Social networks account for 8.6% of Google and are replacing websites
8.65% of Italian searches no longer lead to a website, but activate content coming directly from social networks. This is the raw data that SEOZoom presents to you and that changes the rules of engagement: for decades, we have worked on the assumption that the “container” of the response was always a proprietary HTML page, an article, or a product sheet, but today Google is telling us that for almost one in ten searches, this belief is technically incorrect.
The algorithm has determined that for certain intents, the rigid structure of a website is inferior to the native content of an external platform in terms of user experience. And SERPs are increasingly becoming a hybrid feed where a YouTube video, an Instagram post, or a discussion on Reddit compete with your article for the same visual space.
It is a functional and structural replacement. When users search for a visual tutorial, social confirmation, or an image to save, Google does not want to force them to enter a slow website, accept cookies, and scroll through useless text. It wants to provide them with the immediate asset: the video, the discussion, the photo—also because, otherwise, users would abandon the search engine to search directly on the social app. And so your SEO strategy must evolve: you no longer just have to dominate the SERP with your domain, you have to occupy it with every digital asset at your disposal
The SEOZoom study on the impact of social media on Google
We analyzed almost one and a half billion keywords from Google Italy, and the results leave little room for interpretation.
Social networks participate in the construction of the SERP with a continuity that crosses categories, sectors, and search intentions: 8.65% of searches activate at least one result from a social platform, with over 115 million occurrences distributed between the first page and the top three positions, and on average there are two results from external platforms that you find on the first page of the search engine alone.
You might think that’s a low percentage, but in the context of the huge numbers involved in Google Search (we’re talking about billions of queries every day), an incidence of almost 9% represents a huge market share taken away from traditional websites. This means that almost one in ten searches is no longer the monopoly of editorial or e-commerce sites, but is managed by third-party platforms, because the algorithm evaluates a social media page (a profile, a post, a single video) as semantically relevant as an optimized web page, including it in the traditional ranking.
The critical point is that you are not faced with a single “blue link” from Facebook or YouTube timidly appearing in tenth position: when Google decides that a query has a social intent, at least 20% of the organic space is structurally inaccessible to websites, with a stable distribution involving video content, public identities, visual searches, discussions, and trends.
If you consider that queries often also show video carousels or visual boxes that take up more pixels than a text link, the actual space taken away from your organic visibility is even greater. So, if your goal is to get into the Top 10, you need to know that in these cases you are only competing for 8 positions, because 2 are already automatically assigned to the platforms.
The hierarchy of platforms: YouTube is the second engine, the others are satellites
If you delve deeper into the analysis, you will discover that the aggregate figure of 8.6% hides an extremely unbalanced power map, because Google applies a technical dictatorship, entrusting two giants with control of almost all the space in SERP.
The pie chart is an indisputable verdict: YouTube (43.7%) and Facebook (22.5%) alone control two-thirds of all social visibility in Italy.
YouTube is essentially a direct extension of Google’s search index and, with over 50 million keywords ranked and almost 2 million in the Top 3, it moves twice as much traffic as its closest competitor. This technical and political primacy—remember that YouTube is owned by Google—tells you that video is not “accessory content,” but the preferred format for responding to informational and how-to intent. If the SERP is dominated by YouTube, writing text is often a waste of resources: you have to produce a video.
Facebook remains in second place thanks to the historical power of its entities (Pages, Brands, and Places), but the gap is structural. The rest of the digital landscape—from Instagram (10.4%) to Reddit (7.4%), TikTok (6.5%), and Pinterest (4.8%)—has to settle for sharing the remaining third of the pie.
There is therefore a clear dividing line for your strategy: YouTube and Facebook are the main infrastructures for off-site visibility, while the others act as specialized satellites that the algorithm activates only for very specific vertical purposes (visual, community, or trend). Spreading your budget across all channels is a mistake: if you ignore YouTube’s technical domain, you are giving up almost half of the total space that Google allocates to social results, while maintaining a presence on niche platforms only makes sense if your business intercepts that exact vertical intent.
Google has specialized its platforms: each intent has its own social media
The most sophisticated aspect that emerges from the study is the surgical semantic precision of the results. In other words, Google does not position “social media” at random, but has assigned each platform a specific functional role, using them as tools to meet needs that the classic web struggles to cover.
Qualitative analysis of the Top 10 for each network reveals a very clear map of intentions, where the algorithm chooses the winner not based on domain authority, but on the format’s ability to solve the user’s problem better than a web page would. The user encounters a video, profile, or post in the same space that for years has been reserved for classic text content.
In practice, Google has divided up the search territory, assigning each player a de facto monopoly on specific clusters of intent: YouTube dominates queries related to programs, tutorials, and structured content; Facebook intercepts navigation, editorials, and local communities; Instagram reinforces the presence of media faces and brands; Pinterest drives iconographic searches; Reddit collects operational questions and direct comparisons.
- YouTube is the player for on-demand television. Scrolling through the ranking of the highest-ranked domains, the myth of the “video tutorial” collapses. The Top 10 is dominated by mass entertainment giants, such as the Lotto draw archive, the official channels of Uomini e Donne, Mediaset Infinity, Rai and even Peppa Pig. Here, Google intercepts passive and immediate usage: users use the search bar as a remote control to bypass the broadcasters’ native apps and access streaming directly. The search intent shifts dramatically from information (“tell me what happened”) to consumption (“show me what happened”), making any editorial intermediary that tries to recount the event instead of showing it superfluous.
- Facebook is the phone book of entities and communities. With 22.5% visibility, Facebook remains a validation infrastructure. The most popular queries are almost all navigational or entity-based: direct logins, major newspapers (La Repubblica, Corriere, Gazzetta) and communities of specific interest such as “Cagnolini” (dogs) or “Tagli capelli corti” (short haircuts). Google uses it to confirm the official existence of a brand or to direct users to established thematic groups that act as vertical forums.
- Instagram is the magazine of gossip and entertainment. There is no room for in-depth analysis, only for the personality. Instagram’s Top 10 is a monolith dedicated to TV and the star system: Uomini e Donne, Amici, Grande Fratello, Belen, X Factor. If you search for news about a program or a VIP, Google prefers the official Instagram profile over the gossip article, because it knows that the user is looking for a direct visual update from the source.
- Reddit is the answer for practical (and borderline) usefulness. Google delegates to the forum the management of a vast gray area made up of “dirty” or hyper-practical queries that institutional sites and editorial portals cannot cover for reasons of policy, decorum, or the impossibility of E-E-A-T certification. Google uses Reddit as a “safety valve” to satisfy queries that require a human, raw, and non-institutional response. Among the most frequent results are searches for free streaming, free VPN, MP3 downloads, and discussions about piracy. Here, the algorithm rewards “street smarts”: for the query “free dating sites,” the raw truth of the community is worth more than a commercial review; it is a “downward” transactional intent, in which the user wants to obtain value at no cost and seeks the shortcut that only another anonymous user can suggest.
- Pinterest dominates the “mental printing” intent. The platform oversees the static cataloging intent, winning on queries such as maps, good morning images, and haircuts. Unlike Google Images and simple automatic image indexing, Pinterest offers human-curated collections that respond to the need to find a specific visual reference to save or send on WhatsApp.
- TikTok intercepts local verification and quick discovery. Vertical video conquers discovery. The presence of results for local queries such as “Bakeca incontri a Lecce” (Bakeca dating in Lecce) or geolocalized trends signals a new use of social media: reality verification. Users search on TikTok to see “what a place or situation is really like” right now, using short videos as a tool for immediate inspection to satisfy their instant curiosity. It is a quick consumption experience that renders long text content obsolete.
- LinkedIn is the official corporate job board. No surprise there, but a clear confirmation: LinkedIn appears almost exclusively for work-related transactional purposes (“Trenitalia works with us,” “Job offers in Catania,” “Poste Italiane”) or for corporate validation of large companies (Intesa Sanpaolo, Il Sole 24 Ore, Unibo). Google uses it as a certified bulletin board to bypass generic ad portals.
- X (Twitter) is the pulse of soccer and real-time news. Although the volumes are smaller, the intent is surgical: Sports and Breaking News. The Top 10 is a list of soccer clubs (Juventus, Inter, Roma) and sports or generalist newspapers (Gazzetta, Repubblica). Google activates X when it needs the news “now” or live commentary on a sporting event, still recognizing its primacy in real-time information.
Read the intent to choose the format of your content
All the information we have seen converges on a single operating rule: the presence of a social result in SERP is the clearest signal Google can give you about search intent. The results page has become your editorial brief. You need to stop “guessing” the right format and start decoding what the algorithm has already rewarded.
If you see a carousel of TikTok or Instagram posts for your target keyword, Google is telling you that the user is looking for quick visual inspiration, not an in-depth analysis. If the first page is dominated by YouTube, the intent is demonstration or passive entertainment. If you see Reddit, the user is looking for unbiased opinions and is wary of corporate responses.
Adapt your editorial plan to the sector
This logic requires a drastic change of course in content production.
For example, if you work in News and Lifestyle and your editorial plan includes articles summarizing “what happened” in a television episode or sporting event, know that you are starting out at a disadvantage. Google will always rank the video of the event above your commentary text. The battle shifts to the ability to produce clips and visual highlights.
In e-commerce, on the other hand, users no longer want to read about the features of a toy or item of clothing; they want to see it in action. The video on YouTube becomes your real product sheet, capable of intercepting that search for “reality” that text no longer satisfies.
For physical products, you need to make a clear distinction between those who search to ‘catalog’ and those who search to “discover.” . Data shows that Pinterest caters to the need for static archiving (saving an idea, a map, a cut), while TikTok dominates quick discovery and reality checking. If you sell design or inspiration, you need to build curated “pinboards”; if you sell trends or experiences, you need to produce immediate vertical videos. Google Images alone is no longer enough to satisfy these complex needs.
You also need defensive management for those searches where the user wants the unfiltered truth about services or opinions, where trying to position yourself with an institutional blog is useless and risky for brand safety. Your reputation in these niches is decided in conversations on Reddit or in the forums that Google ranks on the first page. If you cannot control the content (because you cannot write an article on “how to get X for free”), you must monitor what is being said. For Google, that discussion is the “truth,” and you need to be aware of it in order to intervene or correct the situation on other channels.
Social media as a “Trojan horse” for visibility
Finally, there is a tactical advantage to the “monopoly” of platforms. When you come up against highly competitive keywords, where your domain doesn’t have enough Zoom Authority to crack the Top 10, social networks become your Trojan horse. YouTube, Facebook, or LinkedIn have a level of trust in Google’s eyes that your site could take years to build.
Publishing optimized content directly on these platforms allows you to “inherit” their domain authority. It is the most effective strategy for positioning yourself in SERPs, overtaking competitors who have stronger sites than yours, occupying the visual space (video, discussion, image) that the algorithm has reserved for social media. You are not driving traffic to the site, you are bringing your brand before the eyes of the user, where the user is looking.
Opportunità Social by SEOZoom is exactly what you need to map these occurrences: instead of stubbornly positioning a product page or article that no one will click on because the format is wrong, it allows you to create the specific multimedia asset that Google has decided to accept.
The scope of visibility has extended beyond your site (and beyond Google).
The dividing wall between “doing SEO” and “doing social” has collapsed because the Italian SERP now behaves like a hybrid environment. Google has integrated social signals into its index to survive as a universal access point to the web, ensuring that content from different surfaces responds to the same informational need. It’s a change of role: it’s no longer enough to manage your proprietary domain, because you have to control your brand’s visibility on every digital touchpoint that influences your SERP before your competitors do.
Monitor SERPs, identify where external channels are cannibalizing organic results, and instead of fighting a losing battle, plant your flag on the platform that Google has already chosen as the winner.
You have to contend with a new competitive density. The average presence of two external results per page physically reduces the slots for websites and raises the stakes on high-intent keywords. The only way to stay relevant is to feed the Knowledge Graph on every front. Your brand authority no longer depends solely on your company blog, but on your ability to be where Google shifts its attention. If the algorithm chooses a Pinterest board or a TikTok video as the “best answer” for your topic, your brand needs to be there with native content. Associating your entity with winning platforms is the only way to ensure that your name appears as an answer, regardless of where the click lands.
