If you run a business account on Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube, Google can now tell you how that content is doing in its search results, not just on the platform itself. The feature, called platform properties, went fully live worldwide on 29 July 2026, having been introduced quietly earlier in the month.
Instead of verifying a website domain in Search Console, you connect a social account you control. Once it’s linked, you get a Performance report much like the one website owners have used for years: total clicks, impressions, which search terms are bringing people to your posts, and which individual posts are earning the most attention in Google Search, Discover and Google News.
It only covers four platforms so far, Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube, and only Search performance. It won’t tell you how a Reel did inside Instagram itself, only how it did when someone found it through Google.
For years, social content and search visibility have been reported on separately, with business owners piecing together Instagram Insights, TikTok Analytics and Google Search Console as if they were unrelated worlds. This closes that gap a little. A hairdresser posting transformation videos on TikTok, or a wedding venue sharing reels of a recent event, can now see whether those specific posts are surfacing when someone searches Google for something related, rather than guessing based on likes and views alone.
It’s also notable that you don’t need a website to use it. A sole trader who runs their whole presence through an Instagram business account can set one up and start seeing data immediately, which is a meaningful shift for anyone who has treated social media and “proper SEO” as two completely separate jobs. We touched on a similar blurring of lines when we looked at how small businesses can build a local online presence, and this feature is another sign that Google increasingly treats a business’s whole online footprint, not just its website, as part of what it’s indexing and surfacing.
The process is straightforward: open Search Console, choose to add a property, select the platform, and follow the authorisation steps for that account. Google, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Roundtable have all covered the rollout in more detail, including Search Engine Journal’s write-up of the launch and Search Engine Roundtable’s early look at the feature.
The data itself is unlikely to change what anyone posts overnight, but it does mean the argument for treating social content as disconnected from search is a little weaker than it was a month ago. For businesses already producing regular video or image content for social channels, it’s a free way to find out whether any of it is quietly doing double duty in Google Search as well.
