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I built a site over a year ago and it's been verified with Google my business, Google plus, analytics, webmaster tools, etc for that long. I've also included all the relevant structured data to have certain things show up in Google search results that entire time, but social profile links have never worked.

I have the following included in my <head> tag on all my pages. 

<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\/103378801284776045769\/", "https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCqY8keTyAhqo3M9qZsGnofA", "https:\/\/www.pinterest.com\/disputebills\/", "https:\/\/twitter.com\/DisputeBills"],
    "name": "Dispute Bills",
    "logo": "http:\/\/disputebills.com\/assets\/uploads\/2016\/01\/dispute-bills-logo.png"
}
</script>

Now when doing a search for something like "dispute bills" the business shows up in the sidebar, but it doesn't show social profile links like facebook, twitter, etc...

no social links

Reading over the instructions again, it definitely looks like I did everything correctly and it even passes the structured data testing tool without any issues.

The article I linked in the beginning shows that could take up to 3 weeks for things to show up, but it's been well over a year now. Any suggestions to what I'm doing wrong? Does it have something to do with the fact that it's a local business and not a brand?

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4 Answers 4

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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:

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But then there are some circumstances where the social profiles not appear:

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  • Doing a verbatim search also hides the profile links

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  • Blocking javascript also hides them:

enter image description here

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.

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  • Thanks for the well written answer. I actually figured out the problem, ironically this just because available to local businesses which is why it all of a sudden started showing up.
    – Bryan Willis
    Aug 2, 2016 at 15:05
3

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

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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.

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Google developer guide on this page under Social profile links section says -

Google only shows verified profiles for sites with a verification process. In some cases, Google algorithms find information that is publicly available on the web. You can use this markup to override the information Google finds automatically, but you can't specify not to list a social profile.

I could see on many searches even non-verified pages are shown on knowledge graph, but verifying pages on social platforms gives you higher changes of getting social links displayed on knowledge graph.

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