This week Google rolled out a new feature called a “virtual visiting card” or “People Cards” to users in India. The stated reason is to allows you to search for people you know who may not be celebrities and find them on Google.

This feature also looks to be similar to setting up a business profile on LinkedIn, so maybe Google is trying to encroach on LinkedIn’s emergence as the place to go and look up people you’ve met and want to work with.

Once this was released, SEOs were figuring out how to create their own People Cards from other regions. A few SEOs called out changing your search location but @Aussermayr provided his own step by step guide:

The process is pretty quick to go and create your own People Card.

Here’s what the “add me to search” looked like once followed steps 1-6:

Working on the profile card was intuitive. There are sections for where you work, where you’re from, education, social profiles, and more.

The predictive search was good for calling out where I work and my university. For my job title, there are none around to select but you can fill that in with custom text.

There are a few social media profiles you can add. I added my LinkedIn and Twitter accounts but didn’t add Facebook or Instagram. You can fill these out as much as you want.

Once I was done editing, here’s what my profile looks like:

Right now, this profile is only visible if you are searching from India. If you’re searching from anywhere else in the world, you’ll get a standard Google search results page.

Google has set up some guardrails around this feature. Each Google account can only set up one People Card, so you won’t be able to set up cards for you and various businesses or personas from a single email address.

Since this isn’t showing up for searches in the US yet, there’s no real benefit. At this point I’ve got the profile set up for if/when Google rolls this out more broadly.

Is this going to be a real thing, or is this another run around the “authorship” ideas that were promoted with Google+ a few years ago?

Steps to quickly create your own Google People Card (if you’re not in India):

  1. Open Google Chrome and Chrome Dev Tools
  2. Simulate a mobile device
  3. Search [add me to search] on Google
  4. Scroll to the footer
  5. Click on Settings
  6. Set search settings to Region: India. Keep language as English
  7. Save settings and search [add me to search]
  8. You should see the card and “Get Started” button. Have fun!