Social SEO: How People Find You on Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube

In July 2022, Prabhakar Raghavan, then head of search at Google, said something at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference that nearly every article on “social SEO” has quoted since: according to Google's internal research, almost 40% of young people looking for a place to have lunch go to TikTok or Instagram, not to Google Maps or Search [1]. He was talking about Americans aged 18 to 24, and Google never published the data.

Over time, that sentence turned into “Gen Z has left Google.” Newer surveys show something different – and more useful for businesses: people don't search instead of Google, they search in other places as well. And if they don't find you there, they buy from whoever they do find.

Do people search on social media instead of Google?

More alongside Google. It mostly depends on what you ask and who you ask.

In 2025, Sprout Social asked 2,280 social media users in the US, the UK, and Australia where they turn first when they search for something. Among Gen Z, social media came out at 41%, traditional search engines at 32%, and AI chatbots at 11% [2]. In January 2026, Adobe Express found that 49% of the Americans it surveyed had used TikTok to search. But when asked whether they would rather rely on TikTok or on Google, only 4% of Gen Z chose TikTok, and 89% preferred Google over every other platform [3].

Both surveys were run by companies that make a living from the topic, both come from English-speaking countries, and in the Adobe survey Gen Z made up only about 120 of the 807 respondents. For decision-making, only one sensible conclusion follows: social media is one more place where people look for you – mainly for inspiration, reviews, and “what it looks like in real life.” The best way to find out where exactly your customers search is to ask them.

How Instagram search works

Instagram compares what someone types into search with usernames, profile names, bios, captions, hashtags, and places [4]. According to Instagram, the text you type is “by far the most important signal.” After that, it looks at who the person follows and has interacted with, and finally at how popular an account or place is.

That leads to 3 concrete changes:

• Your profile name. The bold name above your bio (not your @username) is searchable. “Studio Lucy” only gets found by people who already know you. “Studio Lucy | Skincare Bristol” also gets found by someone looking for skincare in Bristol. On Instagram, my name is “⚡David "Zelí" Zelenka | Marketing & AI” (Zelí is my nickname) – besides my name, it has 2 words that someone who doesn't know me yet can find me by.
• Your bio. Instagram itself advises putting keywords about who you are and what your account is about in your bio [4].
• The caption, not a comment. To make a post findable, Instagram advises putting keywords and hashtags in the caption, not in the comments [4].

How to use it: Type 3 words a new customer would use to look for you into Instagram search – your field and your city, or the problem you solve. Who shows up? With what name and what bio? That's your competition in search, not the companies you know from your industry.

Hashtags: how many to use

5 at most. In December 2025, Instagram limited hashtags to 5 per post and reel, saying that a few targeted hashtags work better than lots of generic ones [5]. Instagram head Adam Mosseri has long repeated that hashtags don't increase reach – they only help describe what a post is about [5]. Instagram removed the option to follow hashtags in December 2024 [6].

I don't use hashtags on Instagram at all, and on LinkedIn only rarely, when there's a specific reason. I'd rather put the words I want search to find me by in the first sentence of the caption. That sentence also decides whether someone stops at the post.

Instagram posts in Google search results

Instagram lets Google and Bing index photos and videos from public posts and reels published since January 1, 2020, as long as the account is a public professional account and its owner is over 18 [7]. If you don't want that, you can turn it off in your privacy settings. So a business account can show up in Google results, too – and a caption that makes sense without the image works better there than a row of emoji.

LinkedIn: search by meaning, not exact words

LinkedIn rebuilt its post search to understand long queries in natural language, too. In a paper from December 2024, LinkedIn engineers describe how the old system often returned nothing or unrelated posts for complex queries, because it looked for an exact word match. The new one works with the meaning of the text and can handle a query like “how to ask for a raise” [8].

For you, that means 2 things. Stuffing keywords into a post makes no sense – the system understands what a text is about without them. And it pays to write clearly about one topic per post, because a vague text without a topic gives the system nothing to match a query to.

Your profile shows up in Google, too. People can find a public LinkedIn profile through Google, Bing, and other search engines if you've set it to public. You choose what's visible in Settings → Visibility. After you change your profile, it can take weeks or even months for search engines to reflect it [9]. So write the headline under your name so that it says what you do and for whom even without context – not just “CEO” or “Owner.”

YouTube: a search engine Google can see

According to its own help center, YouTube ranks search results by 3 things: relevance, engagement, and quality. For relevance, it looks at how well the title, tags, description, and the video content itself match the query [10]. So say your main topic out loud and keep it in the captions as well – it helps people who watch without sound, and it gives YouTube more text to understand the video.

2 features have a direct impact beyond YouTube:

• Chapters. When you add timestamps to a video description (the first one has to start at 00:00, you need at least 3 in a row, and each chapter has to be at least 10 seconds long), YouTube splits the video into chapters [11]. Google uses the same timestamps to show “key moments” for the video in search results, so people can jump straight to the part they care about [12].
• Testing titles and thumbnails. YouTube Studio can compare up to 3 titles, thumbnails, or combinations of both on a single video. The variant with the most watch time wins [13]. Instead of guessing which title “sounds better,” you get data.

TikTok: search that shows what people look for

TikTok describes search as an engine of content discovery – people go there for recipes, tutorials, and how-tos [14]. For creators, it offers a tool called Creator Search Insights. It shows what people search for often, and separately, topics people search for a lot that don't have many videos yet. TikTok launched it in March 2024 in selected countries [14], so check directly in the app whether you can see it in your account.

Pinterest: a search engine for ideas

Pinterest advises putting keywords in your Pin title and description, your board name and description, and the URL of the page the Pin links to. Based on whether people search for a Pin, save it, and click on it, Pinterest then decides who to show it to next [15]. People can search Pins, boards, profiles, videos, and products [16], so name your boards the way someone would search for them: “Easy no-bake dinners,” not “Recipes.”

Pinterest Trends shows what people search for: popular keywords going back up to 2 years, their weekly, monthly, and yearly change, and whether a trend is seasonal. You need a business account, and some features are only available in some countries [17]. Pinterest makes sense mainly where people choose with their eyes and collect inspiration – home, fashion, recipes, weddings – and for online stores with good product photos. Google and other search engines can also show public profiles and boards, unless you turn it off in your privacy settings [18].

What gets searched where – an overview

Platforms differ in what they read and whether content makes it into Google. Facebook isn't in the overview: according to its help center, its search results are based mainly on the activity of the person searching – friends, Pages they follow, groups, and previous searches – and then on how popular and recent the content is [19]. The help center doesn't mention the text of a profile or post, so I don't go into it here. As of October 1, 2026:

Platform	What search reads	What you can influence	Does it reach Google?
Instagram	profile name, username, bio, captions, hashtags, places	name, bio, first sentence of the caption, max. 5 hashtags	public posts and reels from professional accounts (can be turned off)
LinkedIn	post text by meaning, profile	headline, About section, a clear topic per post	public profile (your choice)
YouTube	title, tags, description, video content	title, description, captions, chapters	yes, including key moments
TikTok	doesn't publish details	caption, video topic based on what people search for	TikTok doesn't document it
Pinterest	Pins, boards, profiles, videos, products	Pin title and description, board name and description, link to your website	public profiles and boards (can be turned off)

Social media, Google, and AI assistants are connected

What you write on social media doesn't stay there. Instagram posts and YouTube videos make it into Google results, and Discover now shows YouTube videos and social media posts as well. I cover how to get into that feed in my article on how to get into Google Discover.

The same goes for AI. Since February 2024, Google has had an agreement with Reddit under which it gets Reddit content in real time through an API and can display it and use it for training [20]. Discussions, reviews, and videos where other people talk about you are a source for AI answers just like your website. What that means for your website and how to find out whether AI cites you is something I explain in the article on how SEO is changing with AI.

So does social media help your website rank in Google? Not directly. Matt Cutts, then head of Google's webspam team, said in January 2014 that Google doesn't use signals like follower counts or likes to rank results. It indexes social media pages like any other pages, as long as it can crawl them [21]. On top of that, links in LinkedIn posts are marked nofollow, and according to its documentation, Google usually doesn't follow such links [22]. Indirectly, though, social media can help. In its SEO Starter Guide, Google lists promotion on social media as one of the ways to help people and search engines discover new content faster [23]. Someone who sees you on social media may later search for you by name or link to you from their own website. How much that adds up to, nobody can tell in advance.

Social media is just one of several connected pieces here. A profile that uses different words to describe something different from your website confuses both people and search engines. That's why I always start with the question “who are we talking to, and what are we saying?” – and only then decide where to write it.

How to start when you don't have time for everything

You don't have to be on every network. One or two you do properly are better than 5 profiles nobody updates. Sometimes the best move is to consciously stop doing one of them.

How to use it: Search Console shows you the words your customers type, not the ones you use. And people often search for the same thing in different ways. Here's an example from Little Shoes (sold as Footic outside Czechia and Slovakia), my barefoot shoe brand for children: from July to September 2026, Czech parents looking for the shoes kids change into at nursery school or school searched with two different words – one closer to “slippers,” the other closer to “indoor shoes.” According to Google Search Console, littleshoes.cz showed up for “slippers for nursery school” (over 10,000 impressions), “indoor shoes for school” (over 4,500), and “indoor shoes for nursery school” (over 1,200) – Czech queries, translated. Your social media captions and videos need both words, not just the one you use for your product.

If you're clear about what you write about and for whom, you don't have to figure out every platform from scratch – only the format changes. If you need to clarify your topics first, a content strategy that starts with the customer will help.

The takeaway

Social SEO isn't a new discipline you have to learn from scratch. It's the same question as with your website: which words do people who don't know you yet use to look for you? The only difference is that the answer doesn't go into a page heading, but into your profile name, the first sentence of your caption, and what you say in your video.

Your website remains the foundation, and Google remains the main search engine. Social media adds more places where people make decisions. If you want to bring your website, social media, and content together in one plan, take a look at how I approach SEO and content strategy.

Start with one thing this week: type 3 words a new customer would use to look for you into the search bar of your main network. You'll see whether they'd find you there.

FAQ

How many hashtags should I use on Instagram?

5 at most – since December 2025, Instagram doesn't allow more [5]. According to Instagram, hashtags don't increase reach, they only describe what a post is about. A descriptive profile name and keywords in your caption help more.

Do Instagram posts show up in Google?

Yes, for public professional accounts whose owners are over 18. Search engines can index photos and videos from public posts and reels published since January 1, 2020. You can turn this off in your privacy settings [7].

How do I get more visibility on Instagram?

For search, a profile name with your field or city helps, along with a bio with keywords and the phrase people search for in the first sentence of your caption [4]. But you get into recommendations in Explore and Reels mainly with content people find interesting enough to stay for – no profile tweak can replace that.

Will social SEO replace SEO for my website?

No. According to surveys, most people still search mainly on Google and use social media alongside it [3]. And you don't own your social media profile – a platform's rules can change overnight. Your website is the place you control; social networks are the paths that lead people to it.

Does social media help my website's SEO?

Not directly. According to its 2014 statement, Google doesn't use the number of likes or followers to rank results [21], and links in social media posts, on LinkedIn for example, are marked nofollow, so Google usually doesn't follow them [22]. Indirectly, yes: someone who sees you on social media may later search for you by name or link to you from their own website. Google itself lists social media promotion as a way for people and search engines to discover new content [23].