Meta’s Instagram will now index public or professional accounts for search engines. Applicable from July 10, 2025, the new policy brings significant changes in social media SEO, which will surely impact content creators, marketers, and brands. Apparently, this policy change will also have an impact on all Instagram posts, including photos, videos, and reels, excluding stories.
With the introduction of Google’s indexing policy, Instagram aims to extend its digital strategy, targeting audiences beyond the social platform. While boosting reach and visibility on digital platforms, brands must consider the new policy. Here is a quick look at all the essentials you need to know about Instagram’s new Google indexing policy…
What is Instagram’s Google Indexing Policy?
Instagram redefines social media SEO by unveiling its new Google indexing policy. According to the new guidelines, starting from July 10, 2025, the public and professional profiles will be applicable for Google indexing.
Announcing a direct shift from keeping posts exclusive for the app and web version of Instagram, the social platform unveiled Google’s indexing policy. As per the guidelines, all public posts from January 2020, including reels, photos, videos, and carousels, are likely to get indexed. However, Stories and personal chats stay excluded from getting indexed.
Why Should Brands and Creators Care?
Alongside opportunities to enhance reach and target a wider audience, the new policy may bring certain complexities for brands and creators. Creators will now be able to target audiences beyond Instagram, typically everyone who uses search engines, boosting visibility and engagement.
Nevertheless, brands and creators will need to attain and excel in SEO skills to create a successful content strategy following the indexing policy. In this regard, optimizing profiles with appropriate keywords, adding valuable captions and alt text to the posts, using impactful hashtags, and others are beneficial.
Tracking engagement signals will surely become a core KPI to assess the performance of the posts. To maintain relevance and timeliness on the search engine, we recommend creating evergreen content on Instagram that has a longer lifespan.
Instagram Indexing Policy for Search Engines Can Also Impose Certain Challenges…
Privacy and content control are the key challenges that can arise for creators. Photos and reels on search engines can lead to misuse of the personal information of creators and outlawed acts of repurposing. Creators who do not want to be indexed can opt out or switch their public profile to a private account.
Alongside that, since multimodal SEO is at its peak, creators need to look to optimize their accounts for multimodal search.
Balancing authenticity will be another hurdle for optimization. Photos, reals, and captions with authenticity are more likely to be indexed by search engines, just like web pages and content. Furthermore, keeping up with the quickly changing settings to get indexed and social media SEO can also be a challenge for brands and creators.
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