For a number of years Google Scholar has been the most popular academic search engine. Sure there have been others (e.g., ERIC) but overall I think most people would agree that they find themselves turning to Google Scholar more and more each year. Google Scholar recently developed the ability to create a Google Scholar Profile.

The following is a screenshot of my Google Scholar Profile.
You can access my live Google Scholar Profile online at: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lvLel-MAAAAJ&hl=en. While there are problems or limitations to a Google Scholar Profile (e.g., it doesn’t differentiate how many citations are self-citations), it is a nice way to get a glimpse of all of your work on one page.

Recently though Microsoft decided to challenge Google’s dominance in the academic search engine world with the development of “Microsoft Academic Search” which can be accessed at: http://academic.research.microsoft.com. And with this new tool came their equivalent of a profile. Here is an example of my Microsoft Academic Search profile:

One nice thing about Microsoft’s version is that they let you embed it:

But as you can see from the embedded code above, it isn’t quite as clean as visiting the profile directly: http://academic.research.microsoft.com/Author/4019111/patrick-r-lowenthal

For more on web presence, visit: http://patricklowenthal.com/intentional-web-presence-10-seo-strategies-every-academic-needs-to-know/