• by Laurie Sullivan , July 8, 2026

Google Search Console has long provided website owners with data on impressions, clicks and query terms, but until now marketers integrating social platforms into Google have had limited visibility into how content surfaces when people search on its engine.

Google this week introduced "platform properties" in Search Console to help website owners and creators understand how their social and video posts perform across Google Search and Discover.

Annie-Mai Hodge, founder of Girl Power Marketing, a social media management consultancy in England, said most social creators responding to platform properties call Google's update "huge" for the "social media SEO world."

One LinkedIn commenter called it "a quiet but meaningful move for SEOs and content creators." That is likely because it allows advertisers, creators and publishers to track the search terms leading people to their Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube content on Search, and see precisely how the audiences interact with the posts.

Samra Tyagi, a social media manager in India, commented in a LinkedIn post, calling the feature the biggest "Social SEO update of the year."

Platform properties offer three reports. The "Performance” report shows total clicks, impressions and related metrics, with filtering and sorting options that identify the individual posts and search queries driving traffic.

The “Insight” report highlights recent traffic trends, top-performing posts and how audiences discover the account through Google. The “Achievements” report tracks growth milestones, such as reaching a new threshold for clicks from Google Search within a 28-day period.

The reports mirror the structure of existing Search Console reporting for websites, but the data is separated by platform properties, which means a creator or a publisher can review performance for Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube independently rather than combining those signals into one.

Moshe Samet, product manager lead for Search Console, pointed to additional data in the Google Help Center to help creators and publishers understand their metrics when Search Console handles specific types of platform property content and search interactions.

In Instagram stories, when an account surfaces Google search it is counted as an impression. If a story appears in search results and a user clicks it, it is counted as a click.

Videos played on Google can appear in different ways. When video content appears in Search or Discover results, it counts as an impression. If a user clicks it, it counts as a click. Even if that click opens the video inside the Google viewer, Google views the click in Search Console.

Empty charts may appear for those who have not yet added a property, and could take a few days to collect and process performance metrics after setup. If the property was created recently, charts will only show data for the days since collection started.