I have a couple of questions about schema

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Tim Capper: Hi
  
  Yes you should have @type PostalAddress because this defines the structure within which is an address>
  
  Schema does not guarantee that Google will display your social icons in business knowledge panel. It also depends if they can confirm that these are the same business and are they important enough to display to users.
  
  Have you added an address into your schema - is your address on site.
  
  Some basic local business structured data types - however if you are using a plugin, it may not provide all the different versions / use cases I list:
  
  https://onlineownership.com/local-seo-tips-for-local.../
• 
  Stockbridge Truslow: Keep in mind that there are two types of knowledge panels - one for local businesses and one for brands. Your local business panel can be enhanced (somewhat) but what you put into your schema, but most of that info is drawn directly from your GMB listing itself. Your "brand" panel, on the other hand, is built from things it discovers on the web - including the stuff you put into your schema. Brand panels tend to be for national companies, but Local Business ones tend to only be for... well, local businesses.
  More Info: https://gofishdigital.com/create-google-knowledge-panel/
  
  Over the past year or so (since way more recently than the above article was published) knowledge panels have expanded a bit - with your Local Business panels having elements of the brand panel added to them. The GMB stuff is pretty straightforward, but the rest of it - Google wants to verify. You can`t just say, "This is my twitter account" - Google wants to take some time and find other sources which confirm that to be true. I am not sure of a timeline, but when we SEO folks say that it really takes about 6 months for Google to do all it`s voodoo to properly rank a page, it`s pretty accurate. If that`s the case, then I`d say you`re looking at (up to) 6 months for these additions to your schema to appear as well. It could be faster if there`s a lot of corroborating evidence out there. It could be slower if there is conflicting evidence out there (like multiple pages on Facebook). We have a client who had (for some reason) 3 different LinkedIn accounts under their business name - and their LinkedIn account we told Google (and everyone else) to use still wasn`t appearing. We finally convinced the client to take some time and kill off the other accounts and poof - within 2 months, the LinkedIn account started to appear.
  
  As for the postalAddress - it doesn`t really mean "Mailing Address" - it`s a data type, with a specific format that it`s looking for. (The possible values for that are in the top section here: https://schema.org/PostalAddress ). If your "address" didn`t have a "PostalAddress" type, you could just put in your address in text form (though your plugin probably doesn`t allow that). Using the postaladdress format, though - the machines reading it can get more info because it knows specifically what each thing means. Different countries put things in different order when they write an address (like on an envelope or something) but labeling each element leaves no doubt as to what is what.
• 
  Jason Chong: Thanks for the detailed answer! Patience I guess for GMB stuff for my business / brand panel. I just keep suspecting an issue as it has Facebook listed but not the others, I guess that was just easier for it to verify. Will have to keep watching and waiting it seems!
• 
  Stockbridge Truslow: There`s this as well: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7249596?hl=en
  
  That gets a bit more in-depth on the verification process. I did forget to mention that consistency in your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) across all the various platforms can help. Try to be consistent there. If not possible/practical to make the business names match up, you can try adding "alternateName" (https://schema.org/alternateName) into your LocalBusiness or WebSite markup. (I don`t have any hard nor anecdotal evidence on how effective that may or may not be, but it`s there for that reason.)
  
  The more consistent everything is - the faster it will be. The more variation (thus needing more time to figure out the true relationships between everything) the longer.