Google Display Social Profiles In Brands’ Knowledge Graph Boxes

Google have started showing brands’ social media profiles in the knowledge graph area of search results pages for some brand related queries. Profiles displayed now include links to social profiles outside of Google+, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube for example.

For instance, a search for ‘Waitrose’ will display the following, with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram profiles listed in the knowledge graph box:

Back in November, Google had started including links to social profiles for people like actors and bands. Now, extending the feature to corporate brands results. The news was announced by Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji on Google+, who stated that new structured data markup is available to specify your social profiles to Google on your brand website.

You can read Google’s documentation on the social profile markup here.

Google will process and consider your specified social media profiles, displaying what they feel are most relevant to specific search queries. This could mean, depending on what users search for, specific profiles may or may not be displayed here. In addition, only verified profiles will be displayed if the social media platform has a verification procedure.

This new feature could be useful for both brands and consumers, making it easy to discover social profiles for engagement.