Red Isle WebSearch for your own trade in Google one evening, the way most owners do every so often to see where they land, and you may find your website nowhere near the top. In its place sits a post from a Facebook group, Islanders trading recommendations for businesses just like yours.
Your website probably hasn't changed at all, and the likelier explanation is that Google has, because it now builds posts from Reddit threads and Facebook groups into its results. That piece of the page shows up on more searches than most owners have noticed.
Google calls it "Discussions and forums," a box that pulls in posts from public online communities such as Reddit and Facebook Groups. Ahrefs, the SEO software company, checked 145 million US Google search results and found the box on 11.7% of them, and its country comparison put Canada at 10.7%. It leans toward longer questions rather than searches where someone is ready to buy.
What is the "Discussions and forums" box?
Ahrefs researcher Glen Allsopp published the study in August 2026, and Reddit supplied the most posts by a wide margin, appearing in 83.9% of these boxes worldwide and 87.8% of them in the US. Facebook came second in the US at 38.3%, and every Facebook link in the data came from a public Facebook Group rather than a business page. Quora ranked third overall.
I wrote about a different part of Google's results, the AI-written answers at the top of many searches, in an earlier post. This box is a separate feature, and what it shows was written by people.
Does this box show up on the searches my business cares about?
Mostly on the ones where someone is asking a question rather than ready to book. Ahrefs labelled 98.7% of the box's appearances as informational searches, and it found the box roughly three times more likely to appear on an eight-word search than on searches in general.
Take two searches I made up: "plumber Charlottetown" and "anyone know a good plumber who does older houses in Charlottetown." The first is a booking search. The second is a longer question, the kind the study found the box favours, and the kind people already post in PEI Facebook groups.
Is Facebook taking my Google traffic now?
The study doesn't measure lost clicks, so nobody can say how much traffic any one business loses to this box. What it shows is that Facebook posts are now placed in front of strangers who typed a question into Google. Facebook Groups were already where a lot of PEI word of mouth happens, whether that is a town's buy-and-sell group or a trades group where someone asks who to call. When Google surfaces one of those posts, a recommendation made to neighbours can reach a stranger.
What can I do about it?
Join the groups your customers already use, such as your town's buy-and-sell page or a local trades group, and answer when someone asks for a recommendation in your line of work. Answer the way you would if a friend phoned you, with the useful detail and no sales pitch. The Ahrefs researchers give the same advice for any of these communities: go in to take part, never to spam or solely promote yourself.
Keep your Google listing and your website saying the same thing about your hours, your services and where you work, which I covered in a post on matching your business info everywhere. A stranger who finds you through a group post will go on to check both.
The good news
A big chain has nobody in a Charlottetown group who knows the street, so a local business that already answers questions there has a head start. The work is small: some time in the local groups, and a website and listing that match.
That pairing is what I build at Red Isle Web, a website and a Google listing set up to agree with each other, at a one-time price with no monthly fee, for Island businesses. Have a look at my work, or send me a note. I'll look at how your business shows up when someone searches your trade and tell you what I'd change first.