Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Google’s “Me on the Web” Aims to Help Manage Your Online Reputation

Google's Me on the Web

Keeping personal information off the web is quite difficult these days. With most of us active on social networks, blogging or even tweeting, maintaining privacy can sometimes seem an impossible task especially when our details appear on search engines.

Taking this issue into consideration Google has introduced a new tool “Me on the Web” that allows users to manage and control their personal details appearing in search results.

The “Me on the Web” tab has been placed in every user’s Google dashboard just below the ‘Account Details’ and contains various help documents that can be referred to for controlling and managing your personal identity and information on the web. This tool shows you all the websites (containing your name and contact information) that are synced to your Google profile so that you can moderate them accordingly.

If you’re familiar with Google Alerts, then you’re probably quite proficient with reputation management and the notifications it provides for any mention of your name, email address and other personal information being used across the web. For those who dont use Google Alerts, “Me on the Web” makes it easier to set up notifications by automatically suggesting some common search terms that you might want to monitor.

Perhaps the best feature of this new tool is the suggestions from Google on how to control third parties posting personal information about you. By using the links to resources under the “Me on the Web” tab, Google inlcudes suggestions like contacting the webmaster of any site and asking your personal information to be removed from their site. You can also report to Google directly asking for legal action, where ever applicable, via an online tool available under the “Me on the Web” tab.

Though Google is not the first company to address and take action on the online privacy concerns of users, with a centralized tool like “Me on the Web” Google is certainly helping the cause.

Article by Searchnews

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