Even for those of us who have long-established Google profiles with many entries, the results seem haphazard. I have 29 people following me in Reader, plus over 600 of my Google Contacts marked as Family, Friends or Coworkers. Quite a few have Google Profiles and some of the profiles are even in the contacts listings. Yet my number of Direct Connections in the Social Circle listings has declined from 37 to 22 to 16 over the past week.

It is unclear how often the Social Circle listings update but the documentation does say it is a batch process rather than online, and it appears to be fairly slow at that.

The inconsistent results right now, just after rollout, reduce the credibility of the service.

In the long term, there is a huge opportunity here for Google to present a unified view of all of the public activities on the web by any given person (with verified identity). This would be really helpful.

Backtype, Disqus, Ubervu all try with comments but are quite inconsistent. Add in the FB Twitter and blog feeds and there’s a real need to find and present a real-time current view.

Hopefully Google can provide this as part of the Social Search product.

The side effects of a Google Profile are good, too. First, it’s a great place to keep a list of all the social networks and services you’re using, from all over the web. If you sign up for something new, pop it into you Google Profile to remember it (and index it).

Second, it improves Google searches for your own name. I now come up for at least 1/3 of the first page of search results for my own name. My Profile undoubtedly helps Google find me and improves my ranking.

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