Search Console Adds Social and Video Platform Properties

Until now, Search Console has only ever reported on content hosted on a domain you control and can verify. If a brand published on a third-party platform, that performance data lived inside each platform's own analytics, with nothing to tie it back to how the content actually surfaced in Google. Platform properties close that gap. For the first time, you can log into Search Console, connect a social or video account, and see the search queries that led people to your posts on those networks.

This matters because a growing share of the content people discover through Google no longer sits on traditional websites. Google has been steadily surfacing social posts, short-form video and creator content in both Search results and the Discover feed. Marketers have known this was happening but have had no first-party way to measure it. Platform properties give them one.

How platform properties work

Platform properties sit alongside the domain and URL-prefix properties Search Console has always offered, but they represent an account on an external network rather than a site you host. Google currently supports four platforms at launch: Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube. You add one the same way you add any property, by opening the property selector, choosing "Add property", selecting the platform, and completing an on-screen flow that securely authorises the connection to your account.

Once connected, the property exposes a familiar set of reports. The Performance report shows total clicks, impressions and the other metrics Search Console users already rely on, with the ability to filter and sort down to individual posts and the specific queries driving traffic to them. If you would rather analyse the numbers in your own stack, the data can be exported in the usual way.

Alongside the raw performance data, an Insights report gives a higher-level read on recent traffic trends, your best-performing posts, and how people are finding your account through Google. There is also an Achievements view that tracks growth milestones, for example when an account passes a new threshold for total clicks from Search over a rolling 28-day window. Google has said the feature builds on an earlier experiment and will roll out gradually over the coming weeks, so not every account will see it immediately.

What the reports show in practice

The most useful part of the release for practitioners is query-level visibility. A fashion brand posting on Instagram can now see that a particular reel is being surfaced for "summer linen outfit ideas" and is pulling clicks from Search, not just likes from the in-app feed. A creator on TikTok can identify which videos Google is ranking, and for what, then produce more of what is landing.

Consider a business that runs an active YouTube channel but a comparatively thin website. Historically, its Search Console account told only half the story, because the half of its audience that found it through video was invisible. With a YouTube platform property connected, that traffic becomes measurable next to the website data, and the business can finally judge which channel is doing the heavy lifting in Google discovery.

The Insights and Achievements views are aimed at a slightly different job. Rather than deep query analysis, they give a quick sense of momentum: are clicks from Search trending up, which posts are carrying that growth, and where are new audiences coming from. For a social team reporting to a marketing lead, that is a cleaner monthly narrative than screenshots stitched together from four separate native dashboards.

What this means for UK agencies and marketers

For agencies, platform properties change the shape of a search report. The old boundary between "SEO" (the website) and "social" (everything else) was always artificial from Google's point of view, because Google indexes and ranks plenty of content that never touches the client's own domain. Being able to pull Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube query data into the same tool that already anchors your SEO reporting makes it far easier to show a client the full picture of how they are found on Google.

It also sharpens content strategy. If you can see the exact queries surfacing a client's social posts in Search, you can spot demand the website is not yet answering, and either brief a post to capture it on the platform that is already ranking or build a page to own it properly. That kind of cross-channel decision was largely guesswork before. This is the sort of connected search and content thinking that sits at the centre of a modern SEO programme, rather than treating each platform as a silo.

There is a client-management angle too. Brands that publish heavily on social have long asked what return that effort produces in terms of discoverability, and the honest answer has been that the data was fragmented. A verified Search Console property with clicks, impressions and queries gives agencies a defensible, Google-sourced number to put in front of a client, which is worth more than any platform's own vanity metrics.

Worth noting is how this pairs with the wider measurement stack. Search Console has always answered the "how are we found" question, while analytics tools answer "what happened after the click". Extending the found side to cover social and video means the top of that funnel is now more complete, and the gaps between what Google reports and what lands on the website become easier to reason about. For UK teams already wrestling with attribution across paid, organic and AI-driven discovery, one more verified, first-party source of query data is a genuine gain rather than another dashboard to ignore.

Practical considerations

A few caveats are worth flagging before you promise clients the world. First, the rollout is gradual, so if a platform property is not yet available on an account, that is expected and not a fault to troubleshoot. Second, the feature reports on how content performs in Google Search and Discover specifically. It does not replace a platform's native analytics, which still cover in-app reach, engagement and the recommendation feeds that drive most social consumption. Platform properties measure the Google-discovery slice, which is a valuable slice but not the whole pie.

Verification also depends on being able to securely authorise the connection to the account, so whoever sets this up needs the appropriate access to the client's social and video profiles. That is a good prompt to tidy up account access and permissions before you begin. As with any new Google reporting surface, expect the metrics and the interface to evolve, and treat the first weeks of data as directional while coverage settles. Full setup guidance is in Google's Search Console help documentation.

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