Social Media Profiles on the Knowledge Panel

[rayrober]

As large franchise organisation in the UK we have approx 400 locations ( franchisees) on GMB - all verified and published. We also manage the social media profiles for these locations ( Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram). A recent audit revealed that across our locations GMB has only picked up 57 of these social media profiles ( out of a possible 1000+). There is no obvious pattern as to why 57 work and the others do not. And where it does work, it does not pick up all social profiles for a location – for example, we have offices where GMB has connected their Facebook but it has ignored their Twitter and LinkedIn. All the links have been checked for accuracy so we do not believe that is an issue with the social media links we are using. We can also see that local competitors who have social media profiles do not seem to have the same problem. Knowledge Panel Help on GMB says that 'Eligible entities will be able to suggest the addition of new, or edit existing, social profiles. Profiles cannot be reordered' We cannot though identify anyway to do this.

Really really appreciate any explanation, suggestions or fixes relating to this.

 

[StephanieNewton]

Hi Ray!

Someone had a similarish query to yours earlier this month about claiming an IG handle.

This is the advice I offered then:

"Frustratingly, you can't actually edit social links/badges through GMB. They are generated by Google when it trusts it's linking the right social media profile to the right business. This can be done through schema markup (additional info here, here and here). But it may be a bit of a waiting game until Google can trust that the two entities are linked.

Sterling Sky's Carrie Hill also suggests using social badges as images in posts, (given how difficult it can be to generate social icons in the KP itself). So that may be something to consider in the meantime."

It's interesting to see that you've explored the different listings and not found any patterns here though . It does seem to be a really hit or miss process — BrightLocal's GMB KP only directs people to our Twitter (and its an old handle at that!) so we've not had much luck creating links between other entities like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Like I said above, I think your best bet is schema — do you know if that's being used on any or all of the sites?

I'd certainly be interested to hear if anyone else has had more consistent luck with this, as it's an issue that seems to crop up time and time again.

 

[rayrober]

Thanks Stephanie - once again appreciate your knowledge and advice.

 

[andrewthorn]

Hey @rayrober , Have you got Schema on the location pages with the social media profiles linked? I am assuming there is an individual social page per location? Let me know we have had some experience getting this to work for some of our franchise clients using Brand and Local schema.

 

[StephanieNewton]

Update: Someone on the other LSF thread I linked to has just informed me that schema for social profiles in GMB is now deprecated. I'm not 100% sure when this happened (I could be way behind on the times here) but it looks like that will no longer be as successful as an approach.

Google says "We now automatically discover social profiles to include in Google knowledge panels. If you’re verified as an official representative, you can suggest a change directly". Although it's not clear how to do this. I'm going to try to investigate this with Google and will post any findings here!

 

[rayrober]

Yes schema on GMB profile has now been deprecated. Looking at various other discussion on this topic I do not think that anyone has discovered how you can actually suggest a change directly. It is as if Google has written the guidance but not actually added the functionality.

 

[StephanieNewton]

Hey everyone,

Here's the response I got from GMB support when I asked about surfacing social media profiles in the KP:

"Hey there, Thanks for reaching out! It appears you are referring to the social profile links that show in the Knowledge Graph on search. This information is pulled automatically by our system using algorithms. We can't guarantee your social links will appear there, learn more: https://goo.gle/2wUPLHt Let us know if you've any questions. Regards, Nick"

Seems it really is a guessing game and all you can do is a) use consistent names across all profiles and website, and b) try to get profiles verified. But I imagine consistently posting and engaging must help a bit too.

 

[Hammer]

Hey everyone,

Here's the response I got from GMB support when I asked about surfacing social media profiles in the KP:

"Hey there, Thanks for reaching out! It appears you are referring to the social profile links that show in the Knowledge Graph on search. This information is pulled automatically by our system using algorithms. We can't guarantee your social links will appear there, learn more: https://goo.gle/2wUPLHt Let us know if you've any questions. Regards, Nick"

Seems it really is a guessing game and all you can do is a) use consistent names across all profiles and website, and b) try to get profiles verified. But I imagine consistently posting and engaging must help a bit too.

Im going to also try sharing Google posts on to the social media sites (example Facebook) to see of that helps trigger anything... hey it can’t hurt, right?