Google has rolled out a better way to see the numbers.

Let’s get on the same page before we get into how exciting this is for our industry. Google Search Console’s most recent update means you can now connect profiles from Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter) directly into Search Console. Meaning it’s now possible to track how non-website assets drive discovery for brands and businesses.

For the purpose of this exercise, picture yourself as a tourism operator, and get ready to fight for your organic social budget at the next board meeting with this update as your amunition.

How does it all work?

A user might search “what to do in Queenstown in winter” on Google and click on a TikTok reel or Instagram post instead of a long-form travel blog or webpage. They might watch a few reels or read a few Tweets (are they called X’s now?) and head to the attraction on the day and book in person.

They’ve never clicked the website – so the tourism operator has no record of them. None. The website analytics never saw them, because they never touched their website. TikTok’s native creator analytics did not provide the same clear, Google-specific reporting that Search Console now offers.

That gap just closed. And for many brands, this will be fantastic ammunition at the boardroom table when organic social comes up in the budget. This is the first time you can track third-party social profiles without controlling the web domain host, which is a genuinely big deal for industries like tourism, where half your best content lives on someone else’s platform.

What organic social data is in Search Console?

Okay, so obviously the best approach here to to spend half an hour in your Search Console playing with the filters and getting a feel for what’s relevant to your brand.

One of the best pieces of data that will cause good conversations is the top queries that lead people to your content. This can be fantastic if you think their might be a disconnect between what you internally call your experience/product/service, and what terms users actually search to find you.

Another great nugget to look for – whether your international market is finding you. Filter by country and you’ll get a read on how discoverable you are in the markets you’re actually spending against.

For our friends in tourism, this can be super illuminating – where are the people planning their trips, and what are they looking up when you appear.

A quick reality check…

This update isn’t some sort of miracle for your rankings or your social performance. It’s another juicy layer of data to add to your toolkit. Use it to plan new content and move forward.

It’s also not a replacement for native analytics. Search Console tells you how your TikTok performed in Google, not how it performed in TikTok. Both still matter, and different people are looking in different places.

While it isn’t available for Facebook or LinkedIn yet, it’s still worth exploring in Search Console. Getting familiar with the data now will put you ahead of the curve if it eventually rolls out to those platforms.

Have we sold you?

Great, let’s get you set up:

1. Open Google Search Console and hit the property selector, then “Add property”.
2. Look below the usual Domain and URL Prefix options for the platform property section.
3. Pick your platform and authorise the account.
4. Check the username before you confirm. If you’re logged into a personal account in another tab, you can absolutely connect the wrong one. (Ask us how we know.)
5. One account is one property, so a brand with an Instagram and a YouTube channel is adding two, and reporting on them separately.

What should tourism operators do with this new organic social insight?

Well, great question! We think it’s worth looking back on what you’ve done. Because for years, your organic content has been playing a role you haven’t been able to give it credit for.

Your reels, TikToks, content shoots, influencer collabs and all these other good things in content land have been earning Google visibility for years… but that content never appeared in a single Google report. You’ve had to defend all that spend on engagement numbers, because engagement numbers were all you had. So go back and see what other data you can pull, see what pieces of content were silent weapons of search result domination.

Travel planning isn’t linear. It’s part search, part scroll, part chat with your Aunt Sharon who visited in the 80s. Typing in “things to do in XYZ” goes well beyond the ten blue links that pop up. We always knew it, but now you can measure it.

So pull up the data and go back to the creator who didn’t go gangbusters on TikTok metrics but you might now see, was an absolute Google weapon. Put out some content online that uses the terms you didn’t know people searched to find your reels. Build pages that videos have proved there is demand for, and marvel at what lies beyond the views of your YouTube videos – consider the intents that aren’t in your brand guidelines and make room for new learning.

If you do it you should measure it.

We’ve said that at Empire9 for a long time. But being able to measure things previously unknown… really gets our wheels turning.

If your business needs a hand in the Google space, or the Organic Social space – they’re thankfully two of our favourite spaces. Behind outer space and personal space perhaps. Anyway, point being – we’d love to help on all things digital domination. Give us a bell if we can help with your goals!