Google will now show you how your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube profiles perform in Search. Set it up today, it is free.
Most owners have no idea how often their social profiles show up in Google. That changed this week, quietly, and setting it up costs nothing.
Google has rolled out a Search Console update that lets you add your Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube presences as "platform properties" and see their Search performance, impressions, clicks, and the queries that surfaced them, alongside your website's (news.google.com). Search Engine Roundtable also surfaced a companion trick: those platform properties can show AI-surface performance reporting too, meaning you can start to see when your profiles appear in Google's AI experiences, not just classic results (seroundtable.com).
For a small business, this closes a real blind spot. When someone Googles your business name, your Instagram or your YouTube channel is often on page one next to your website. Until now you could not see any numbers behind that. Now you can.
Why this is worth 15 minutes
- Your social profiles are search results. For many local businesses, the Instagram profile outranks the website for brand searches. Knowing which queries surface which property tells you where customers actually first meet you.
- It is early data on AI visibility. The AI-report angle matters more than it looks. Google showing platform properties inside AI performance reporting is one of the first free, first-party windows into how the AI surfaces treat a small brand's presence. Free first-party data beats every third-party guess.
- It may change your content math. If your TikTok gets Search impressions and your blog does not, that is a signal about where Google thinks your authority currently lives, and about what to fix.
How to set it up
In Search Console, add the social profiles you own as new properties, the platform-property flow verifies ownership through the account itself. Once verified, performance data starts accumulating; give it a couple of weeks before drawing conclusions. Check the queries report first: the searches surfacing your profiles are often not the ones you expect.
The honest caveats
This is measurement, not magic: adding the properties changes nothing about how you rank. Coverage of the AI reporting angle describes early, partially documented behavior, so treat those numbers as directional for now. And profile visibility is not a substitute for a website machines can read; it is a complement to it.
Your website remains the one property where you control everything the machines see. If you have never checked what search and AI crawlers actually receive when they read it, our free scan does exactly that, in plain language, and pairs well with the new Search Console data: one shows what Google sees of your profiles, the other shows what every engine sees of your site.
Sources: Google News syndication on the Search Console platform-properties rollout, July 10, 2026; Search Engine Roundtable on AI performance reports for platform properties, July 10, 2026 (seroundtable.com).