Google Just Made Your Social Profiles Visible in Search Console - Here's Why That Matters

Google Search Console 'Search Channels' Report

This isn't a small feature update. For the first time, you can see how often people are finding your brand's social presence through search, which platforms they're clicking on, and how your social profiles perform compared to your website in the SERPs. If you've ever wondered whether people searching for your brand actually want to land on your website or engage with you on social platforms, you're about to get a definitive answer.

Important: This is currently an experiment and isn't available to everyone yet. Google is rolling it out gradually, so if you don't see the report in your Search Console, you're not doing anything wrong - you just don't have access yet. Keep checking back, because when you do get access, the data will be waiting for you. Right now, we’re only able to see YouTube in the information that Google has given us, but I believe this will roll out to other Google surfaces first, and then wider social channels too. Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready for this one.

What's Actually Changed

Google Search Console now treats your social media profiles as distinct entities that can be tracked separately from your website. When someone searches for your brand and your social profiles appear in the results, Search Console can now tell you:

• How many impressions your social profiles received

• How many clicks they got

• The click-through rate for each platform

• Which queries triggered your social profiles to appear

This appears as a new "Social channels" report in Search Console, sitting alongside your traditional search performance data. The report shows data for social profiles that you've verified ownership of through structured data markup (Organisation or Person schema) on your website.

Critically, this is separate from traditional web search results. Google isn't just showing you that your website appeared - it's showing you when your social profiles appeared as distinct destinations that people can choose instead of (or in addition to) your website.

The rollout is happening globally, but as an experiment, so access is being granted progressively. If you don't have the report yet, you will eventually, and historical data should populate once you gain access.

What This Means For You

You Can Finally See a Blind Spot in Your Search Presence

Until now, you've had comprehensive data about how your website performs in search, but absolutely nothing about how your social profiles perform when they appear in search results. This has been a genuine blind spot, particularly for brands where people actively search for their social presence rather than their website.

If you're a restaurant, people might search "[restaurant name] Instagram" to see food photos. If you're a B2B company, people might search "[company name] LinkedIn" to check out your team or job postings. If you're a retailer, people might search "[brand name] reviews" and find your Facebook page. You've never had visibility into this behaviour at scale - now you do. Here at Reflect, we’ve been talking about the value of multichannel search for a while in our quarterly SearchPulse reports, which you can download here.

Social Has Become a Search Destination, Not Just an Engagement Channel

The existence of this report validates something we've been seeing anecdotally: people use search engines to find brands' social profiles because that's where they want to engage. They're not necessarily looking for your website homepage, your product pages, or your blog. They want to see your latest posts, read customer reviews, or message you directly through social platforms. They most likely want to see other humans, not a sea of text or jargon.

When people search for a brand, they may be looking for the easiest path to current information or direct communication; a low-friction interaction is often preferred. A social profile (like an Instagram or LinkedIn page) offers a quick, current, and human-facing snapshot, which feels less effortful than navigating a complex corporate website. 

Users choose social profiles because they immediately see follower counts, recent activity, and engagement (likes, comments). These are powerful forms of social proof that validate the brand's relevance and trustworthiness in a way a static homepage cannot. This "search destination" behaviour is often a search for validation, not just information.

This changes how you should think about social media in your overall digital strategy. Your social profiles aren't just places where you post content and engage with followers - they're searchable assets that appear in Google results and compete with your website for attention. They're part of your search presence, which means they're part of your SEO strategy, whether you've been treating them that way or not.

You Can Now Measure Social as a Funnel Entry Point

Multi-touchpoint attribution has always been messy, but this data gives you something concrete: which social channels are being discovered through search, and how often people choose them over your website. If your LinkedIn profile gets 10x more search impressions than your Instagram, but you're spending 80% of your social resource on Instagram, that's a strategic misalignment you can now see and correct.

Equally, if your social profiles have higher CTR than your website for branded searches, that's not a failure - it's intelligence about where your audience wants to engage. You can use this to inform content strategy, resource allocation, and even how you structure your conversion funnels. Maybe the path to conversion goes through social engagement first, not a website landing page. Validate this against

Competitive Intelligence You Didn't Have Before

You can now benchmark your social presence performance in search against your website performance. If people are searching for your brand and choosing social profiles 40% of the time and your website 60% of the time, you understand the split in how people want to interact with you. Over time, tracking changes in this split tells you whether your brand is becoming more or less "social-first" in how people discover and engage with you.

This also matters for brand safety. Dormant or outdated social profiles that still surface in search send users to abandoned spaces that erode trust and damage perception. Through a behavioural lens, negativity bias tells us that a single poor or neglected touchpoint can outweigh ten positive experiences, meaning one “dead” profile can disproportionately harm your brand. The new report helps you surface and mitigate this hidden risk by highlighting where you’re unintentionally driving traffic to abandoned channels. Previously, this was almost impossible to spot; now you can identify, prioritise and fix it before it impacts reputation.

What You Can Do in Response

Immediate Actions - This Week

Check if You Have Access

Go to Google Search Console and look for "Social channels" in the left navigation under the Search results section. If it's there, you're in the experiment. If not, you're waiting - but you can still prepare for when you get access.

Audit Your Social Profile Markup

The report only tracks social profiles that you've verified ownership of through structured data. Check your website's Organisation or Person schema markup to ensure your social profiles are listed correctly. Use Google's Rich Results Test tool to validate the markup is being read properly. If your social profiles aren't in your schema, add them now so you're ready when access arrives.

Verify Ownership of Social Profiles in GSC

If you have access to the report, make sure you've verified ownership of your social profiles through Search Console's verification process. Without verification, you won't see data for those profiles even if they're appearing in search results.

Document Your Current Social Presence

List all active social profiles for your brand across all platforms. Include dormant or legacy profiles you might have forgotten about. When the report becomes available, cross-reference this list against what Google is showing to identify any profiles appearing in search that you're not actively managing.

Quick Wins - This Month

Compare Social Channel CTR vs Website CTR

Once you have access to the data, compare the click-through rate of your social profiles against your website for branded searches. If social consistently has higher CTR, it means people prefer to engage on those platforms rather than your site. This should inform where you put content, how you structure customer service, and where you direct paid traffic, for example.<

If specific platforms have particularly high CTR, they're resonating with your audience - make sure you're maintaining them properly and consider increasing investment there.

Identify High-Impression Channels and Audit Their Health

Look at which social channels are getting the most impressions in search. These are your most visible social assets from a search perspective. Visit each one and audit:

• Is the profile complete and up-to-date?

• Are you posting regularly?

• Does it accurately represent your current brand positioning?

• Are there customer questions or reviews you haven't responded to?

High search visibility on a poorly maintained profile is worse than no visibility at all.

Find and Fix Dormant Profiles

Check the report for social profiles that are getting impressions but have low or zero clicks, or that you don't recognise. These might be old profiles on platforms you've abandoned, duplicate profiles you created and forgot about, or even fake profiles you didn't know existed.

For profiles you own but have abandoned, either reactivate them properly or request removal from search through the platform's settings. For fake profiles, report them through the platform's procedures. You don't want search traffic going to properties that damage your brand.

Look for Branded Searches Where Social Appears But Your Website Doesn't

If your social profiles are ranking for queries where your website isn't visible, that's a potential issue. Either your website isn't optimised for those queries (fix your on-site SEO), or Google believes your social profiles are more relevant for those specific queries (understand why and adjust accordingly).

Strategic Shifts - Next Quarter

Integrate Social Profile Optimisation Into SEO Strategy

Social profiles are now measurable SEO assets. This means profile completeness, posting frequency, engagement levels, review management, and platform authority all affect how your social presence ranks in search. Work with your social and SEO teams together (if they're separate) to optimise profiles specifically for search visibility, not just platform engagement.

This includes things like keyword-rich bio descriptions, consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information across profiles, regular posting schedules that signal active accounts, and engagement with followers that demonstrates profile health.

Test Whether Investment Improves Search Visibility

If you have underperforming social channels that you care about (low impressions or CTR), run a test: increase activity on that platform for 60-90 days and measure whether search visibility improves. Post more frequently, engage with followers, update profile information, gather reviews. Track impressions and clicks in the Social Channels report to see if Google responds to increased platform activity with better search placement.

This gives you a direct ROI measurement for social investment that you've never had before - does putting resources into a platform improve its search visibility, and does that search visibility drive valuable traffic?

Use This Data to Inform Channel Prioritisation

Your social media strategy might be based on platform trends, where your competitors are active, or where your team prefers to work. Now you have hard data about where people are searching for you. If LinkedIn gets 10x more search impressions than Twitter but you're posting 5x more on Twitter, that's a strategic misalignment.

Obviously, search impressions aren't the only metric that matters for social success, but they're a strong signal of where your audience expects to find you. Use this data alongside engagement metrics, conversion data, and strategic priorities to make informed decisions about resource allocation across platforms.

Rethink Social Profiles as Landing Pages

If your social profiles are getting significant search traffic, stop thinking about them purely as engagement channels and start treating them like landing pages in your marketing funnel. This means:

• Optimising pinned posts for conversion actions

• Ensuring profile CTAs are clear and aligned with business goals

• Tracking traffic from social profiles to your website (not just social to website, but search to social to website)

• Testing different profile descriptions and link placements to improve conversion

• Coordinating messaging across website and social so the experience is coherent

People finding you through search and landing on social rather than your website isn't necessarily good or bad - it's just a different entry point to your funnel that needs optimising.

Treating the social profile as a landing page is about reducing friction. Every extra click, confusing bio, or unclear CTA increases cognitive friction, making the user more likely to abandon the journey. Optimising for conversion is essentially reducing the perceived loss of effort for the user to take the next step.

Set Benchmarks

Once you have 2-3 months of data, establish benchmarks for social channel impressions, clicks, and CTR by platform. This gives you a baseline to measure against as you optimise your presence and as Google's algorithms evolve.

Track these metrics monthly and look for trends. Are impressions growing over time? Is CTR improving as you optimise profiles? Are any platforms declining in search visibility?

Compare Search-Driven vs Direct Social Traffic

Use analytics to understand how much of your social traffic comes from people finding your profiles through search versus platform-native discovery (feed, hashtags, recommendations). This tells you how dependent each platform is on search visibility versus organic platform growth.

If a platform gets high search impressions but low direct traffic, it's search-dependent. If it gets low search impressions but high direct traffic, it's platform-native. Both are valuable but require different strategic approaches.

Plot Social Search Visibility with Brand Search Volume

Track whether increases in your overall brand search volume correlate with increases in social channel impressions. This validates whether growth in brand awareness is translating into people actively searching for your social presence, which is a strong signal of brand health and audience intent to engage.

If brand search grows but social impressions don't, it suggests people are looking for your website rather than social engagement. If social impressions grow faster than overall brand search, it suggests your audience increasingly prefers social-first interaction with your brand.