"We post to Instagram and YouTube for customer acquisition, but we honestly cannot tell whether we are reaching prospective clients. We review our website analytics, but we cannot track how many people find our social posts through Google Search, so we just post without clear direction." A local retail business manager shared this frustration. Operating both a website and social channels without unified visibility leaves businesses unsure where to focus efforts.
Google addressed this challenge. On July 7, 2026, Google announced the addition of platform properties as a new property type in Search Console. This capability lets organizations track impressions and search query traffic for content published on Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube across Google Search and Discover. By expanding beyond owned domain data to capture social search performance, Search Console significantly broadens how organizations evaluate acquisition.
Uncovering previously unmeasurable metrics
Search Console was originally designed to track which keywords trigger search impressions and clicks for owned websites. However, because social media content lives outside owned domains, tracking its performance within Google Search remained largely impossible.
With the new platform properties, selecting any of the four supported platforms and completing verification through guided prompts unlocks the following insights:
| Newly accessible metrics | Application in acquisition |
|---|---|
| Search queries driving traffic to social posts | Identifies the exact terminology prospective customers use. |
| Which posts generate search impressions and clicks | Informs future content strategy based on high-performing posts. |
| How user accounts are discovered across Google | Clarifies whether initial discovery occurs via search or social channels. |
The primary benefit is comparing website search analytics and social search analytics within the exact same Search Console dashboard. Google indicated this feature would roll out gradually over several weeks following the announcement.
Viewing websites and social media as unified search entry points
Many small businesses manage websites and social channels in isolation. From a user perspective, however, Google Search serves as a shared gateway that leads interchangeably to websites or social posts. Platform properties illuminate traffic arriving from this shared search gateway across both channels.
For example, discovering that TikTok posts attract traffic for keywords missing from your main website allows you to create dedicated website pages targeting those phrases. Conversely, high-performing website topics can be adapted into social content to expand brand awareness. Instead of managing websites and social media separately, businesses can coordinate roles across the common arena of search—supported by unified data on a single screen. Identifying how prospective users search for your brand connects directly to concepts in our article on link discoverability in the AI search era.
More data is useless without actionable execution
On the other hand, it is important to note that merely having access to more data does not inherently translate into improved customer acquisition. If you are satisfied just looking at numbers and do not translate them into your next action, all you are left with is the extra effort spent creating more properties. What matters is establishing an ongoing workflow that interprets "which channels perform best for specific search queries" and applies those insights to the design of subsequent content and user journeys. While the measures corporate websites should implement in an era where even rank 1 results might not get clicked are detailed in our article on SEO strategies in the AI Overview era, now that measurement extends across social media, the value of seamlessly designing the process from "measuring" to "taking action" has never been greater.
Now that the scope of measurement has expanded, it is the ideal time to rethink customer acquisition
With the arrival of platform properties, even small and mid-sized businesses can now obtain a holistic picture of search-driven customer acquisition spanning both their websites and social media accounts without incurring additional costs. Instead of continuing social media operations "on a whim," you can now make data-driven decisions based on "which posts are effective for which keywords." This makes it an ideal time to rethink your customer acquisition budget allocation. "We want to measure the customer acquisition results of our website and social media together," "We want to connect search data to future content planning and user journey improvements," or "We installed Search Console, but we don't know how to interpret and leverage the metrics"—if you have concerns like these, please feel free to reach out to GleamHub's SEO and web customer acquisition support. Now that the scope of what can be measured has expanded, let us work together to rethink your overall customer acquisition strategy.
