According to Google, starting June 24, all your movies, TV shows, books, albums, and game reviews will be visible on a single profile page. An email was sent These profiles were sent to users last month. These profiles can also be searched through Google search, which helps in creating profiles of users based on their likes and dislikes.
The company first launched this capability Post movie reviews for users based in India in 2017Over the past few years, this functionality has expanded globally. Last year, the company told TechCrunch that they made review profiles public and searchable in some regions, starting with the US and India. Now, they’re making all profiles public globally.
Essentially, you can click on any user profile to see all the reviews they’ve posted. Google told TechCrunch that the company provides a toggle to make profiles private. But this toggle wasn’t available until earlier this week, as Google noticed. SEO Consultant Gagan Ghotra and TechCrunch.
“Profiles make it easier for people to see and manage their reviews of things like movies and TV shows in one place, and make reviews more helpful to others. These reviews were previously public, and we give people the control to make their profile private or remove it entirely, as well as the option to privately edit or delete their reviews,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.
Google also makes all profiles public by default. This means that if you don’t know you have a profile page with reviews or you haven’t paid attention to the emails from Google (which may have gone to the Spam or Updates folder on your Gmail), your profile will be visible to everyone.
The company told TechCrunch that it sent users a notification to hide the profile controls through the Google Profile interface. Additionally, it notified users about the new Google Profile via a pop-up on their existing reviews. However, if users don’t know a new profile exists, they’re unlikely to visit the page. And it’s highly unlikely you’ll go back again and again to read your review of a show or movie. Google needs to do a better job of notifying users about a brand new page related to their account.
Prospective employers can use searchable profiles to gauge the opinions of their prospective employees, which could impact their chances of hiring, Ghotra told TechCrunch via direct message. Also, it’s easy for advertisers to scrape this data and serve targeted ads to users.
How to hide your profile
Here’s how you can make your Preview profile private:
- Go profiles.google.com
- Click/tap on the three-dot menu next to your profile name
- Select the “Profile Options” item
- Turn on the Profile Privacy toggle.
Even if you hide your profile, your individual reviews will still appear under the title of a movie or TV show, but it won’t link back to the page with all your reviews. Notably, your reviews on Google Maps are not part of this rollout.
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