Starting July 10, 2025, public posts from Instagram professional accounts (that’s business and creator accounts, age 18+) will automatically be indexed by Google and other search engines. That means your photos, videos, carousels, and Reels can now appear in organic search results, making your Instagram presence part of the wider web.
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Instagram is officially cracking open its once-private ecosystem to boost discoverability beyond the app. Until now, the platform’s robots.txt file has largely kept Google’s crawlers out. But with this update, your public posts become part of the searchable web, competing with YouTube videos, TikToks, blog posts, and news articles for prime search real estate.
The feature is opt-in by default, but you do have control, and it only affects public professional accounts. Private and personal profiles stay out of Google’s reach.
Where to find it: Settings → Privacy → Allow public photos and videos to appear in search engine results.
That means the lines between social strategy and search strategy just got blurrier. Captions now work like webpage titles. Alt text on your posts? Google’s indexing that too. And hashtags aren’t just for social discovery, they now help your posts rank for search terms. Strangely enough, I remember Adam Mosseri saying hashtags no longer mattered, and that was just a few weeks ago…
How to make the maximum out of this update:
- Write captions with keywords in mind, especially the first line, which acts like a headline in search
- Use descriptive Alt text, better accessibility and better SEO
- Rethink hashtags, they’re now dual-purpose.
And this new strategy works. Google has already been indexing some Instagram content. SEOZoom reports that in Italy alone, Instagram appears for over 669,000 keywords, with more than 600,000 Reels showing up in search. And when it comes to ranking, IG content performs well: a lot of posts land in Google’s top 10 results, already peaking at position 4.
With this update, Instagram shifts from a pure-play social feed to a searchable content powerhouse. Marketers now need to measure Google rankings, CTR, and search traffic alongside Reels views, likes, and saves. Bio sections, pinned posts, and highlights all gain new importance, they’re not just for followers anymore. They’re for first impressions when someone Googles you, your brand, or your niche.
Instagram isn’t just playing catch-up. It’s fighting to stay relevant in a world where search, social, and AI discovery are merging fast. The walled garden is gone. The invisible door is open. And the competition for Google real estate just got a whole lot fiercer.