If you’ve searched for a local business on Google recently, you might have noticed something new on its profile: a carousel of its latest social media posts, sitting right there alongside the reviews and photos.
Google calls it “Social media updates”, and it does exactly what it sounds like — it pulls recent posts from a business’s connected social accounts (Facebook, Instagram, and others) and displays them directly on the Google Business Profile. No extra work, no re-posting. If your socials are linked and active, Google surfaces them for you.
It’s a small change with a bigger message behind it: Google increasingly treats your social media activity as part of your local search footprint.
What the feature actually is
When someone searches for your business by name, Google shows your Business Profile — the panel with your hours, reviews, photos, and contact details. The new “Social media updates” section adds a scrollable strip of your most recent social posts to that panel, each labelled with the platform it came from and how long ago it was posted.
It’s worth being clear about the current state of the rollout, because the breathless “this changes everything” posts going around social media skip this part. As of now, the feature has been rolling out gradually — it started with single-location food and drink businesses across markets including Australia, and it shows most reliably on branded searches on mobile. Google has been widening eligibility over time, but not every business will see it on their profile yet.
So if you check your profile today and the carousel isn’t there, don’t panic — it doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong. The smart move is to get set up now so you’re ready when it reaches your category.
Why it matters for local SEO
Google’s local ranking algorithm weighs three things: relevance, distance, and prominence — how established and trusted your business looks online. (We covered this in detail in Local SEO Citations: How to Get Found Online.)
Social media has always fed into prominence in a loose, behind-the-scenes way. What’s changed is that Google is now putting that activity on the profile itself. An active, well-tended social presence becomes a visible signal of a living, operating business — and a stale or empty one becomes visible too.
It also gives you more ways to occupy the search result. Instead of a single profile panel, a searcher sees your hours, your reviews, your photos, and a current snapshot of what you’re up to. That’s more surface area working for you before they ever click through to your website.
Why it matters for AI visibility
Here’s the part that’s easy to miss. The same content that feeds your Business Profile increasingly feeds AI-powered search — Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the rest. These systems are trying to understand what your business does so they can decide when to recommend it.
A social feed full of clear, specific posts — “we now offer X”, “here’s a project we completed in [suburb]”, “book your Y before winter” — gives those systems concrete, current information to work with. A feed of memes and motivational quotes gives them very little.
Connecting your socials to Google effectively hands AI systems a tidy, structured stream of evidence about your business. The clearer that stream, the more confidently they can describe and suggest you.
What to do about it
Three practical steps:
1. Connect your social profiles to your Business Profile. Log in to your Google Business Profile, find the social media links section, and add your Facebook, Instagram, and any other active accounts. This is the prerequisite for the carousel to ever appear — Google can’t show posts from accounts it doesn’t know about.
2. Stay genuinely active. A carousel of three posts from eight months ago is worse than no carousel at all. You don’t need to post daily, but you do need a consistent rhythm. Pick a cadence you can actually sustain.
3. Post with substance, not just personality. This is the one worth getting right. You don’t need to abandon the fun, behind-the-scenes, or educational content that makes your brand likeable — that content still does its job. But make sure a real share of your posts plainly state what you do, what you offer, and where you do it. Your services, your products, your locations, your areas of expertise. The clearer you are, the easier you are for both customers and AI systems to understand and recommend.
The bigger picture
None of this replaces the fundamentals — a fast, well-built website, accurate listings, and real reviews still do the heavy lifting. But it’s a useful reminder that your online presence is increasingly read as one connected whole. Your website, your Business Profile, your social accounts, your directory listings — Google and AI systems stitch them together to form a picture of your business.
The businesses that win are the ones whose picture is consistent, current, and clear.
If you’d like a hand getting your local presence in order — Business Profile, social connections, citations, and all — our Business Booster service is built for exactly this. Get in touch and we’ll take a look at where you stand.