Search Console Platform Properties: Social and Video Data in Google

A Search Console platform property is a new property type that lets you connect your Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube account to Search Console as a separate property. Google announced it on 7 July 2026. It shows the impressions and clicks that posts from the connected account get in Google Search and, if your content reaches them, in Discover and Google News. It does not show views or engagement inside the platform itself.

Are platform properties live globally?

The feature is being rolled out gradually. As of September 2026, Google's help page still says it may not yet be available to everyone, so the headline claim that platform properties are "globally live" for every account does not match Google's own documentation. If you do not see the option in your account yet, it does not mean you have a settings problem.

What exactly does a platform property show?

Each platform account is added as its own property and offers three sections:

• Performance report: total clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR) and average position. You can filter and sort by post and by query to see which ones bring traffic, and export the data. The Discover and Google News tabs only appear if your content got traffic from those surfaces.
• Insights report: recent traffic trends, your best-performing posts and how people find your account on Google.
• Achievements: milestones such as reaching a new click threshold in the last 28 days.

The default date range in the report is 28 days. If you have just connected the account, the charts will look empty for the first few days; data builds up from the day collection starts.

Two details directly affect how you read the numbers. First, the summary card at the top of the Insights page counts web, image, video and news searches together, while the detailed lists below it show only traffic from web search results. That is why the lists can add up to less than the number at the top. Second, a click is counted even if your video opens in Google's own viewer. So not every click means the visitor moved on to YouTube or TikTok.

Which questions does it answer, and which does it not?

A platform property answers this question: "What are people searching for on Google when they reach my social and video content?" For brands whose YouTube videos, Instagram posts or TikTok content appear in Google results, this is data you could not see directly before.

It does not answer these questions:

• How many times a post was viewed on Instagram or TikTok. For that, you keep using the platform's own analytics.
• How your website performs. Site data stays in your domain or URL-prefix property; a platform property does not merge with it automatically.
• Engagement metrics such as followers, likes and comments.

In short, a platform property does not replace social media analytics; it measures the visibility of your social content on the search engine side.

How is it different from the "social channels" test in December 2025?

On 8 December 2025, Google started a test in Search Console for a limited number of sites. In that test, social channel data was shown inside the site's Insights report and applied only to channels that Search Console automatically associated with the site.

The July 2026 platform property is a separate property type. You add the account yourself, you verify ownership yourself through the platform, and you can use it even if you have no website. In the announcement, Google says it designed this with creators who do not have their own website in mind as well.

How do you add a platform property?

1. Open Search Console. Click Add property on the welcome screen or in the property selector in the left-hand menu.
2. Pick the platform you want to add from the list: Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube.
3. Follow the on-screen steps to sign in to your account and authorise the connection.
4. When ownership is verified, a confirmation message appears; finish setup with Go to property.
5. If you have more than one account (for example both Instagram and YouTube, or two brand accounts on the same platform), repeat the process for each one.

Ownership is re-checked at regular intervals for security. If your session on the platform expires, access to the property pauses; when you verify again, you return to the same report.

What do people commonly get wrong about it?

Several misreadings circulated when the feature was first announced. Three points need correcting:

• It is not data about platforms you do not own. The data belongs only to the account you manage and verify by signing in, not to the whole platform. You cannot add someone else's account.
• It measures performance on Google, not on social media. Your reach on Instagram does not appear here.
• The gradual rollout is still going on. On the announcement date, Google said the feature would roll out in stages over the coming weeks, and the help page still carries that note.

How can businesses use this data?

Rather than opening the report once and forgetting it, tie the data to a few decision questions:

• Which searches go to your video instead of your website? For example, if your YouTube video gets clicks for how-to searches such as "how to install the product" but your site does not, it may make sense to embed that video on the relevant page of your site and strengthen the text.
• Which account stands out in brand searches? If your Instagram or X account gets clicks on searches for your brand name, keeping the contact and link details on those profiles up to date directly affects winning customers.
• Where is your content budget going? Questioning search-focused content for a platform that gets no visibility on Google, and putting more weight on the channel that does, is a more measured decision.

Read this data together with your site's own performance report, not on its own. Since 31 August 2026, the generative AI performance report, now available for all sites, also shows AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions separately. If you want to handle your site's visibility in search engines and AI answers together, take a look at our SEO services and our AI search visibility work.

In short: a checklist

1. Check whether the platform option appears in the property selector in Search Console.
2. Add every Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube account you manage as a separate property.
3. Expect no data in the first week; make your first reading once the 28-day period is complete.
4. Compare the queries that bring the most clicks with how your site does on the same queries.
5. Keep using the platform's own analytics; the two data sets answer different questions.

If you want to bring social media and search together in one reporting setup, we can build it with you as part of our social media management service.