Google Now Showing Facebook, Other Social Posts on Your GBP Profile
Google Posts have declined in visibility. Social posts on your GBP could replace them, extending their reach. But there's a lot we still don't know yet.
Updated: 3/12/24
Today Google is now showing social media posts from Facebook, Instagram and other social media sites on the mobile Google Business Profile (h/t to Krystal Tang of Uberall for spotting). The presentation of the social posts occurs in the new mobile layout with drop downs, first seen last week. It appears to supplant any Google Updates (aka Posts) that are present. The roll-out is US only at this point.
On March 6th, we found evidence of this change in an updated Google support document titled Manage social media links which indicated Google's is plan on showing social media posts from other sites on your GBP page. The change to the help file was first spotted by Local SEO Stefan Somborac, and while it showed that the feature coming the details were not very clear.
Relevant Sites
The document indicates that a business can add any of the following social sites to its Google Business Profile:
- TikTok
- X (formerly known as Twitter)
- YouTube
Updated FAQ
Google has now fully updated the FAQ for the social media links help page and included specifics as to which links can be used and why they might not show:
What Does It Look Like?
It can be seen in the new layout of the Business Profile and is titled Social media updates and sometimes replaces the Updates drop down that displayed the Google Updates (Posts) and sometimes sits below it. The three most current social updates are present in a scrollable carousel.
We have also seen instances when the GBP drop downs are not present and the social profile shows up much closer to the main profile information.
It is not yet clear whether how Google will pick and choose which social site to show there if more than one site is listed in the Google Business Profile.
Implications for Your Business
If your business is already active and stays current on some of the above social networks you shouldn't do anything differently. It makes sense to post regularly at the third party sites where you are already getting traction. If and when this change occurs it should give an additional visibility boost to those posts, and effectively leverage a single effort. It is possible that you need to maintain some level of posting frequency to get visibility but we don't really know at this point. In the example above the posts showing were two weeks old.
History of Social Links
Google first started adding social links to GBP profiles in July, 2016. However they were automatically scraped and often assigned to the wrong business listing. There was no obvious way to get them on your profile but there were some good suggestions. In summer of 2023 it seemed that Google would add the ability for owners to add them themselves and they did roll out in the fall of last year.
Whither Google Posts (aka Updates)?
GBP Updates (aka Posts) have been declining in visibility. Obviously if a business is active on a social media and that starts showing on your Google results, the motivation to continue posting on Google will decline significantly. Unless of course a GBP Update impacts your rank. 🤣
According to Whitespark's Darren Shaw's research: "137,665 out of 1,101,573 business had at least one active post at the time of my data collection. ... 12.5% had posts | 87.5% had no active posts." That is a fairly low adoption rate and leads me to speculate that Google Updates may become Social Updates.
Google has been actively cutting features of late as they move their focus to the AI future and Posts/Updates could be a casualty.
Stay Tuned
There is a lot about this upcoming change we have absolutely no clue about. At this point what we do have is speculation and questions: When will it happen? What will it look like? How should we respond? Will Posts hit the graveyard?
This change, if implemented well (i.e., is visible and reliably attaches to the correct profile) could simplify the SMBs marketing job and increase reach – both obvious wins.