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For years, Google Search Console was a tool confined to a single domain—you could check how your own website was performing, but there was no official way to verify how content published outside of your website, such as on a brand's social media profiles, was performing in Google Search. Google is changing this. The company has introduced a new feature that, for the first time, allows you to combine Search Console data with activity on the four largest social and video platforms. For brands, online stores, and marketing agencies like ours, this is a significant change in how they measure a brand's true online visibility.
Search Console is no longer just about websites
Previously, Search Console focused solely on a verified domain—you could analyze phrases, clicks, impressions, and page rank, but all of this related to a single, specific URL to which you had administrative access. Social media, despite long being an important element of brand visibility online, remained beyond the tool's reach—data on their effectiveness had to be derived solely from the platform's native analytics (e.g., Meta Business Suite or TikTok Analytics), which provide no insight into how this content is being discovered on Google.
A new feature, which Google calls platform properties, fills this gap. For the first time, account administrators can verify and connect a social profile or video channel to Search Console—even though they don't have developer access in the traditional sense (as with their own domain). This allows them to see how specific posts, videos, or profiles are being found in Google search results, what search queries lead to them, and how much traffic they actually generate.
The feature currently covers four platforms: Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube. These are the most popular channels where brands and creators publish visual and video content, and as it turns out, they have long been indexed and shown in Google search results, just without the ability to measure this effect within Google itself.
Three places where new data appears
Google didn't create a new section in Search Console from scratch—instead, it expanded three existing reports to include social and video platform data. This is important because it means that people who already use Search Console won't have to learn a completely new tool.
1. Performance report
This is the heart of the new feature. Here, you'll find exactly the same types of metrics you're used to when analyzing your own website: total clicks, views, as well as the ability to filter and sort data. The difference is that this time, they apply not to website subpages, but to specific posts and social media profiles. You can see which posts and search queries generate the most traffic from Google, and the data—just like with a classic performance report—can be exported and analyzed in another tool, such as a spreadsheet or BI system.
2. Insights Report
This report is more concise in nature – instead of a detailed data table, it presents a general overview of trends: how traffic changes over time, which posts are performing best, and how users discover a given account through Google. It's a useful tool for those who don't want (or don't have the time) to analyze raw data but need a quick summary – for example, for a monthly report for a client.
Interestingly, this type of data isn't entirely new – Search Console Insights previously offered some, rather limited, insight into social channels. The new feature is a natural extension of this mechanism, albeit much more extensive and better integrated with the rest of the tool.
3. Achievements
This is the most "soft" element of the new feature – a section where Search Console notifies you when certain thresholds are crossed, such as a new number of clicks from Google Search in the last 28 days. This is both motivating and organizing – it allows you to track your profile's development over time without having to manually compare data from previous periods.
How do I connect my social profile to Search Console?
The process for verifying a new property is similar to the standard procedure for adding a domain to Search Console, although this time it applies to a profile rather than a website. It looks like this:
- Open Google Search Console and log in to the account you want to associate with your profile.
- Go to the Search Console verification page or use the property selection drop-down menu available anywhere in the tool and click "Add Property."
- Choose one of the four available platforms: Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube.
- Follow the on-screen verification instructions to securely confirm that you (or your company) are indeed managing the profile and authorize the connection to your Search Console account.
It's worth remembering that, according to Google, the feature is being rolled out gradually over the next few weeksto various accounts. It's possible that, even if all the conditions are met, the "platform property" option won't appear yet. This is normal for this type of rollout, and you should simply wait or check back later.
Importantly, help documentation for this feature appeared in Google's help center weeks before the feature itself officially launched, before being briefly removed – suggesting the rollout was planned and tested internally some time in advance before rolling out to a wider audience.
How is this different from “search profiles” in Google Discover?
It's important not to confuse this new feature with the so-called search profiles that Google introduced as part of Google Discover. This is a completely separate feature, aimed at a different purpose and with its own independent analytics system. Platform properties in Search Console apply solely to how content from social media and video platforms is discovered in the classic Google search engine—not in Discover.
This distinction has practical significance: if in the future you come across materials about "search profiles", they should not be confused with the function described here - these are two different tools, measuring different things and in different places in the Google ecosystem.
Why is this a big change for brands and online stores?
Until now, brands haven't had any official, reliable data source on how their presence on social media platforms translates into visibility on Google. We could only assume—based on the general knowledge that Google indexes public profiles on Instagram, X, and YouTube videos—that such traffic exists, but there was no tool that could measure it directly, from the same dashboard where we analyze the rest of our SEO efforts.
The new feature changes this in several specific areas:
- Real insight into the customer journey. You can finally see exactly which Google searches lead users not only to a store's website but also to a specific Instagram post or YouTube video. This allows for a better understanding of how customers actually find a brand – often, the first point of contact isn't the website at all, but rather the social media visible in search results.
- Verifying the effectiveness of video and visual content. Until now, assessing social media effectiveness has been based almost exclusively on native platform metrics—reach, likes, comments. Now, a completely new perspective is emerging: how much of this traffic and interest actually comes from Google search, rather than from a given platform's algorithm or paid activities.
- Better content and keyword planning. Knowing the specific phrases that lead users to a brand's social media profiles is valuable information not only for the social media department but also for the entire content strategy – including the content published on the website. If a given phrase generates traffic from Google to an Instagram profile, it's probably worth considering creating content around it on the company blog or product page as well.
- Integrating SEO and social media into a single strategy. Until now, these two areas of marketing activities were often analyzed and planned separately, by different people, using different tools. Sharing data in a single dashboard makes it easier to treat them as elements of a single, cohesive online brand visibility strategy – which in practice means fewer fragmented reports and more informed decisions about where to invest time and budget.
- A new argument in conversations with clients and decision-makers. For marketing agencies and freelancers, it's also a concrete, compelling argument in conversations with clients – previously, it was difficult to clearly prove that social media activity had any impact on visibility on Google. Now, it's quantifiable.
What to watch out for when implementing a new feature
Even though the new product is promising, it is worth approaching it with a certain degree of caution – at least at first:
- A gradual rollout means incomplete data across the industry. Since the feature is rolling out to different accounts at different times, comparing results across brands or competitors can be misleading for now – not everyone has access to the same data.
- A fresh feature often means fresh bugs. Newly implemented features in Google tools can be rough at first – it's worth observing how the data behaves in the first few weeks before considering it a fully reliable source for strategic decisions. This is a similar principle of caution we apply to any major technical change – similar to website migration, where new data also needs to be observed before making decisions based on it.
- This data reflects visibility on Google, not all social media traffic. The new report only shows the portion of activity that flows through Google Search. It doesn't replace native platform analytics, but merely supplements them with additional, previously unavailable context.
Comment swiatcyfrowy.pl
At swiatcyfrowy.pl, we've long been telling our clients that effective brand visibility online today means much more than just a website's position in search results. It's the sum of signals flowing from the entire online ecosystem: website, blog content, customer reviews, and increasingly, social media and video platform activity. The new Google Search Console feature aligns precisely with this thinking – for the first time, it provides us with additional, reliable data to assess how our clients' content activities truly translate into visibility on Google, regardless of the platform on which that content is published.
If you run an online store or brand and are wondering how to leverage the new capabilities of Google Search Console in your visibility strategy, take advantage of our free pre-audit and see how your brand performs online today, before we plan the next steps together, so that SEO and social media presence truly drive each other, instead of functioning as two separate, unrelated activities.
