Huge news for social media – your Instagram posts can now be found in search engines
Get ready retailers, this one is a game-changer. As of the 10th July 2025, Meta has opened the doors, allowing your public Instagram posts to be indexed by Google Search. This means your amazing content is no longer confined to the social media apps; it can now appear directly in Google search results, increasing your discoverability and helping new customers find you.
Why is this a game-changer for retailers?
This presents a significant opportunity for businesses of all sizes, particularly those that rely heavily on social media for their marketing efforts. Imagine someone searching for “teddy bears in [your area]” and your post pops up. That’s the power we’re talking about.
What can you do as a retailer to capitalise on this?
This new change means your social media strategy must be more closely aligned with SEO best practices than ever before. Here’s how you can optimise your Instagram posts for Google Search:
Use relevant keywords
Think like your customer. What terms would they use if they were searching for your products or services on Google? Incorporate those keywords into your bios and captions.
Include alt-text to describe images
Adding alt-text to images is great for search engine optimisation (SEO) and accessibility. Search engines can’t see images the same way as humans, so they rely on text to understand what an image is all about.
By providing a clear and concise description through alt text, you help search engines like Google index your content correctly, which could improve your ranking in search results.
At the same time, alt text makes your site more inclusive for users with visual impairments by allowing screen readers to describe images, ensuring everyone can access your content.
Use relevant hashtags
While hashtags are primarily for discovery within Instagram, they also provide context to search engines about your content’s topic, which can help search engines index your content. Use a mix of broad and niche hashtags that accurately reflect your post’s content and your brand.
Location tagging
If you have a physical store or serve a specific geographic area, always tag your location. This is incredibly important for appearing in local Google searches, helping nearby customers find you.
Archive irrelevant posts
Just like with a website, quality matters. If you have old, irrelevant or low-quality posts that no longer represent your brand or offer value, consider archiving them. This helps present a clean, relevant profile to search engines.
Ensure you have public professional accounts
This is non-negotiable. Search engines such as Google can only crawl and index content from public professional business accounts. Double-check your settings to ensure your business profile isn’t set to private.
Note: The account owner must be 18 years or older for content to be indexable.
Check your account settings
To ensure your photos and videos are set to appear in the search engine results, go to your profile on your mobile device, tap the three lines in the top right corner, then select “Account privacy.” From there, ensure the “Allow public photos and videos to appear in search engine results” option is toggled on.
Happy Optimising
It’s important to remember that it can take some time for Google to index new content, so don’t give up hope if you don’t see immediate results. You can do a Google search for your brand name or specific products or services to see if your posts are appearing in the search results. We’ve even given this a little test ourselves and can already see some of our posts popping up.