where I work, where I schooled, my phone number, links to my social media profiles, and my website. You can choose what information you want to share.

How to create your personal Google People Cards Profile:

1. On Google either on browser or Google App, with your account signed in, search for your name, or search for “add me to search”
2. Tap on Get Started to begin process of creating your card.
3. Fill out your information, change your Avatar if you want to.
4. Make sure you fill out the required sections which are marked with an asterisk. These are your NAME, LOCATION, ABOUT, and JOB.
5. Include any additional information you may want to make public. Google will let you add social media links.
6. You won’t be able to change phone number and email when it is already on your Google Email Account. This had to be done under Google Account Settings.
7. After that you need to Preview your details to see if everything is fine.
8. Then SAVE the information. Once that’s done, you can search for your name on Google to see your card. You can also edit any information by searching for your name anytime.

Being a new feature on Google, it will be interesting to see how Kenyans, and Africans in general take it up. Of course, knowing people, many would want to be easily found online. In India, only people within the Indian region can search up for a profile and find the details people have shared about themselves. We still don’t know if in Africa, only the people within a particular country will be able to see other people’s cards, or if all Africans will see each other’s profiles (that’d be a weird position for Google to take here compared to India).

It will also be interesting to see what people think of the feature, as it is a new way for companies to mine for people’s data. The good thing however, for everyone open to the idea is that people who do lots of stuff online, and other professionals will be able to easily share their information online, and be found easily given Google is the most accessed website all over.