Is Social Media Content Ranking More In Google Search? And Why The Overlap of Social & SEO Matters

By Ethan Lazuk

Starting from mid-to-late 2023 and now into 2024, and especially over the last few months, I’ve been noticing more examples of social media content ranking in Google Search results.

In my view, this makes social media content a type of “SEO content,” just as much as any blog post, service page, or other website content would be.

It also means social media strategies are contributing to SEO, like through brand awareness, audience trust, and traffic.

To show you what we’re talking about, here’s an example:

After I first published this article, I shared it on my LinkedIn account. That post now ranks in Google’s search results, just as the blog post itself does:

In other words, depending on what my audience searches for on Google, they might not see my website, or they might see my social posts with links to my website.

We’ll explore this topic in depth below. 😉

But let’s just quickly think about this from a perspective of data and reporting.

As SEOs, we typically report on metrics like clicks and rankings (average position of queries) in Google Search Console or organic page views and engagement rates in GA4.

But what happens when someone clicks on our “SEO content” in social post that’s ranking? We likely don’t see that data.

The organic traffic is to the platform, while the article click probably referral traffic in our GA4:

But how do we differentiate posts ranking in search engines from people finding them in their social platform feeds?

The same dilemma can be true of social media teams.

If your social content is getting views directly in Google’s search results, and not in the social platforms, are you aware of those impressions?

What if someone sees a tweet (X post) or a TikTok video for a brand in Google’s search results, and then proceeds to search for it there and visit the website.

That’s organic traffic, but who gets credit?

That’s why, practically speaking, I believe SEO content strategies should be including social media content, while social media strategies should be accounting for the organic visibility of posts and videos in search results on Google.

Going a step further, SEO and social strategists should work more together on strategy and reporting for conversions, sales, and brand awareness.

In this article, we’ll explore the overall relationship between SEO and social media.

The biggest topic of interest will be how content shared on social media platforms (such as X, LinkedIn, Instagram (Meta), TikTok, and Reddit) can get indexed by Google and appear both in organic search results and other places pertinent to SEO.

We’re not talking just about Google’s Perspectives carousel, Discussions and forums, or other SERP features designed for social media (like X or TikTok carousels), but also Google’s normal web results, Image search, and surfaces like Discover, SGE, and People also view (in SGE while browsing).

We’ll also look at the ways Google has introduced more social media-like features into Search, particularly for local results. And we’ll have a special section dedicated to TikTok.

I’ll also explain my theory for the reason we’re seeing more social content in Google Search, which I hypothesize is partly due to a paradigm shift that began in May of 2023 with the announcement of “hidden gems” and ramped up in November 2023, when Google finished rolling out a series of ranking system improvements.

I also included a video summary at the end, so feel free to check that out!

From what I’ve observed during and after Google’s March 2024 core update, this trend of social content ranking in Search has only grown. From that perspective, this topic feels as relevant as ever.

Let’s begin with a core question:

What might the fusion of social content with Google’s search results portend for the future of SEO and social media strategies?

I believe the introduction of more social media content to Google’s search results creates new opportunities for brand visibility.

That visibility isn’t limited to your own website or brand’s content either.

For example, I’ve taken more of an interest in AI research lately. Here’s one of my tweets (X posts), getting visibility in search results for sharing a research paper with commentary:

While that might not send referral traffic to my website, it does create brand associations between my name and AI research content, further demonstrating E-E-A-T.

For SEOs worried about the impact of AI overviews, like Google’s SGE, incorporating more social media content that shows genuine experience could help offset the impacts that generative AI answers will have on organic website traffic and content visibility in Google’s search results.

In other words, our content strategies should focus less on blog posts based on easily answerable questions (long-tail keywords) and more on leveraging social media content to elaborate on pertinent questions to our audiences that require genuine expertise or experience.

I also think having more social content ranking in Google Search opens up new avenues for creativity in SEO and social media content strategies.

Growing discussions about a social media and Search overlap

Beyond digital marketing discussions, the overlap between social media and Google Search is making its way into broader marketing and tech circles.

Check out this discussion by The Vergecast from February 2024 on TikTok about Google’s search product “being organized around real-time social conversations”:

More recently, there have been discussions in SEO circles around Google’s Discussions and forums feature showing up for medical content and Your Money, Your Life (YMYL) queries, which are considered sensitive and require the highest levels of E-E-A-T.

If Google is showing forums for medical searches, you can bet it’ll be highlighting social content in the SERPs for most topics related to your clients or business.

Later in this article, I’ll show different examples of social media content appearing in various parts of Google Search, as well as ways Google itself is becoming more like social media.

We’ll also touch on related topics about SEO and social media, like if social posts can help with indexing website content, whether or not social media signals impact website rankings directly, plus other areas of overlap.

Who should read this article?

Whether you’re a search marketer, a social media specialist, or a marketing manager, the time for SEO and social teams to collaborate more is now.

When I say “social media” in this article, I mean organic social content, excluding sponsored posts and ads.

However, I have seen influencer marketing content and even promotional UGC appearing organically in Google Search results, as well.

But whether it’s normal web search results, Perspectives, SGE, or People also view, the places for social content to appear in Google Search are growing.

Note: This article is intended to be read top-to-bottom. However, if you don’t have time to read it in full, that’s totally cool!

Here’s a summary of the introduction to give you some main ideas:

• Personal history – the longer I do SEO, the more surfaces and content types I optimize for (holistic brand building vs. keyword rankings).
• Google Search evolution – today, I’m noticing more X and LinkedIn posts in regular search results, as well as SGE and People also view, where I didn’t as much before, not to mention the growth of Perspectives and especially now forums. This seems related to a paradigm shift that began in May of 2023 and ramped up in November of 2023 and now into the spring of 2024.
• Implications – SEOs and social media specialists should collaborate, because their disciplines now overlap more than ever, and the visibility of social content in search may help fill a void created by generative AI.

And here’s a table of contents to jump to any section of interest:

• Why SEOs should care about social content
• My personal journey of discovering social content’s value
• Examples of social media content in Google Search (recent discoveries)
• Google’s paradigm shift (the “experience era”)
• Risks and rewards of social content
• Why social media specialists should care about Google Search
• Optimizing social content for Google Search
• Closing thoughts (part 1)
• Other ways social media and Google Search overlap (part 2)
• And don’t forget about Bing (and Meta AI)!
• Addendum: the rise of TikTok content in Google
• Closing thoughts and the vibes

And if you so choose, here’s a link to a Pink Floyd song to listen to while you read. 🙂

Now, let’s explore our next fundamental question:

Why should SEOs care about social media content?

As SEO professionals, many of us love (or love to hate) social media because it’s a way to share knowledge.

One must be discerning when it comes to taking advice at face value. (Next to content, context is arguably king.)

I’ve personally learned a lot over the years from following people on X and LinkedIn. (It’s what led to Hamsterdam.)

However, most of the SEO knowledge shared on social media platforms doesn’t pertain to social content itself.

Every once in a while, someone might suggest that sharing a link on X could benefit its crawling and indexing, that social channels can amplify and distribute content, or that SEO content can be repurposed for social media audiences.

All good stuff, and we’ll explore social media’s other roles in SEO later.

But what’s of focus here is social media content indexed and appearing (ranking) in Google Search results

We as SEOs are attuned to drawing conclusions about search intent from keyword research, SERP analysis, and competitor insights.

From there, we might create topics for helpful content to satisfy our audiences along their buyer’s journeys.

What isn’t often discussed is how to optimize social media content for Google Search visibility.

The closest we get is usually when local search marketers share Google Business Profile optimization tips, like for posts, reviews, or photos and videos.

However, there have been articles written about Google Perspectives, including suggestions for how to optimize content for it.

We’ll discuss Perspectives more later (and if you’re not familiar, that article linked above has an overview and examples).

But our focus here is how social content can appear in Search more broadly, including a couple of new-ish instances that I’ve only just started noticing in the last few days of early February or so.

Is social media the new SEO content?

No way.

Blasphemy!

Ok, maybe that’s a little dramatic …

But I wouldn’t even go so far as to say social media content is equally as important as website content to SEO strategies.

However, based on trends I’m seeing lately (albeit anecdotally), we could be moving in that direction.

(I hope to gather some hard data in a 2nd update.) 🙂

Hmm, so when did this all start?

Social content ranking in Google Search or appearing in SERP features, like Twitter (X) carousels or knowledge panels, is nothing new.

For as long as we’ve had Google (since 1998), we’ve had social platforms.

Notice the Google+ icon from 2011 in that chart? We even had a fusion, for a time.

However, (as we’ll discuss more below) I believe a paradigm shift happened around May 2023.

That’s when Google introduced the Perspectives filter (now a Forums filter) but also “hidden gems,” a series of core ranking systems improvements that fully rolled out in November 2023.

However, before we dig into the tofu and potatoes of that discussion, I’d like to share a personal history and related context with you.

While I can’t speak for other SEOs, my journey was an evolution.

A personal journey of discovering the value of social media content for SEO purposes

In the early years of my SEO career, I largely focused on website content for Google’s main search results:

• “What keywords should this blog post rank for?”
• “What service or guide pages do we need to target our personas?”
• “Which cities should have their own location pages?”

Over time, I added more Google Search features into strategies:

• “Let’s optimize the Google Business Profile.”
• “Let’s try to build a robust knowledge panel.”
• “Let’s ensure our Merchant Center feed is dialed in for free product listings.”
• “Let’s create FAQs that target People also ask.”
• “Let’s add unique images for those image packs.”
• “How about YouTube content for those video results?”
• “What about structured data for rich results?”
• “Oh, customer reviews are showing, so let’s encourage those, too.”
• “Ah, SGE snapshots now, so let’s revise those sections into chunks for generative AI responses.”

Then came a broader emphasis on building brands, pleasing people, and recognizing more opportunities for organic visibility relevant to buyers’ journeys:

• “Which of our blogs are ripest for Google Discover?”
• “Can we get our related content into People also view?”
• “Oh look, our TikTok video is in the Perspectives filter; let’s lean into that!”

Those last two parts, People also view and Perspectives, are largely what inspired the discussions in this article.

The more I explored their content, the more opportunities for using social media as “SEO content” that I discovered.

Social media content appearing in Google Search, plus recent discoveries

If you’re already familiar with People also view and Perspectives, feel free to scroll past the next two sections. Otherwise, here’s some info and examples of each.

People also view in SGE while browsing

I consider People also view as like a mini Google Discover.

Its results appear in SGE while browsing when visiting a webpage directly from Search or Discover, as long as you’ve enrolled in the Google Labs experiment.

People also view results are interesting because they don’t typically align with top results for the query, seem highly personalized, and often include results from the same domain or author.

That creates a whole lot of opportunity to surface related content during your audience’s buyer’s journey, turning that single webpage click from Search into a rabbit hole with your brand’s content at the center.

Here’s a recent example of a social post from X appearing in SGE while browsing (People also view results) just like any webpage would:

Consider the effort it takes to create a blog post. Then consider the effort it takes to sent out a tweet (X post). That’s efficient organic visibility. 🙂

Perspectives

While it’s the name of several Google features, Perspectives in this context refers to the filter (which has now changed to a “Forums” filter) and carousel (which is still around) that shows organic social media, video, and forum or discussion content accessible from the main SERP.

What’s interesting about Perspectives is that it gives SEO strategists a seat at the table when other marketing channels plan their content.

If those social posts and videos can bring visibility to brands through organic search result carousels, they count as SEO content.

I saw something recently that more strongly suggested an expanding overlap between social content and Google Search

I often use my website’s content for sharing examples of SEO findings on social media, because then I don’t need anyone’s permission to share the discoveries. 😉

Just a few months ago is when I first noticed social media content in People also view results.

I was on my homepage, and People also view was showing my LinkedIn and Instagram profiles. But what made it particularly exciting was a single post from X (Twitter), which was actually a reply to another post:

I’d never noticed an individual social post in People also view before that, let alone a reply to another post!

Then a little later that same day (or maybe the next), I noticed two more individual social posts, one from X and another from LinkedIn, pulled into an SGE snapshot:

I’ve seen this happen even more lately with SGE.

Here’s a recent example where I searched for a specific Search Engine Journal article on desktop and SGE cited a tweet while the regular search results returned the article itself:

What I find really cool is how SGE shows the favicon for Search Engine Journal and X (Twitter).

In fact, when I post on social media now, I often consider if the content can be used to influence SGE answers or show as citations for branded (or even non-branded) queries.

And again, those are individual social posts, not full articles or profiles.

I’ve also been noticing individual LinkedIn posts in Google’s traditional web search results.

LinkedIn articles ranking in Google got a lot of attention beginning several months ago in late 2023, including Pulse articles as well as the AI-written collaborative articles that invite expert contributions. (I contributed to some and wrote about that experience.)

But now we’re talking about individual LinkedIn posts ranking in Search.

(It’s also hard to discern normal LinkedIn posts from Pulse articles, as their Search snippets appear the same.)

Here’s one LinkedIn result that recently appeared in a SERP I’ve been monitoring for “10x content”:

What’s interesting is the author, Grant Cardone, doesn’t really have E-E-A-T for that topic.

His post does have “300+ reactions,” except I don’t know if that matters.

Because then I saw this other LinkedIn result ranking for “Google Perspectives.” It was created 7 months ago and only had “1 reaction”:

Many of the above screenshots are from February and March of 2024.

As of April of 2024, I’ve been noticing a continuation and growth of this trend, as mentioned in the introduction of this article.

As a general example, if you publish a blog post and then share it on LinkedIn, it’s possible the latter might rank alongside (or even outrank) the original post.

Lately, I’ve been seeing these examples where the LinkedIn post says “[Author Name]’s Post” on desktop:

While the mobile results shows the full title:

Most recently, I’ve seen social media content populating the image boxes in Google’s search results (what we might consider Google Images):

And I’ve also see social content profiles used for knowledge panel about sections and even People also ask question answers:

This creates a new strategic consideration for SEO content distribution on social media.

It also means your referral traffic from social media in GA4 could, in reality, be organic search traffic originally. So be sure to monitor those assisted conversions and user journeys with Explorations. 😉

We sort of got a hint that social content might be coming more in Google’s November 2023 announcements

In a blog post on The Keyword, Google’s VP of Search wrote:

“And starting today, we’ll show new information on search results that highlights information about the individual creator — like their social handle, follower count or the popularity of their content — so it’s easier to find content from creators you care about.

As part of this work, we’ve also rolled out a series of ranking improvements to show more first-person perspectives in results, so it’s easier to find this content across Search.” [Highlights added.]

– New ways to find just what you need on Search, Cathy Edwards (VP/GM, Search), The Keyword

The ranking improvements mentioned were the “hidden gems.”

Meanwhile, the “individual creator” information refers to things like the “reactions” numbers we saw in those LinkedIn posts.

Here are two points of clarification around these announcements from Danny Sullivan, Google Search Liaison (compliments of Hamsterdam Part 32). 😉

First off, the information about creators isn’t tied to rankings (it’s more just a display element, likely for transparency):

We’ve done work to show more first-hand perspectives in results. But that’s not based on showing stuff only from “verified” accounts plus it can include forum discussions that don’t have that concept. But where individual creators are shown, we’re also displaying more above them.…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 15, 2023

But here in this “hidden gems” explanation is where we might have found the answer to us seeing more social posts ranking:

It's really that our core ranking systems are designed to show more of this type of content if it seems helpful. It's not that they are somehow classified as "gems" but rather that this type of content sometimes hasn't surfaced as well in results in the past, so bringing it to…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 15, 2023

The line that sticks out is, “this type of content.”

We know from that previous response that Discussions and forums are considered perspectives content. (More on this later.) As it turns out, we also later got a more direct connection between Discussions and forums and hidden gems via a tweet by Danny Sullivan in April of 2024.

But what I wonder is if another “type of content” that hadn’t “surfaced as well in results in the past” included social media posts, like from X and LinkedIn.

That Google blog post from November 2023 also makes reference to the original May announcement for Perspectives, when Google Search, “added new ways to find and explore diverse perspectives on Search in the Google app and mobile web.”

In the November announcement, we also learned that Perspectives was coming to desktop.

Arguably, Perspectives and hidden gems were a combo attempt, in part, to surface more social content organically throughout Google’s surfaces.

Even though Reddit, Quora, and LinkedIn articles have gotten much of the attention so far, social content from other platforms has also been appearing in Search more often (at least anecdotally).

Before the Perspectives filter was replaced with the Forums filter (a feature I learned goes back to 2009), I noticed Google was testing on the Perspectives filter, like by adding topical filters on top. (If you refer back to the “10x content” screenshot above from 2/7/24, the filters along the top usually weren’t there.)

At the time, I felt this implied Perspectives was a feature of some consequence, worthy of testing. Now I just believe it was part of the larger paradigm shift toward experience-based content, in general.

A paradigm shift: enter the “experience era” (more social content in Google Search)

As mentioned earlier, I believe the paradigm shift when more social content started appearing in Google Search began in May 2023 and was ramped up that November onward, leading to what we’re seeing in early 2024.

In that May 2023 article on The Keyword, Perspectives was announced along with a mention of hidden gems.

The two were sort of a package deal from the start.

And the fact that in November 2023, Perspectives came to desktop (not to mention social information displays launched) in the same announcement where hidden gems finished rolling out — i.e., “a series of ranking improvements to show more first-person perspectives in results” — strengthens the case.

At the core of these efforts is Google Search’s clear desire to surface more content with demonstrable experience relevant to users.

This is likely in partial response to growing social platform use among younger users (TikTok as a search engine) and general user dissatisfaction over bland “SEO” content.

Personally, I was fixated on the part of hidden gems that referred to “a post on a little-known blog, or an article with unique expertise on a topic,” but the article also made mention of “the importance of ‘experience.’”

That section linked to a December 2022 Google Search Central blog announcement when Experience became a new “E” in E-E-A-T for the quality rater guidelines.

Then in the subsequently updated version of the QRG from November 2023 (the same month we got all those announcements discussed earlier), something else was mentioned for the first time: TikTok!

As mentioned, Reddit and Quora posts and LinkedIn articles have been getting more attention for appearing in Google Search lately — for example, here’s an article on LinkedIn about Reddit’s growth found in Google’s search results (a trifecta!), created and well written by Ann Smarty.

For Reddit and Quora, their visibility largely comes in regular web search results (blue links) but also Discussions and forums features.

These were announced in September 2022 but have grown in visibility since late 2023 (during the post-HCU and “hidden gems” eras), including for reviews queries and many other topics.

And now we’re seeing more examples of “experience” through individual social posts from X and LinkedIn, which aren’t just tucked away in Perspectives or even People also view but are also findable in SGE (AI overviews) and regular search results.

Risks and rewards of social content appearing in Google Search

Let’s think for a second about the implications of those earlier examples where we saw the X post and LinkedIn and Instagram profiles appearing in People also view for my homepage.

Proper planning, or not …

That homepage now represents my business. I’ve worked hard at phrasing it and other pages’ content to convey the right attitude to prospective clients.

But now a random comment I left on X, which probably took me 3 seconds of forethought to craft and send, is potentially visible to visitors, whether they follow me or not.

Is that a risk?

Not really, if your brand voice is consistent everywhere. 😉

Fortunately, my brand voice is my normal human voice.

Reaching new audiences

There’s also a chance for increased reach.

For example, lots of people have left X since it rebranded from Twitter.

Similarly, lots of people prefer to use LinkedIn instead.

Seeing X posts in Google Search gives those people, who wouldn’t usually see your content on X, an opportunity to view it.

The same is true of other platforms.

But there’s more …

The personal and the professional collide

That screenshot of People also view results from earlier, it also included my LinkedIn and Instagram profiles.

LinkedIn, that’s more formal, so you’re unlikely to be at risk there, unless you’re posting platitudes that put your audience to sleep … kidding!

Side note/tip: I see a lot of the same content verbatim on X and LinkedIn. It can be better to adjust the post to the platform. For example, I rewrite my X posts for LinkedIn, considering the slightly different audiences and contexts.

Meanwhile, that Instagram …

Instagram can be a sticky wicket.

I’ve worked with corporate leaders who wanted to build a knowledge panel yet expressly asked to exclude Instagram from their pages and sameAs schema because it was for personal use.

I don’t pay too much attention to my Instagram account, nor do I post there often, so I have minimal followers as a result.

Yet, now that my Instagram profile is front and center for audiences who may be visiting my website for SEO services, I need to consider how those random personal photos of my wife, Dania, and me walking our dog or taking selfies in the park would play in that professional context.

I’m sure no one would have an issue with dog walking photos, but I honestly couldn’t tell you what else is in my Instagram account from several months or years ago. Do you keep track of yours?

And sure, that Instagram content is accessible online anyway, but it would take effort to find it, and the person would have to think to look for it in the first place.

But now, Google is surfacing Instagram and other (potentially personal) social media results just as it would legitimate SEO content, such as website blog posts or service pages.

One of those types of content we might spend hours or days creating, while the other might get 5 seconds of total thought behind it.

Brave new world …

Outside voices in your customers’ ear

Bigger brands likely don’t have to worry about inconsistency between their website and social results in Google Search.

They’re usually measured and strategic about their social content.

Unlike an individual who might pop off a reply on X in the moment, brands use professional social media teams that consider the impact of every character they post. I suspect some are even using generative AI.

So, even if their social content shows up in Google Search unplanned, they’re still good.

But what if the social content that shows up is someone else’s talking about their brand?

For example, I searched for “Semrush keyword tool value,” which is kind of a review keyword.

Page one of the results was largely branded Semrush content, but then on page two was a LinkedIn post:

In this case, it was an article (Pulse), but I think it speaks to how “perspectives” can enter the conversation.

Then if you consider actual Perspectives content, and how it can suggest ancillary questions, like about how accurate a tool is or its cheaper alternatives, it opens up side alleys in buyers’ journeys that brands should account for, yet necessarily can’t control.

I’ve worked with larger brands where one rude comment on Reddit caused huge headaches for navigational queries on Google Search, and that was in the pre-hidden gems era.

One door closes (with SGE and AI answers) and another opens (with social media)?

At the same time Google Search is ramping up content that shows “experience,” so too is it exploring generative AI in search.

After all, People also view actually predates SGE, but its current iteration is a direct result of SGE while browsing.

SGE snapshots can also surface social content as citations, as we saw in the earlier screenshot with the X and LinkedIn posts.

Maybe SGE, and generative AI in general, will take a bite out of organic traffic to some website posts or pages, particularly those relevant to easy answers, informational queries, or comparisons. (Not to mention generative AI features coming to Maps.)

But on the flip side, if people and businesses can use their social platforms to get visibility in Google Search, just like a blog post could (or did) do, that exposure can have downstream effects for brand awareness and audience trust that supports conversions later in the sales funnel.

While social content in organic search isn’t going to result in better keyword rankings in GSC or organic traffic metrics in GA4, we might see more referral traffic from Search to social, and thus better social metrics.

We might also see more navigational searches or conversions across all channels, organic search included, as a result of that social engagement and cumulative brand awareness and trust.

Users who see a positive brand or product representation in social content from Google’s Perspectives, People also view, SGE, or normal search results might be influenced in how they perceive and engage with that brand’s other digital assets throughout the buyer’s journey.

If our overall goal as SEOs is to help build brands and get revenue for businesses, sure the ROI of organic search visibility might be trickier to report, but if we can contextualize its contribution in assisting conversions, its value should be readily apparent to stakeholders.

Who knows, users may be more apt to click a blog post or product link in SGE all because they recognize the brand from a social post or video also in Search.

This also helps explain …

Why social media specialists should care about Google Search

I spent 8+ years in digital agencies before starting my independent consulting business, and often I worked collaboratively with paid and organic social media teams on accounts, particularly in my earlier years at larger agencies.

Our collaboration usually revolved around topic ideation (“Which content is popular on search, so we can get inspiration for our social content?”) or correlation of timing (“When are you publishing those blog posts, because we can create accompanying social posts and also amplify them?”).

Let’s say as a social media specialist, your goal is to earn followers and get positive engagement signals (likes, comments, shares, etc.) to grow a client’s brand awareness, sales, and brand evangelists.

Whereas before those metrics were limited by the exposure your content could get on the social platforms themselves, now Google Search might index and rank that social content for relevant queries, placing it in more surfaces along your audience’s buyer’s journey.

Your social content might even see exposure from new audiences who don’t use social media and wouldn’t ordinarily find your messaging.

The traffic to that social content would likely be referrals from Google Search, but it could also result in more views, likes, comments, or shares on the actual platform.

I’m sure there are a lot of other benefits a social media specialist would identify, as well. (Maybe I’ll reach out to one for round two of updates to this article.) 😉

Optimizing social media content for Google Search

We know what makes great website content for Google Search today.

It should be original, helpful, people-first, and created with real expertise or experience to satisfy an intended audience’s search intent.

The same can be said for creating social content for search.

If what you’re posting about on social media has unique value for an intended audience’s search intent, is relevant to their buyer’s journey, and has a personal appeal, it’ll encourage engagement signals and have cross-channel value.

That said, the key is brand voice consistency.

While the formats of content can be different across social platforms, and the audiences can vary, as well, the messaging of your business or brand shouldn’t waver.

Whether you’re posting a thought on X, shooting a video for TikTok, or writing a blog post on your website, your audience should immediately identify the perspective behind all that content is one and the same — yours.

Closing thoughts (to part 1)

• If a primary goal of SEO is to generate brand awareness, qualified traffic, and conversions for through organic search visibility, then social media content in Google Search opens up more opportunities.
• Historically, we SEOs depended on website content (blog posts, product pages, etc.), yet, more and more, generative AI, Maps, knowledge graph features (particularly for shopping), and other SERP features act like buffers between a user’s query and clicks to a website.
• At the same time, we’re seeing more social content in Search, which creates brand visibility yet could also eat into web clicks.
• We also have less control over how that social content appears in Search compared to website results. It’s almost like how brands get mentioned in Bard or ChatGPT. Sure, the corpus of online content we create contributes, but the exact context and content of an LLM’s answer to a person’s unique prompt is tough to anticipate.
• However, for the time being, whether it’s Perspectives, People also view, SGE snapshots, or traditional web results, the fact that social posts and videos have a likelihood of surfacing means SEO strategists should have a seat at the table when those content strategies are made.

Other ways social media and Google Search or SEO overlap (part 2)

So far, we’ve focused on the growing instances of social media content appearing in Google Search, and why SEOs and social media specialists should care for their content strategies.

But now in part 2, let’s look at some of the other ways social media and SEO overlap.

Social media profile links and content from Google Business Profiles

In the past, if you had a Google Business Profile (or Google My Business), your social links would get added programmatically.

I once worked with a business where a disgruntled customer created a spoof Facebook page, and it’s what appeared on their GBP!

In August 2023, GBP added the ability to manually add social links to your profile, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, X (Twitter), and YouTube.

Then in March 2024, social media content started appearing in GBPs:

Here’s a recent example of how that might look:

I caught a Google test. Check out the posts on this listing; they're FB posts, not GBP posts. Can't see it again. Has anyone seen this? pic.twitter.com/e7i1UVNZdA

— Amy Mattison Toman 🐚🩴🐚 (@BubblesUp) May 9, 2024

Clearly, Google thinks that your social profiles are also relevant to your business audiences.

Relatedly: GBPs can also have posts, which are similar to social media, but should be used entirely differently.

Social media profiles can also be shown in knowledge panels. In fact, if you’re claiming a knowledge panel for yourself, logging into your social profiles is one way to do it.

I also include social profiles in sameAs schema for person or profile page markups (as well as related to businesses in organization or local business schema).

Social signals “do not” influence your rankings

What’s meant here is that links to your site from social media platforms are nofollowed, so they won’t pass PageRank.

Also, social posts themselves can rank in Search, as we’ve seen throughout this article. But getting mentions of your page in social media won’t directly help it rank any better.

That said, people suspect otherwise (and so does some data), and this debate has gone on for about 15 years, at least.

My guess is social signals contribute to user engagement (brand awareness, navigational searches, ancillary traffic), and that contributes to rankings indirectly.

After all, we saw that one LinkedIn page ranking that had just “1 reaction.”

(Now that I think about it, I did do a mini case study about a brand that went viral on TikTok and got a bunch of navigational traffic.)

Relatedly: follower count (like gets shown in search results, discussed earlier) is not a ranking factor, either.

Content distribution

When you create content for SEO purposes, such as blog posts, you can distribute those on social media.

This can get your content in front of a larger audience, and it may earn backlinks if people link to your article.

In a way, what we talked about in this article is the opposite of this.

Rather than using social media to distribute your SEO content, it’s using Google Search to distribute your social content.

Relatedly: You can repurpose your SEO content for social media. For example, the outline of your blog post can become the script of a TikTok video, a slideshow on LinkedIn, or a post thread on X.

Sharing links on social can help with crawling and indexing?

I’ve seen SEOs suggest in forums and on X that sharing the link to a webpage in a social post can help encourage its crawling and indexing by Google Search.

Anecdotally, I feel like this method has worked for me.

Then in the latest version of the Google SEO Starter Guide (published February 2nd, 2024), there’s a section called “Promote your website,” which suggests that “social media promotion” of “your new content will lead to faster discovery by those who are interested in the same subject, and also by search engines.” [Highlights added.]

So, it seems true, maybe?

Google Search features reminiscent of social media

While Google+ had its day (2011-2019), Google Search still has features today that are reminiscent of a social media experience.

Following topics

The first that comes to mind is the ability to influence the content in your Discover feed by following topics (or entities and queries) from normal search results or Discover. You can also like Discover articles with a heart icon to save them (and likely feed the algorithms).

News fans can also follow specific publications through Google News, which can appear on your Google homepage on mobile, alongside your Discover feed.

Local Search features

In local news (see what I did there), a few Google Maps features come to mind. A photo-first results update launched in October 2023 selects photos from Google Maps community members (powered by AI) to offer suggestions for specific searches.

When you log into the Google Maps app, there’s also an Explore tab that lets you view trending happenings or locations in your area, as well as follow the Local Guides who post about them.

Google notes

Google Search Labs introduced notes in November 2023 as an experiment. (In fact, it was included in the same announcement as Perspectives on desktop and hidden gems’ completed rollout.)

As its name implies, notes are a way for everyday searchers to add context to articles or other results they find in Google Search.

Google even says to “use notes to share your perspective on content that’s in Google results.” [Highlights and bolding added.]

Notes kind of remind me of comments on social media posts. They can be designed with different fonts, colorful backgrounds, and other add-ons, reminiscent of Instagram posts.

What’s most exciting, though, is because notes are indexable, you can find them ranking in normal search results, but also in other surfaces, like People also view!

Here’s an example of a note I left appearing for my Perspectives article:

Since notes are specific to a user’s Google profile, it could be a good branding opportunity for businesses or their representatives (team members) to leave them on relevant industry articles, showcasing their knowledge.

Just as businesses encourage customers to leave reviews, like on their GBPs, maybe encouraging readers to leave notes — even though it wouldn’t have a rankings impact, most likely — could also be a way to drive engagement and community discussion, similar to GBP Q&A sections.

Relatedly: Google Search has “people cards,” which users can manage and that can get surfaced in search results for related queries. However, this is currently only available in India and a few African countries.

That said, even regular knowledge panels for individuals are looking similar to social media profile pages these days, in my opinion:

Interestingly, my knowledge panel also has an About section pulled from LinkedIn, specifically my consulting company’s page:

Think of social media as an extension of your SEO strategy and a way to connect the dots about your brand and service or product offerings.

In fact, I also work with musicians, and many of them are more focused on their knowledge panels and socials than their websites.

I’m sure there are many other examples, as well!

These are just a few that came to mind. 😉

And don’t forget about Bing!

Bing’s search engine usage may be higher than many SEOs realize, as it also influences results from other search engines, like DuckDuckGo, Yahoo!, and Ecosia. But the growth of AI assistant chatbots in social media platforms could increase the visibility of Bing search results, as well as traffic from them.

Meta AI assistant was recently upgraded with Llama 3, for example. As a result, this AI chat experience, which is available across Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, and WhatsApp, can show sources with organic links to results from both Google and Bing!

Here’s an example of a conversation I had with Meta AI, where I simply asked who I was and it referenced Bing’s search results to talk about some of my projects:

As I mentioned in the introduction to Hamsterdam Part 54 (an SEO news recap), SEO is becoming as much about influencing the information customer’s see during chat experiences as it is organic search rankings.

And social media use is at the heart of some of those opportunities!

Addendum: TikTok!

Earlier in this article, I suggested that part of the reason more social media content is surfacing in Google Search (the “experience” paradigm shift) was due to younger searchers’ habits — the whole, “TikTok as a search engine” topic.

Well recently, I came across an article on SEL by Ashley Liddell discussing this. It brought up some more ideas (and context) for our conversation about the overlap of social content and Search.

Let’s explore!

A note about incentives for the “experience” paradigm shift

First off, we have a statistic to mention now, which is that more Gen Z users (born 1997 to 2012) prefer social networks to search engines (48% vs. 44%) “when looking for information about brands, products or services.”

Incorporating social content into Google Search might be one way to lure back their interest. (If you’re interested, I recently wrote about young people’s search preferences in the context of Perplexity AI and Rabbit R1 in Hamsterdam Part 41.)

TikTok content appearing in Google Search

Also noteworthy, the article reminded us about TikTok videos recently being spotted in both Google SGE snapshots and featured snippets.

I’ve seen carousels of TikTok video results in normal search results before, as well as individual videos ranking. (I’ll add screenshots if I come across them again in the wild.)

However, just like the X and LinkedIn examples from earlier in this article, we can also include single TikTok posts (which videos are) as a form of “SEO content” eligible to appear across Google Search surfaces.

This also ties back to our earlier mention of the Google Quality Rater Guidelines update from November 2023, which added a TikTok content example.

As a recent example, Gisele Navarro of HouseFresh shared a great article called, “How Google is killing independent sites like ours,” about the dominance of big brands in Search. Some of the articles examples pertained to air purifiers, so I started searching queries around that and saw some TikTok videos appearing in Google Explore — a mobile feature similar to Google Discover, in a way, that appears below normal SERPs and suggests related queries or topics:

If smaller brands are to compete against “digital goliaths,” social media content may be one avenue to get there.

“Commercial” appeal

Relatedly, I caught an X post shared by Lily Ray about how her teammate, Jamie Reedy, found a TikTok Shop item in a product knowledge panel in Search (i.e., Google’s shopping graph):

If you’re not familiar with TikTok Shop, the best analogy I can give is that if Google’s shopping results are like a mall, and Amazon is like a big-box retailer, then TikTok Shop would be a bazaar.

Many SEOs are familiar with Google Gemini (as just announced). Well, for a while already, Google Lens could search for products in your screenshots (via the shopping graph). Gemini (now as a virtual assistant) could streamline that process (as could Circle to Search and other AI features).

I’ve also just noticed TikTok content appearing in Discussions and forums within Google product knowledge panels:

It extracts clips of video content (likely using multimodal AI technology like Gemini) and then when you click one, it takes you to a page of related TikTok results in the platform:

However, TikTok is similarly experimenting with AI to auto-suggest products from the TikTok Shop based on what appears in videos.

It seemed like the TikTok Shop was isolated from Google’s shopping graph (a Walmart vs. Target sort of vibe), but that instance of a TikTok Shop product in a Google product knowledge panel suggests even more areas of overlap between social content and Search, now in the context of commerce.

And if there’s one thing we know, it’s that once shopping results get involved, the floodgates open.

Influencing the story

Something I also remembered was from my Perspectives article about how ads and sponsored social content don’t appear in the filter (that I’ve ever seen), however, I was once part of a digital marketing campaign for an ecommerce brand that involved both SEO and influencer marketing (sponsored UGC in the form of TikTok videos), and while monitoring search results, I noticed some of our influencer posts were appearing in the Perspectives filter for branded queries.

In other words, social content needn’t be informational or for brand-building purposes alone to have SEO value. Even product reviews that are incentivized could appear.

That said, as a recent Think with Google article about creator content reminds us, quality is about personal relevance: “As one consumer told us, “I value authenticity and relatability as high-quality traits within content. For me these are just as important as audio and video [quality].””

In other words, a risk of leaning into sponsored UGC for SEO purposes, to use another SEO analogy, is that it could have the same bland inertia as a sponsored guest post.

Some guest posts do work for brand-building purposes though. And that’s the same lesson in this context, I think.

Whether it’s content for TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, or another social platform, focus on making a personal connection with the audience, satisfying their search intent or interest, and, most importantly, coming across as real.

To quote the character Wee-Bey from my favorite TV show, The Wire: “Either you real out there or you ain’t …”

“Two and Two Always Makes Five”

If you’re a visual learner, I shot a video summarizing this article with some bonus information:

I’ll continue to monitor how social media content appears in Google Search results (and maybe other search engines or AI answer engines).

For example, since publishing this, I noticed two more interesting examples of social content in Search results.

The first was seeing Reddit posts in Google Discover. (I’ll keep an eye out for additional social content there.)

The second was seeing an X (Twitter) carousel appearing prominently on page one (around position 3) for the query “what is SEO.”

We recently saw some rankings system updates (May 2024 core update and spam update) that could change the equation (with more or less social content), as well.

I’ll also revisit this article to improve the writing or add images or details based on new updates or user feedback.

Until then, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing! 🙂

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