Platform properties: Google now shows you the search data behind your YouTube videos. LinkedIn is left out

Since July, Google has been showing you search data for content that does not live on your website at all.

On 7 July 2026, Google announced a new property type for Search Console on the Search Central Blog: platform properties. A property in Search Console (Google's free reporting tool for site owners) is simply the unit you see data for. Until now that was your domain. Now it can be your YouTube channel.

The global rollout followed on 29 July 2026, together with a guide. The matching documentation carries the same date.

For B2B mid-market companies, the value comes down to three questions. Which platforms are included? What is in the reports? And where does the feature stop?

Four platforms. That is all.

Google's guide explicitly names four selectable platforms.

LinkedIn does not appear anywhere in the official documentation. Neither does Facebook. Anyone running marketing for an industrial company sees immediately where that hurts. The channel many B2B firms have invested in for years delivers no numbers here.

One detail gets lost in most write-ups. Google never says that more platforms are coming. We checked the announcement of 7 July, the rollout post of 29 July and the related help pages. Not one of them names a timeline or further platforms. If you read somewhere that LinkedIn is "not yet" supported, that is an assumption. Google's own statement on the matter: none.

We consider that more honest than glossing over it. If LinkedIn is your main channel, this update does nothing for you right now. If you run a YouTube channel with application videos, training or trade fair footage, it does.

What the reports contain

Once set up, Google applies the same logic it uses for websites to your posts. There are three reports.

The Insights report shows clicks over the last 28 days, your strongest posts, the search terms behind them and the countries your users come from.

The Performance report goes deeper. It shows clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position. You filter by country, date range and search term. There is a 24-hour filter that tells you whether a freshly published video is picking up. And there is a comparison mode for two groups of URLs. Google gives the example of comparing /watch against /shorts/ on YouTube.

The Achievements report counts milestones. Google describes it as a record of growth and click-based accomplishments, such as hitting a new click threshold. It is not a diagnostic tool. It tells you that something happened, not why.

The data covers three Google surfaces: Search, Discover and Google News. Google News was added later. The 7 July post named only Search and Discover. The rollout post of 29 July named all three.

If you already use the Search Console report for AI search, you know the logic. Here too, Google counts its own surfaces, not those of others.

One point of context matters: this is Google data, not platform data. Likes, comments and watch time stay in YouTube Studio. Search Console answers a different question. It tells you which search query brought someone to your video.

Why this matters more for B2B than it sounds

With a product that needs explaining, technical buyers do not search for your company name. They search for the problem. For an error message, a standard, a retrofit case.

Those exact phrasings were only available to you for your website. For a video that answers the same question in four minutes, you had no search terms. You saw that views were coming in. Where from was guesswork.

That changes. And the search terms from the video are usable material for your own site. If people find your video through a phrasing you have no landing page for, you have found a content gap. No keyword tool needed, with real data from your own account. This is exactly the principle behind our data navigation concept built from Google Search Console, where we derive site structure from real search queries.

Setup takes a few minutes

The process is lean. You open Search Console, click "Add property" in the property selector and pick one of the four platforms. Google then walks you through the authorisation. The official guide to platform properties describes exactly these four steps.

One detail matters for service providers. Verification runs through signing in to the account itself, not through a DNS record or an HTML file. So we cannot create a property for you without you logging in or granting us access. Factor that in when you delegate this internally.

Each account is added and verified individually. If you have already claimed your Google Search profile, your verified accounts show up in Search Console automatically.

Two points that regularly come up in practice:

1. Data does not arrive immediately. Google states that it takes a few days for data to appear in the reports. An empty chart the day after setup is normal.
2. The feature is not everywhere yet. Google has announced the global rollout. The help pages still carry the note about a gradual release. If you do not see the option, wait a few days and check again.

The property is tied to the platform account, not to your domain. Whether Google additionally requires a verified website is not stated on any help page. Google's stated audience argues against it. In the announcement, Google explicitly names channels beyond your own website as the reason for the feature. That is not a commitment. We will check it at the next setup and add it here.

Where it stops for reporting teams

This is where it gets uncomfortable for companies with established reporting. Three limits are not spelled out in the announcements.

There is no documented way to pull the data from outside. For website properties, Google offers two routes: the Search Console API and the daily bulk export to BigQuery. For platform properties, Google mentions neither. Neither the API reference nor the export documentation lists platform properties. If you have built your reporting in Looker Studio or BigQuery, these numbers will not reach it for now. In practice that means exporting by hand, one table at a time.

Google merges nothing. Each account becomes its own property, separate from your domain property. There is no combined view across platforms. If you want to compare YouTube against Instagram, you export both properties separately and line them up yourself.

There is no look back. Google puts it plainly in the help pages. For a newly created property, the charts only show data from the point collection started. Google does not backfill historical numbers. Create the property in November and you have nothing for the summer.

From that limit follows the one piece of advice that is worth money today. Connect the accounts now, even without a finished plan for the data. Setup takes minutes and needs no IT team. From the day you connect, the blind flying ends, and you start collecting the history you will need in the next planning cycle.

What we do not know

There is no publicly robust study measuring how often video results appear in Google Search for B2B industrial queries in the German-speaking market. Nor one on how they perform against classic results. The numbers circulating in presentations mostly come from global, cross-industry research or from individual vendor datasets. They do not transfer to a machine builder in southern Germany.

Anyone quoting you a percentage for your industry right now has estimated it.

Hence the sober advice: use the new properties to collect your own numbers. After four to eight weeks you have a dataset that applies to your company. That beats any benchmark from someone else's industry.

What we take from this

Google is making visible what used to be a blind spot. This is not a rebuild of your strategy, it is one measurement gap less. We claim nothing beyond that.

The most honest way to handle it: create the property now, let it run for eight weeks, then hold the search terms up against your website. After that you stop arguing about your content on gut feeling. You have your own data for the next round of planning.

• Google Search Central Blog, See how content from social and video platforms performs on Google Search. developers.google.com
• Google Search Central Blog, Platform properties roll out globally, plus a new social and video performance guide. developers.google.com
• Google Search Central documentation, Analyze your social and video platform content performance in Search Console. developers.google.com
• Google Search Console Help, About platform properties in Search Console. support.google.com
• Google Search Console Help, Advanced filters and comparisons in the Performance report. support.google.com
• Google Search Console Help, Bulk data export to BigQuery. support.google.com