Written by Christopher Carbaugh, founder of Hoot Host

For years, Google Search Console has answered one question: which searches bring people to my website? But starting today, it answers a second one: which Google searches bring people to my social media and videos?

After a staged rollout that started in July, it’s now available to everyone, and it works with Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube. If you run a small business and post on even one of those platforms, this is worth a few minutes of your time.

Here’s what it does, how to set it up, and how to actually use the data.

A normal Search Console property is your website. But with this new addition, a property is now also a social or video account. Once you connect one, Search Console shows you the traffic landing on that account, with the same query-level detail you already get for your website: the search terms people typed, how many times your post showed up, how many clicks it got, and where those people are. This is a gamechanger for understanding your social media’s impact in search!

Two things to understand up front. First, this is Google traffic only. It won’t show you likes, shares, comments, watch time, or anything that happens inside your social media. Second, it’s read-only reporting. There’s nothing to configure and nothing it changes about how your posts rank.

What it gives you is something none of the native platform dashboards can: a look at your social content through the eyes of Google search – and thus how you can create new content to improve your search performance.

How to set it up for your socials

The process is short and simple:

1. Open Search Console and click the property dropdown in the top left, then Add property.
2. Choose the platform type: Instagram, TikTok, X, or YouTube.
3. Follow the prompts to authorize the connection. You’ll need to be logged into the social account itself.
4. Repeat for each account. Every platform property is verified separately
5. Wait for data to populate (at least 48 hours normally), then open the Performance, Insights, and Achievements reports

That last step is the one people trip on. A freshly connected property starts empty, so don’t panic if you see nothing on day one. You need to make reviewing your reporting and using it in your content strategy as a regular part of your routine.

The three reports, in plain terms

• Insights is the summary page. It shows your 28-day click trend, your top-performing posts, the search themes bringing people in, and where your audience is located.

• Performance is the detailed version, and it works like the Performance report you already know for your website. You can filter by date, country, device, search term, and individual post, and you can export everything to a spreadsheet. If you only look at one report, look at this one!

• Achievements tracks milestones, like the first time a post passes a click threshold in a rolling 28-day window. It’s a nice-to-have, not a decision-making tool honestly.

What this changes for small business owners

The bigger story here is that Google is treating social posts and videos as search results worth measuring, right next to your web pages. That cuts two ways!

It means your Instagram caption and your YouTube title are now search copy, and you should write them that way: clear, descriptive, and matched to how people actually phrase questions. The query group data tells you exactly what that phrasing is.

It also means your website matters more, not less. Social posts come and go from search results as platforms change their URLs, their embed policies, and their relationships with Google. Your own site is the one property you fully control, the one place you can send every bit of that social attention, and the one that will still be ranking when the next platform pivot happens.

The smartest use of the platform property data is to spot what’s working on social media, then build the deeper, permanent version of it on your own website – like a blog post with your videos in it!

So connect your accounts, spend a week watching the Insights report, and treat what you find as a to-do list for your combined content marketing.

Have a question about getting your site set up in Search Console, or want help turning a hot social topic into a page that ranks? Reach out to the Hoot Host team.