Why We’re Not Using Google Search Console’s Social Profile Integration
In July 2026, Google announced that site owners could start tracking which search terms led people to their Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube content on Google Search (interestingly, not LinkedIn or Facebook at the time of this writing). Anyone interested simply has to add each social account as a separate property in GSC.
In Google’s own words, “we want to make it easier for site owners and creators—even those without their own website—to get a consolidated view of how all of their content is getting discovered on Search.”
While it sounds like a helpful integration for content creators, here’s why Geeky Tech has decided not to use it for client reporting.
But first, let’s take a closer look at what this integration offers.
What Does the New GSC Social Profile Integration Do?
Integrating your social platforms on GSC shows how your profile appears on Google Search, News, and Discover. Yes, we’re talking about Google properties only.
Setting this up is fairly straightforward. You just need to open your GSC account, open the property selector dropdown, add the property you want to connect, and complete the verification steps.
What happens once you set up your social account?
Let’s say I type ‘weratedogs’ into Google. The feel-good influencer’s Instagram account appears as the second result on page one. When I click that Instagram link, the WeRateDogs’s GSC records that click. However, once I step inside Instagram and start swiping through the account’s warm-and-fuzzy videos, GSC tracking stops.
What Metrics Does GSC Track?
This new integration allows you to track clicks, impressions, average click-through rate (CTR), and average search position for your selected property.
It does not track any activity from within your social accounts or your overall social performance. If you’re looking for more detailed analytics, you’ll still need to defer to your individual social account.
Why GSC Social Integration Can Be Useful for Businesses
While it doesn’t give you the whole picture, this type of tracking provides an additional view of how branded social properties surface in Google Search. Plus, if you’re trying to build your social media empire, you may find these reports helpful:
- In the performance report, see which specific posts and queries are driving the most traffic to your socials.
- In the insights report, get basic intel on your recent traffic trends and top-performing posts, and see how people discovered you through Search.
- In the achievements report, find growth metrics and achieved milestones.
Why Geeky Tech Doesn’t Use It for Our Clients
When the platform feature first emerged, our in-house technical team took it for a test drive. After reviewing the data, we realised it might lead to a few issues that make this integration just not worth it for us or our clients.
Don’t get us wrong: when it comes to digital marketing, our thirst for data is unquenchable. But as a third-party SEO agency that doesn’t offer social media management services, there are several reasons why these additional data streams don’t add value for effort:
Limited Account Access Makes it Tricky to Report
If a client changes their login details and forgets to tell us, their reporting might not make sense. Incorrect logins can interrupt the data from feeding into GSC, which can make it look like social media performance has dipped when it hasn’t.
Yes, we could add a big, fat, juicy caveat to every report reminding clients that their graphs may not be accurate, but that kind of defeats the purpose of delivering marketing intelligence our partners can take to the bank.
Having to explain how to read these reports every month feels like we’re setting our clients up for confusion, especially since we’re not set up to manage their social accounts in the first place.
The Metrics Don’t Give Us the Whole Picture
As I said, GSC only collects impressions, clicks, average CTR, and average SERP position. But if someone finds your social account on Google, chances are they were already looking for you to begin with. Appearing on page one in a branded search is simply a byproduct of being a branded property. In other words, if someone uses Google only to patch them through to your YouTube video, the data you’re collecting might not be as useful as you think.
These reports don’t tell us much about how users interact with your social media profile on the platform, such as engagement, followers, views, reach, or traffic. And if you’re trying to be Instagram’s next B2B SaaS influencer (good luck to you!), we have a hunch that your in-app analytics will do a much better job at telling the story of your account performance.
And lastly, the way these properties are set up doesn’t give you a clean view of your overall social performance. Google Search Console treats each property separately and only reports on individual accounts. If you’re looking for a tidy, cross-platform social-performance report, GSC just ain’t the one.
Are People Really Using Google to Search Social Media Accounts?
Which brings us to what may be the most obvious reason we’ve given this integration a hard pass: who the heck is intentionally using Google to find accounts on TikTok?
Are content-hungry desk jockeys really opening up their browser and typing in ‘SAP TikTok’ (23k followers, teehee) all that much? Probably not. They’re probably whipping out their phones, opening the TikTok app, and searching ‘SAP’ right there. And even if they are using their desktop to check out SAP’s latest dance-challenge TikToks, Google probably isn’t the first place they’d look.
Considering the vast majority of people aren’t using everyone’s favourite primary-coloured search engine to engage with your socials, bothering with this integration feels a little like wearing mukluks all year long because it snowed that one time.
Our Advice to Marketers
Having said all that, we don’t discourage marketers from using this new feature. We do see the benefits if you’re an in-house team that manages your own social media accounts and can balance your GSC data with individual in-app analytics.
So, let that be our parting advice: Treat your GSC social performance data as complementary to your platform views, traffic, likes, followers, and engagement, and you’ll treat your findings appropriately. 🙂
Use UTMs to make sense of where your traffic is coming from and which posts are attracting buyers to your site.
