With Google deprecating the social profile markup, some businesses may be out of luck with being able to control the social buttons shown in their local knowledge panels.
As a reminder, Google said they are no longer going to be using this markup to determine the social buttons used in the knowledge panels. They gave two options either claim your knowledge panel and/or let Google figure it out without the markup.
But for businesses that might not work too well. If the buttons are missing these businesses may not have a way to communicate to Google that they are missing. Joy Hawkins wrote "What are we supposed to do for local knowledge panels? There is no option to suggest ones that are missing."
Ari Roth suggested a way Google can make this work, but right now, these options are not available:
This is an excellent question. I suggest one of two solutions: 1) The same "Suggest an edit" option given to verified owners of non-local Knowledge Panels. 2) Simply adding the ability to include social links in the GMB dashboard like we can include a website.
— Ari Roth (@aroth26) June 27, 2019
To be clear, for businesses that are trying to specify different country specific versions of social media buttons - that can be handled. But not specific local/regional versions:
You can suggest different profiles per country by submitting each one separately. Make sure you explicitly state the country and profile link in each request.
— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) June 26, 2019
Forum discussion at Twitter.
