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[august_leo]

I think of Academia.edu as a similar site to facebook and would not weigh it in any decisions unless the candidate was behaving inappropriately on the site in a public way.

This reminds me: a couple nights ago I checked in on someone I went to grad school with. On the top of his Facebook profile he's now listed as a "Professor at School I Never Heard Of." So, I googled SINHO and searched for him on their site. Eventually I pieced together that he is an industry post-doc in the city he used to live in, went to SINHO for undergrad and is now teaching a class there (adjuncting). Not what I would call "Professor at SINHO."

Just thought that was a similar thing to what the OP seemed to encounter.

[etsuko]

I think the importance or prestige of the site may be field-specific.  Some very well-connected, high-profile people in my field are there and post somewhat frequently.

[nuff_said]

As a grad student I don't have a web presence on my department's site at all, so I established a profile on academia.edu to fill in the information gap for people wanting to know more about my research / teaching etc.

I've been googled a lot lately, I'm assuming because conference papers and publications have put my name 'out there'.  I'm also in the habit of googling other scholars as I become aware of their work, so I can't fault anyone for doing the same.

I would think very poorly of colleagues who misrepresented themselves, but unfortunately there is a lot of that going around. People often attend conferences and stretch the truth of position titles and affiliations.