Google is making reviews of all your movies, TV shows, books, albums and games visible under one profile page starting June 24, according to an email has been sent to users last month. These profiles are also searchable through Google searches, which can lead to users being profiled based on their likes and dislikes.
The company launched the feature to publish movie reviews for users based in India in 2017. Over the years, this feature has expanded globally. Last year, the company told TechCrunch that it was making reviewer profiles public and searchable in certain regions, starting with the US and India. Now, they make all profiles public globally.
Basically, you can click on any user profile and see all the reviews they’ve posted. Google told TechCrunch that the company provides a switch to make your profile private. But that switch wasn’t available until earlier this week, as spotted by SEO Consultant Gagan Ghotra and TechCrunch.
“Profiles make it easy for users to see and manage their reviews of things like movies and TV shows in one place, and make reviews more useful to others. These reviews were already public, and we give users the control to make their profile private or delete it entirely, along with options 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 if you have a profile page with your reviews or haven’t paid attention to emails from Google (which may have ended up in your spam or updates folder in Gmail), your profile will be visible to everyone.
The company told TechCrunch that it sent profile hiding control notifications to users through the Google Profile interface. Additionally, it notified users of the new Google profile via a pop-up on their existing reviews. However, if users do not know that a new profile exists, they are unlikely to visit the page. And there’s a small chance you’ll be coming back to read your own review of a show or movie often. Google needs to do a better job of notifying the user of a completely new page associated with their account.
Ghotra told TechCrunch via direct messages that searchable profiles could also be used by potential employers to learn about their prospective employees’ opinions, affecting their chances of being hired. Moreover, it is an easy target for advertisers to delete this data and serve targeted ads to users.
How to hide your profile
Here’s how to make your preview profile private:
- I’m going to you profile.google.com
- Click/tap the three-dot menu next to your profile name
- Select the “Profile Options” item.
- Enable privacy profile switching
Even if you hide your profile, your individual reviews will still be visible under a movie or TV show title, but it won’t link back to a page with all your reviews. Note that your Google Maps reviews are not part of this disposition.
