How to get social profile links to show up in a business listing aka "Knowledge Graph" on the right of the Google search results?
The structured data of the website social profiles are correct. From the tests I made it doesn't have to do with the fact that it's a local business, but with the google search preferences used when performing the search or a problem when Google generates the profile box.
For https://www.google.com/search?q=dispute+bills it shows the full results:
But then there are some circumstances where the social profiles not appear:
- Changing Google Search language preference to Spanish (they only appear with Google in English)
- Doing a verbatim search also hides the profile links
- Blocking javascript also hides them:
So, your Social Profiles are correctly configured, there are some scenarios on each client configuration that may hide them.
You can try performing the search in another browser and if you can't see them report the situation using the feedback button that appears below the box as the instructions suggests in the Troubleshooting section (as you know they are already correctly configured):
report the missing events using the small "Feedback" link under the Knowledge Graph panel in Google search. Click "Wrong?" on your company's name and explain the problem, being sure to use the term "social profiles" in your description of the problem.
I must be getting blocked in your browser. It works fine for me on both Firefox and Chrome. It may be the Adblock Plus settings or some other security plugin for your browser. Here is a document on that subject: Adblock Plus Features
Ok so I got to the bottom of it. Aparently this did have to do with the site being set up as a local business.
Google did not have support for social icons for the "local knowledge graph" until the 28th/29th of this month (July 2016). Up until that time it only supported large/well recognized brands and companies and that wasn't even always the case until earlier this year. Ironically after having the site up for about two years I decide to ask this question days before they implement it.
I talked to a friend who works at Google and he verified that this was just recently implemented. There's also a twitter discussion about it here.
Google will find and implement the links on it's own if the social profiles have enough authority. But you should also use the Organizational schema markup on your own site.
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org",
"@type":"Organization",
"url":"http:\/\/disputebills.com\/",
"sameAs":[
"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/disputebills",
"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/dispute",
"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/+Disputebills",
"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/c\/Disputebills",
"https:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/disputebills",
"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DisputeBills"
],
"name":"Dispute Bills",
"legalName" : "Disputebills.com",
"logo":"http:\/\/disputebills.com\/dispute-bills.png",
"contactPoint": [{
"@type": "ContactPoint",
"telephone": "+1-888-622-2809",
"contactType": "customer service"
}]
}
</script>
It's also important that you're an owner of the google my business page as this allows you to edit the social links google adds on it's own (even though you can't remove or add them you can edit the ones that show up). Your site needs to be activated in the google search console / webmaster tols so it's connected to your website.
I'd also throw in the facebook meta tags, twitter, metas, and any others that you plan on using, and even the publisher tag
<link rel="publisher" href="https://plus.google.com/103378801284776045769">
and make sure you actually have clickable links, and maybe even some share buttons somewhere on your actual site to have a better chance of getting them to show.
To be honest I'm not convinced that the schema markup has nearly as much impact as having credible social profiles (ones that actually post frequently, have links to them, from them, and have followers. The example above "dispute bills" is a good example. You'll notice that google plus isn't currently showing up because we don't really use it all that often and barely have any followers where the other ones we have a lot more. I noticed this trend across all the sites I'm hosting.
If you have done all of the above re-crawl/index your website in the search console and report an error/feedback to google about the your business knowledge graph.
Anyway, I suggest checking out Jane's twitter discussion on this as well as the rest of her twitter posts as she seems to be very on top of the latest "Google Local Business" trends.