Add Me to Search in 2026: Google People Cards Are Gone. Here’s How to Get Your Name on Google Now

Quick answers

What “Add me to Search” was, and why people still search for it

In August 2020, Google launched something it called a “virtual visiting card” for people in India. You signed in to your Google account on your phone, searched add me to search, tapped Get started, verified your phone number and filled in a short profile: your name, what you do, where you’re based, a short bio, and links to your website and social accounts. When someone searched your name, a small box could appear in the results with your details.

For freelancers, job seekers, small business owners and creators, it was a genuinely useful idea. You didn’t need a website. You didn’t need to know anything about SEO. You just filled in a form and Google did the rest.

That’s why, years after it was switched off, tens of thousands of people in India still search for it every month. And they search for it every way imaginable: add me to search, add me to Google, add to me search, add me to the search, add me to search get started. They’re all looking for the same button, and it isn’t there any more.

Why “Add me to Search → Get started” does nothing now

A huge number of web pages still tell you to search “add me to search” and tap Get started. Some of them are even dated 2026. They’re simply out of date: written in 2021 or 2022 and refreshed with a new year in the title, or copied from older guides without anyone checking.

When you search “add me to search” today, Google shows ordinary search results, mostly articles about the feature. There’s no card, no button and no form. That’s true on Android and iPhone, in the Google app and in Chrome, signed in or signed out.

What happened to existing People Cards?

If you had a card, Google sent an email in early 2024 saying the feature would end on 7 April and that you could save your content until 7 May. After that, the data was deleted. There’s no archive to restore from and no form to request it back.

The good news: if you kept a copy, or you can remember roughly what you wrote, it’s exactly the material you need for Step 2 below. A People Card was really a tiny personal web page that Google hosted for you. Now you host it yourself, which means nobody can switch it off.

Which situation are you in?

“Add me to Google” means different things to different people. Find your row, then jump to the right section.

How to add yourself to Google search in 2026: the 7-step plan

Here’s the honest version. Google doesn’t have an “add me” button for people any more. What it has is a search engine that shows the most relevant pages for a name. So the job is to make sure the most relevant pages for your name are ones that describe you accurately, and ideally ones you control.

None of this needs technical skill beyond what you’d use to set up an email account. Most people can do Steps 1 to 5 over a weekend.

Step 1: Run a 10-minute name audit

Use a simple table like this one. It takes ten minutes and saves weeks of guesswork.

Example audit for a fictional designer. Your rows will be different, which is the point.

Step 2: Build a one-page personal website (your new People Card)

This is the single most important step. A page on your own domain is the closest thing to a People Card that exists now. The difference is that you own it, so no product shutdown can delete it.

It doesn’t need to be big. One well-made page beats a ten-page site that never gets finished. A domain like yourname.in or yourname.com typically costs somewhere around ₹500–₹1,200 a year, and a simple one-page site can be built on WordPress, a website builder, or by a developer in a day.

What to put on your page, by profession

The structure stays the same for everyone. What changes is the proof and the profiles that matter most. Here’s what we’d prioritise for the people who search “add me to Google” most often:

Copy-paste templates

If you’d rather have it done for you, that’s part of our web design work. A personal brand site is one of the smallest projects we take on, and one of the most useful.

Step 3: Add Person schema so Google knows the profiles are all you

Schema markup is a small block of code, invisible to visitors, that describes the page in a format search engines read easily. For a personal site, the useful part is sameAs: a list of your other profiles. It’s how you tell Google, “this LinkedIn, this Instagram and this website all belong to the same person.”

Paste something like this into the page’s <head> (most WordPress SEO plugins also have a field for it). Replace the example details with yours:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "ProfilePage",
  "dateModified": "2026-11-05",
  "mainEntity": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Ananya Rao",
    "jobTitle": "UX Designer",
    "description": "UX designer in Bengaluru designing apps for fintech and health startups.",
    "url": "https://ananyarao.in/",
    "image": "https://ananyarao.in/ananya-rao.jpg",
    "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "addressLocality": "Bengaluru", "addressCountry": "IN" },
    "worksFor": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "Studio North" },
    "sameAs": [
      "https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananyarao",
      "https://www.behance.net/ananyarao",
      "https://www.instagram.com/ananyarao.design"
    ]
  }
}
</script>

Google documents the ProfilePage type with a Person as its mainEntity. You can check your code with Google’s Rich Results Test. Schema doesn’t guarantee anything appears in search, but it removes ambiguity, and ambiguity is the main problem when your name is shared with other people.

Step 4: Tell Google your page exists

Google will usually find a new page eventually. You can speed that up for free:

1. Go to Google Search Console and add your domain as a property.
2. Verify ownership. The usual method is a TXT record added at your domain provider; most providers have a one-click option.
3. Paste your homepage URL into the URL Inspection bar at the top and click Request indexing.
4. Come back in a few days and search your exact name plus profession.

Keep the Search Console account. It shows which searches your page appears for, and it’s also one of the accounts Google can use to verify you if a knowledge panel ever appears (Step 7).

Step 5: Make every public profile point to the same person

Google doesn’t just look at your website. It looks at everything with your name on it, and tries to work out which pages are about the same person. Make that easy.

Step 6: Get mentioned on other sites

A page you write about yourself is useful. A page someone else writes about you is more convincing, both to readers and to Google. You don’t need national press. You need a handful of credible pages that mention your full name and what you do, and ideally link to your site.

• Your company’s team or leadership page, with your full name, role and a link to your site or LinkedIn.
• Event and conference speaker pages. If you’ve spoken anywhere, even at a college event, ask for a bio with a link.
• Podcast and YouTube interview pages. Guest pages and show notes often rank surprisingly well.
• Professional directories that matter in your field, kept complete and accurate.
• Alumni features from your college or school.
• Guest articles on respected industry sites, with a short author bio.
• Local news, if you’ve done something genuinely newsworthy.

This is also exactly what helps you appear in AI answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI Mode, which lean on what other sites say about you. We cover that in AEO and GEO explained, and it’s the core of our digital PR work.

Step 7: Watch for a knowledge panel, and claim it if one appears

If enough credible sources describe you consistently, Google may start treating you as a distinct “entity” and show a knowledge panel: the information box that appears beside results on desktop, or near the top on mobile. It’s the nearest thing to a People Card that still exists, with one big difference: you can’t create one. More on that next.

Knowledge panels: the closest thing left to a People Card

Per Google’s Knowledge Panel Help, if a panel already shows for you, you can claim it like this:

1. Search for your name on Google and find your knowledge panel.
2. Click or tap Claim this knowledge panel (on mobile it may be under the panel’s menu or “About”).
3. Review the information, then sign in to one of the official sites or profiles Google lists for you, such as your YouTube channel or your website’s Search Console account.
4. If Google can’t find an official profile linked to you, it asks for more information to verify who you are.
5. Once verified, you can suggest changes to the panel’s details and photo.

Two caveats from Google itself: not every panel can be claimed (check back from time to time if the button isn’t there), and business locations are handled through Google Business Profile, not knowledge panels.

“Add me to Google” for businesses: use a Google Business Profile

Many people searching “add me to Google” actually want their business on Google Search and Maps. That’s a different, fully working product: Google Business Profile. It’s free, and for a local business it’s often the most valuable listing you can have. It’s what appears when someone searches “bakery near me” or “physiotherapist in Whitefield.”

1. Go to Google Business Profile and sign in with the Google account you’ll use for the business.
2. Enter your exact business name, as it appears on your signboard. Don’t stuff keywords into it; that breaks Google’s guidelines.
3. Choose the primary category carefully. It has a big effect on which searches you appear for.
4. Add your address or service area, phone number, website and opening hours.
5. Verify the business. Google chooses the method based on your business, and it often asks for a short video showing your location, signage and proof of business.
6. Once verified, add real photos, products or services, and start replying to reviews.

Getting this listing right is a core part of our SEO work for local businesses.

How long does it take to show up on Google?

For most people with a reasonably distinctive name, a new personal page gets indexed within days to a couple of weeks of requesting it, and starts showing for “name + profession” searches within a few weeks. Ranking for your bare name on its own takes longer and depends almost entirely on who else shares it. A knowledge panel, if it ever comes, usually follows months of coverage on other sites. You can’t speed that last part up by asking.

What if someone famous shares your name?

This is the most common frustration once people have done everything above and still don’t see themselves on page one. If you share a name with a film star, a cricketer or a politician, you are very unlikely to outrank them for the bare name, and that’s fine. Nobody looking for you types only your name.

Privacy: be findable, not exposed

If your phone number, email or home address already shows up in Google results, Google’s Results about you tool lets you request removal of those results. Google redesigned it in 2025 so you can start requests from the search results page and track them in one place. Two things to know: removal from Google doesn’t remove the information from the website hosting it (contact the site for that), and the tool covers specific kinds of personal information, not anything you’d simply rather people didn’t see.

Scams to avoid

Because so many people still search for “add me to search”, there’s a small industry selling things that don’t exist. Walk away from anyone offering:

• “Google People Card creation” for a fee. It can’t be done.
• A “guaranteed” knowledge panel. Nobody can guarantee what Google shows. Some sellers create fake or flimsy sources that get removed later, and the panel goes with them.
• Paid Wikipedia pages. Articles about people who don’t meet Wikipedia’s notability rules usually get deleted, sometimes with a note about undisclosed paid editing.
• “Verified Google profile” badges. There’s no such product for individuals.
• Apps claiming to “add you to Google”. No app does this. Some just collect your personal details.

Troubleshooting: common problems and fixes

Your “add me to Google” checklist

• Ran an incognito name audit and noted the top five results for four searches
• Registered a domain with my name
• Published a one-page site with name, profession and city in the title and heading
• Added a clear photo, one-line bio, proof of work and profile links
• Added Person / ProfilePage schema with sameAs links and tested it
• Verified the site in Google Search Console and requested indexing
• Updated LinkedIn, Instagram and other profiles to the same name, photo and bio, all linking back
• Asked my company, past events and podcasts to link to my site
• Removed personal phone numbers and home address from public pages
• Set up a Google Business Profile, if I run a business people visit or I serve an area

Sources

• Search Engine Roundtable, “Google Search People Cards Going Away On April 7” (Google’s notice to card owners, March 2024).
• Search Engine Journal, “Google To Remove ‘Add Me To Search’ People Cards In April”.
• Google India Blog, “Introducing people cards: virtual visiting cards on Google Search” (August 2020).
• Google Knowledge Panel Help, “Get verified on Google”.
• Google Search Central, “Profile page (ProfilePage) structured data”.
• TechCrunch, “Google makes it easier to delete personal info from search results” (February 2025).