Google says the tool makes it easier to set up Google Alerts, and suggests search terms you may wish to monitor, and provides links to resources that offer information on how to control what third-party info is posted about you on the web. Product Manager Andreas Turk writes on the Google Public Policy Blog:

In recent years, it’s become easier and easier to publish information about yourself online, through powerful new platforms like social networking sites and photo sharing services. One way to manage your privacy on these sites is to decide who specifically can see this information, determining whether it is visible to just a few friends, family members or everyone on the web. But, another important decision is choosing how you are identified when you post that information. We have worked hard to build various identity options into Google products. For example, while you may want to identify yourself by name when you post an answer to a question in a forum so that readers know the response is reputable, if you upload videos about a controversial cause you may prefer to post under a pseudonym.

However, your online identity is determined not only by what you post, but also by what others post about you — whether a mention in a blog post, a photo tag or a reply to a public status update. When someone searches for your name on a search engine like Google, the results that appear are a combination of information you’ve posted and information published by others.

As far as I can tell, there’s not a whole lot new going on here. Me on the Web simply shows you what links you have attached to your Google Profile, which you could also see by actually going to your Google Profile (and which you presumably already know, since you set them up in the first place), a link to Google alerts, and a couple of Help Center articles about reputation management. This is all accessible from the Google Dashboard, which there is a good chance you hardly visit. At best, it looks like just another access point for this info. I guess the alerts suggestions could be mildly helpful.

All of that said, Me on the Web certainly can’t hurt anything. If it makes a few more people, a bit more conscious of their online reputation, that’s not a bad thing by any means. It should also serve as another subtle reminder to Google users that they have Google profiles (which provide a landing page for those Google social products – Buzz and +1s).

To the service’s credit, GMail has also identified 1000 other spam messages in the past five days – quite the up-tick, actually, and has promptly removed them to my spam folder.

I didn’t go to my spam folder looking for my Google Alerts. I went there looking for an evaluation from one of my graduate school mentors (Phil Deaver, you rock as a teacher by the way).

While I was digging through the garbage there, I noticed my name, in large comforting letters, staring back at me from an entwinement of male member enlargement promises, banks I don’t go to, and a smattering of foreign alphabets.

(I take no shame in admitting I ego-alert myself. People talk about me online sometimes. Most of the time, it’s good. I also have them set up for several other topics, so there.)

Sure enough, covered in day-old syrupy irony, all of my Google Alerts were landing in my Google-provided email spam folder. And I just laughed and laughed.

I didn’t dig past the 1000 messages to learn just how far back Google tweaked its spam filters so hard it flagged itself. But I missed 61 alerts for "Google" and a few for myself.

If I hadn’t have checked there, I might not have known Meredith Smith’s Top Three Misconceptions of the New Google Analytics Interface, Akbar‘s missive on the Google Salesforce.com deal, or What’s Behind Google’s Sneak Attack Against Microsoft.

But I did know that anyway. I have other ways of gathering information, thank googness.

Most certainly, though, I wouldn’t have known that there’s a Jason Miller who pitches for the Rochester Red Wings, or one that is an executive member of the Meat Industry Action Group.

(There are lots of me’s out there, with every variation of my full name, initials, with middle and without – five writers, one race car driver, one rodeo guy, two actors, and, apparently, a baseball player and meat industry executive. This is why, as soon as I get around to it, I will be Jason Lee Miller, Lord and Baron of Ladonia.)

So anyway, Google, it’s nice you’re tough on spam, but do you need to be so hard on yourself?