Update: Google puts your address in the SERPS, shows it to your social circle
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Update: Google puts your address in the SERPS, shows it to your social circle

26th April 2011

Update: The address shown in the SERPS is probably shown within your social circle (see below).

Original title: Google puts your address in the SERPS, quick edit your profile and more autocomplete

It is becoming more than a day job to keep track of all the changes Google makes to their SERPS. We therefore sometimes try to update you with the latest developments in the SERPS.

Today again three changes which Google made to the SERPS: you in some cases can edit your Google Profile straight from the SERPS and Google has made some changes to the autocomplete feature, making it also work on word-by-word. Most remarkable however is your address showing up in the SERPS.

Editing your profile in the SERPS

This one was dropped to me by my good friend Joost de Valk (thank you Joost) who based on a story we wrote a while ago noted that the Google Profiles start showing in the top results more often. This is something we will dive into more deeply soon, but the screenshot Joost send me has an interesting feature in it:

If you look at Joost’s results you can see that at his Google Profile result a button is added: “Profiel bewerken“, which is Dutch for “edit profile”. Jost is logged in off course, but now has the option to immediately start editing his profile. I am not seeing this myself but my guess is we will be seeing more of this very soon.

Your address in the SERPS

In Joost’s results also note the other elements: his address is there. Something which might scare some people off, but it is also in the Google Profile, so if you don’t want it showing up in the SERPS you better not put it in your Profile. I am not sure many privacy-officers will like this, especially because this hasn’t been communicated by Google

Note that this is also visible for others, if I do a search for Joost’s name, I see the address popping up.

UPDATE:

It looks like this is only shown to your direct contacts since Joost has it set in his profile that only his contacts can see it:

UPDATE 2:

As Nichola points out in the comments, it does look like the feature is available within your social circle. Which means your address will not just be shown to your friends, but also to their friends, which is weird if you look at the settings which Joost had set for visibility below:

More autocomplete

Last week Google did officially announce a change. The autocomplete feature we all love and hate so much now also gives you suggestions on word-by-word basis. This means that even if you have ignored the first part it will give you new suggestions based on your query, based on only the last part of your search:

This feature is currently rolling out to all users on google.com in English.

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Bas van den Beld is an award winning Digital Marketing consultant, trainer and speaker. He is the founder of State of Digital and helps companies develop solid marketing strategies.
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