How Do I Add My Social Media Profiles to Google?
Update 2019/2020: Social profile schema markup is officially deprecated, meaning that Google no longer considers it for informing which social profiles are featured in the organization’s or person’s Knowledge Panel. Google now automatically discovers social profiles and chooses which to include, often testing different profiles for user engagement. You can still help update your knowledge panel by making a suggestion.
Suggestions can only be made by logged in Google accounts that are verified as representatives of the organization or person featured in the knowledge panel. To be considered a verified representative, search for your name, or the person or organization you represent, click on claim this knowledge panel and follow the steps from there. You must sign in to an official site recognized by Google, including YouTube, Search Console, Facebook, and Twitter. While the ultimate call is Google’s, suggestions that are backed up by verifiable and official sources are more likely to be accepted.
In November 2014, Google extended the abilities of the Google Knowledge Graph Box to support adding links from social networking sites outside of Google+. Then, only high profile people, like politicians and celebrities were featured. But now, the Knowledge Graph allows social profiles from big brands. This gives marketers a huge opportunity to grab more visibility and increase user navigation.
What are the Benefits to Social Media Schema Markup?
Google says the goal of the Knowledge Graph is to help users find and use information to resolve their search query without having to navigate to multiple sites to find the exact information they need. So, as more and more people search for branded social media profiles, if your brand isn’t on social networks and predominately displayed, you’re missing out.
This basically offers new, prime real estate that’s up for grabs to promote organic SERP to leverage social visibility to generate more value behind social strategies.
Which Social Profile can be Displayed on Google?
Under Google’s structured data markup, you’re able to specify the social profiles that appear in search results by adding a markup on your official website to appear in the Knowledge Graph. However, sites will have to go through a verification process because Google will only show verified profiles. And, the social profiles used in the markup must correspond with those that users see on the same page.
The best way to have your brand’s profiles displayed in the Knowledge Graph is using a markup code to specify each profile on your website. Currently, you’re able to specify social media profiles for corporate brands on:
- Google+
- YouTube
- Myspace
- SoundCloud
- Tumblr
While Google encourages you to specify other social profiles, right now, these are the only ones that are included in the Knowledge Graph results. As Google’s algorithm continues to process social media profiles, the most relevant will be displayed as a response to the search query.
How to Add a Structured Data & Schema Markup to Your Site
According to Google’s guidelines to specify a markup, use the scheme.org vocabulary and JSON-LD markup format. This is an open standard to embed structured data onto webpages for Google to recognize the data as a social profile.
To do this, publish a markup on a page of your official website without blocking Googlebot by robots.txt. You’ll also need to include a Person or Organization record within the markup using the URL of your official site and the “sameAs” for the URLs of your official social media pages.
How to Specify Multiple Social Sites with JSON-LD
Keeping in stride with the schema.org language, use this simple template to specify multiple social media sites that are associated with one organization:
<script type=”application/ld+json”>
{“@context” : “https://schema.org”,
“@type” : “Organization”,
“name” : “Your Brand’s Name”,
“url” : “https://www.yourwebsite.com”,
“sameAs” : [ “social media profile link”,
“Social media profile link”,
“Social media profile ink”]
}
</script>
To specify a person instead of an organization, use the same template as above, but replace the “type” with “Person” instead of “Organization.” Then, use the person’s name instead of the organization’s name.
You’re also able to replace the URL and social values with your own to insert the code into the page to show the profiles. The markup doesn’t have to be the same as above and can be formatted differently. The above is just an example.
How to Specify using Microdata or RDF
As long as you’re using the same schema.org types as the example, you’re able to use microdata or RDFa markups instead of JSON-LD. An example of this is:
<span> itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/Organization”>
<link itemprop=”url” href=”URl of your site”>
<a itemprob=”sameAs” href=”your Facebook link”>FB</a>
<a itemprop=”sameAs” href=”your twitter link”>Twitter</a>
</span>
How to Test and Publish the Specified Markup
Your structured data that’s enclosed with the <script types=application/ld+json”> tags is able to be inserted into any HTML page of your brand’s official website. Then, it will be crawled and indexed by Google.
You’ll need to first verify and test the markup to determine how it will be processed by Google. Simply paste the HTML source from your markup page into Google’s Structured Data Tool (or add a URL).
Google will then crawl the code and then tell you if it validates.
On the right side of the box, you’ll get the All Good that’s highlighted in green, as well as highlighted errors. The box will allow you to expand the Organization markup element to see your social media markup. For more in depth results, click Results to filter down to Social Profile Links to see the social media structured data.
You can then resubmit your entire site or just individual URLs with the fetch as Googlebot tool.
Specifying Social Profiles
At the end of the day, any online business that uses social media should be adding this markup. It allows you to have more presence on Google and who doesn’t want that?
Sources:
- “Google Knowledge Graph Now Showing Social Profiles for Brands,” Search Engine Land
- “Ask Google to Re-Craw your URLs,” Search Console Help
- “Specifying Your Social Profiles in Google,” Google Structured Data
