Google Posts are appearing higher up in local knowledge panels, in a test that reverses the 2018 change that pushed the Posts section to the bottom of the panel. Search Engine Roundtable reported the move on Monday, October 19.
Ben Fisher first posted about the change a few days earlier on LinkedIn. “Good news, everybody! GBP KP is now testing a higher position on posts!” he wrote, using the shorthand for the Google Business Profile knowledge panel.
Google Posts Position: Up, Down, And Up Again
Fisher’s observation comes with a caveat that matters for anyone checking their own listings: the position is not stable. “Now every 3 days I am seeing posts move up and then 3 days later they move down,” he said.
Search Engine Roundtable’s Barry Schwartz said he is currently seeing Posts moved up higher in the panel, and published screenshots showing both the lower and the higher positions. The Posts section sits alongside a business’s social media updates in the panel — the business’s own short updates, offers and event notices published through its Google Business Profile.
The history is simple. In 2018, Google moved the Google Posts section to the bottom of the local panel, where it has largely stayed. A return to a higher position would undo an eight-year-old demotion.
This is a test sighted by practitioners, not a change Google has announced, and the three-days-up, three-days-down pattern Fisher describes is exactly what an experiment in progress looks like. Businesses checking their own panels this week may see either layout, or both in the same week.
What A Higher Position Would Change For Businesses
Placement inside the knowledge panel decides whether a Post is seen at all. A business that publishes an offer, an event or a seasonal update is writing for the panel that appears when someone searches its name — and a section at the bottom of that panel competes with reviews, photos and attributes for a scroll most searchers never make.
Schwartz made the incentive point directly: if Posts sit that high on the page, it will likely incentivise more businesses to add Google Posts to their Google Business Profiles. Posting is free and takes minutes; what has held it back is the suspicion that nobody sees the result.
The test lands in a local surface that is already changing around it. Our report on how Ask Maps replaced Business Profile Q&A covers the AI now answering customer questions, and our piece on local visibility in AI answers explains why the panel is no longer the only place a business is judged. Google’s own posts from a business are one of the few panel elements the business fully controls.
Why It Matters
The central entity is the Google Posts section of the local knowledge panel, and the attribute in play is its position. Position is distribution: the same Post, word for word, is either part of the first impression a searcher gets or a footnote below it. For local businesses and the agencies that manage their profiles, a confirmed move up would change the return on a task many have let lapse since 2018 — regular posting would again buy prominent placement on the business’s own name search, next to neighbours like reviews and photos that the business cannot control. Until Google confirms it, the right move is to watch your own panel, not to rebuild a posting calendar on a test.
Background
Google Posts launched as a way for businesses to publish short updates directly into their knowledge panels and Maps listings — offers, events and news in the business’s own words. The 2018 move to the bottom of the panel cut their visibility and, with it, how often businesses bothered. The feature has survived since as a minor part of Google Business Profile, kept alive by local marketers who valued even a low slot on a high-traffic panel.
Source: Search Engine Roundtable
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