Social & communities · Official documentation

Search Console can report Google performance for 4 social platforms: Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube

Google opened Search Console platform properties to everyone on 2026-07-29, for Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube. Google says the property shows performance on Google Search only, not views inside the platform. Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, Medium, and Quora are not on the supported list.

How often a social post was seen or clicked in Google Search has mostly come from third-party estimates. Google now reports those numbers inside Search Console.

We read 3 Search Central blog posts, the Search Console Help article and Google's analysis guide on 2026-09-14, and collected the sentences that set the scope and the limits.

Finding 01

Four platforms are supported, and the feature opened to everyone on 2026-07-29

How Search Console came to report social performance
2025-12-08 · Experiment: some social channels in the Search Console Insights report2025-12-08Experiment: some social channels in the Search Console Insights report2026-07-07 · Platform properties announced · Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube2026-07-07Platform properties announcedInstagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube2026-07-29 · Global rollout and analysis guide2026-07-29Global rollout and analysis guide2026-09-14 · We checked the sources2026-09-14We checked the sources2025-12-08 · Experiment: some social channels in the Search Console Insights report2025-12-08Experiment: some social channels in theSearch Console Insights report2026-07-07 · Platform properties announced · Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube2026-07-07Platform properties announcedInstagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube2026-07-29 · Global rollout and analysis guide2026-07-29Global rollout and analysis guide2026-09-14 · We checked the sources2026-09-14We checked the sources

Dates are the posting dates stated on each blog post.

Select one of the four available platforms: Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube.
Google Search Central Blog "See how content from social and video platforms performs on Google Search" · 2026-07-07
Today, platform properties are globally available to everyone.
Google Search Central Blog "Platform properties roll out globally, plus a new social and video performance guide" · 2026-07-29

Finding 02

Platform properties report Google performance only, not views on the platform

Platform properties only show how your content performs on Google Search. They don’t track when people see your content on the platform itself (for example, they won’t show how many times your video appeared on TikTok).
Search Console Help "About platform properties in Search Console"

The same article says News and Discover performance is included when posts appear there.

You can create platform properties to view reports for your content performance on Google Search, as well as News and Discover if your content appears there.
Search Console Help "About platform properties in Search Console"

Finding 03

7 of the 11 platforms we measured can't be tracked this way

PlatformPlatform propertyGooglebot · post URLSitemap lines in robots.txt
RedditNot listedBlocked0
LinkedInNot listedAllowed0
YouTubeSupportedAllowed2
InstagramSupportedAllowed5
FacebookNot listedAllowed182
ThreadsNot listedAllowed15
XSupportedAllowed1
TikTokSupportedAllowed0
PinterestNot listedAllowed50
MediumNot listedAllowed1
QuoraNot listedAllowed0
Support comes from the Search Console Help list of supported platforms; the other two columns are our robots.txt results from 2026-09-14.

LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, Medium, and Quora allow post URLs for Googlebot, yet platform properties can't report them. Measure those on the pages of your own site that the posts link to.

Finding 04

Google suggests comparing Shorts with videos, and reels with posts, by URL keywords

YouTube: Compare URLs containing the word /watch to URLs containing the word /shorts/.
Google Search Central "Analyze Social and Video Content in Search Console" · 2026-07-29
Instagram: Compare URLs containing the word /p/ to URLs containing the word /reels/.
Google Search Central "Analyze Social and Video Content in Search Console" · 2026-07-29

So how do you check how social posts perform on Google?

  1. Add Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube accounts to Search Console as platform properties, one property per account.
  2. Ownership is re-verified periodically, and report access pauses if an external login connection expires. Hand over the connected accounts when the person managing them changes.
  3. For Shorts or reels comparisons, use comparison mode with URL keywords, and confirm the keywords against your account's real post URLs.
  4. For Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, Threads, Pinterest, Medium, and Quora, measure the pages on your own site that posts link to, in a website property.
If you have accounts across multiple platforms (like Instagram, TikTok, and X), or manage more than one profile on a single platform, be sure to repeat this process to create a platform property for each one.
Search Console Help "About platform properties in Search Console"
For security, ownership is periodically checked. If your connection is lost, either because an external login expired, access to your platform property will pause until you re-verify.
Search Console Help "About platform properties in Search Console"

Methodology

  • Google Search Central Blog, "Introducing social channels in Search Console" (2025-12-08) · checked 2026-09-14 · https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/12/social-channels-search-console
  • Google Search Central Blog, "See how content from social and video platforms performs on Google Search" (2026-07-07) · checked 2026-09-14 · https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/07/search-console-social-video-platforms
  • Google Search Central Blog, "Platform properties roll out globally, plus a new social and video performance guide" (2026-07-29) · checked 2026-09-14 · https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2026/07/platform-properties-social-video-guide
  • Search Console Help, "About platform properties in Search Console" · checked 2026-09-14 · https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/17148418
  • Google Search Central, "Analyze Social and Video Content in Search Console" (2026-07-29) · checked 2026-09-14 · https://developers.google.com/search/docs/monitor-debug/analyze-social-video-content
  • Quotes were matched as strings against the saved page text.
  • We did not connect our own accounts to platform properties; this covers what the documents say.
  • The two robots.txt columns come from files fetched on 2026-09-14 and don't show whether a URL is indexed.