If you post on Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube, this will be of interest to you. And if not, it’s a nice bit of knowledge for any marketing professional to have. After many years of wanting more social media data available through Google’s analytics tools, Google has finally listened. The search engine goliath has introduced a new property type in Search Console called platform properties, allowing creators and brands to see which search terms are leading people to their posts, and how people are interacting with that content once they find it, even if they don’t have a website of their own.
It’s a small addition on paper, but it closes a gap that has existed for years and been a source of frustration for agencies, social media managers and content creators. Search Console has always told you how your website performs in Search. It’s never told you how your social content performs there, even though social posts increasingly show up in Google’s results. This could be the first of several changes that bring social media and Google closer together.
What you’ll actually be able to track
Each platform property comes with three types of reporting, which will be familiar to current Search Console users.
Performance: Total clicks, impressions and related metrics for your social posts, with filtering and sorting so you can see which specific posts and search queries are driving traffic. The data can also be exported for further analysis elsewhere, useful if you’re already pulling Search Console data into a wider reporting dashboard.
Insights: An overview of recent traffic patterns, including your best-performing posts and how people are finding your account through Google. This is the report most likely to shape content decisions week to week.
Achievements: Allows you to track milestones such as hitting a new total click threshold from Search within a 28-day period. More of a motivational nudge than a strategic tool, but a nice way to flag momentum to a client or stakeholder.
How to set up social media property types in Search Console
As a Google Partner Agency we have a sense of duty to stay up to date with the latest Google trends and updates so we can advise our clients. We recommend setting up these new property types for any channels you use and would like to report on in greater detail. Remember, analytics in social platforms can not tell you how a user found your content, knowing they came from Google and what they searched to find it is strategy-shaping information! Here’s how you can get it set up:
- Open Search Console
- Go to the property selector and choose Add property
- Select Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube
- Follow the prompts to authorise the connection
How does this update differ from Search profiles
It’s worth separating this from Search profiles, which Google launched back in June. A Search profile is a public, shareable page that pulls together a creator’s content for their followers to browse. A platform property is the opposite: it’s private analytics, showing you how your posts perform in Search, rather than putting them in front of an audience directly.
Platform properties also aren’t entirely new territory. They build on a December 2025 experiment that first brought social channel data into Search Console in a limited form. This is that idea, formalised and rolled out properly.
Why this update is getting the thumbs up
For a long time, social performance and search performance have lived in separate reporting worlds. Meta and TikTok analytics on one side, Search Console and GA4 on the other, with no easy way to see where they overlap. Platform properties start to join those up. If a TikTok video is quietly picking up impressions through Google Search, you can finally see that, rather than guessing based on platform-native view counts alone.
For brands that invest across both channels, this is a useful reminder that social content doesn’t stay contained to the platform it was posted on. Google is indexing and surfacing it in Search and Discover, which means the same content strategy questions that apply to your website, what are people searching for, and does your content actually answer it, now apply to your social output too. If you need help applying an SEO strategy to your social media content, get in touch to find out how we can support you in this department.
Why isn’t LinkedIn included in the new Platform Properties Google Search Console Update?
Some B2B businesses (like us) are disappointed that the additional data doesn’t include LinkedIn. Whether this changes in time depends entirely on a shift in corporate partnerships, technical API access, and user intent.
To make Platform Properties work for Instagram or TikTok, Google has to get authorisation to access data through their API. The social platform must agree to allow Google to verify that you (the Account Holder) are the owner of that handle so Google can safely pass search query data to your dashboard. Because LinkedIn treats its B2B data as a premium commodity, they are historically much more protective against letting Google bridge into their ecosystem.
What to do now
The rollout is gradual, starting with four platforms, so don’t be surprised if the option isn’t in your Search Console account yet. When it does appear, it’s worth connecting your accounts early. A few weeks of Performance and Insights data will tell you far more about which posts genuinely gain visibility in Search than any amount of guessing, and it puts you ahead of anyone still treating social and SEO as two separate conversations. If you don’t do it already, SEO should factor into your social media content, which may also help with ranking in AI overviews.
Speak to a member of our team if you require digital marketing support on this topic or in a broader capacity.