INSTA GRATIFICATION IN SEARCH?
Instagram debuted in 2010 and has since evolved into both a launching pad for creators and a showcase for businesses. Creativity thrives there, and new creators are discovered. But with more than a billion monthly users, it’s also a very crowded place.
However, the content created on this platform has always lived in its own ‘walled space’. This changed in July 2025, when Instagram allowed public content from professional accounts to be indexed by search engines - blurring the lines between search and social.
3 things you should know about the July 2025 Instagram SEO update
Your content may be searchable by search engines.
If your content is public, it may now be crawlable by search engines, but professional Instagram account holders can manage whether their content appears in Google (and other) searches by accessing their account settings and selecting to opt in or out.
Technical SEO becomes a focus.
To take advantage of this change, focus on technical SEO by optimising post captions, image alt texts, and hashtags with keywords that match user intent and your content strategy. This approach improves how posts are indexed by search engines.
Posts from 1 January 2020 onwards are explicitly eligible under Instagram’s new indexing rules.
As an owner of a professional or business account, you may wish to consider a strategic clean-up from this date and optimise chosen ‘to keep’ content already created.
In Summary
As always, there are positive impacts and potential risks to consider and some businesses may need new skills or resources to adapt. Those who create content not intended for discovery outside Instagram may also need to adjust their privacy settings to retain control. New opportunities include the ability to reach non-followers via Google, as SEO becomes more holistic across social and search.
If your business needs extra resources to navigate these changes, please reach out via email to mariann@mtfmarketing.co.uk to arrange a free discovery call.
