Organic Social Visibility & Multimodal Search: How to Get Cited in LLMs

This week, we're grateful to Katarina Lujak who shares original research on how social platforms are dominating SERP features, with data-driven tactics for optimizing Instagram and YouTube to increase organic visibility and LLM citations.

Traditional search trends show a shift in top-funnel informational content where websites are not the predominant end destination for a user anymore. With AI influencing traditional search, social media channels are being used as a simple short-answer solution, combating the attention decline with AIO in Google SERP.

Formats like video are getting cited in the AIOs, as in many other SERP features that are now snatching that traffic. In an environment where multimodal search is a new standard, an important part of organic strategy has to include obtaining new emerging features and formats.

To find out more about what is going on in organic social, I did research into Instagram's, TikTok's and YouTube's organic traffic. I analysed the traffic based on page types that we see most in the SERP and took two of the most opposite markets to compare: US and Germany. Their differences are based on user behaviour (target audience has different search habits), market size, and Google innovation (US having the latest trends).

Key findings from this research:

• Social network platforms are important like never before for SEO visibility
• Instagram and TikTok are implementing SEO best practices to capture organic traffic
• Google treats page types within platforms differently when displaying them in SERP
• Specific tactics exist to adapt to these changes and implement them in your SEO strategy

Google, social networks and entities

A s ocial network’s performance directly influences how Google understands, trusts, and ranks the whole entity. Its performance also strengthens brand signals, influencing LLM knowledge and grounding searches.

Recent changes and updates from Google opened a door to increased entity optimisation, where every social media channel is treated as a separate entity.

The timeline:

• July 2025: Instagram post and reels indexation began

• December 8, 2025: Google announced social channel integration in Search Console

• December 12, 2025: Google released the December BCAU - social media networks rise in traffic (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok)

• Social platforms continued expanding their presence in rankings, AI Overviews, AI Mode, and SERP features

Social media platforms and SEO best practices

Instagram

Technical SEO best practices

Instagram apparently tries to adhere to SEO best practices by implementing some critical SEO elements. I've analysed programmatic pages from the /popular/ directory that saw insane growth to 15M with the last update.

What Instagram implements:

• Crawling allowed in robots.txt: no explicit rules for /popular/ (programmatic pages)

• Sitemaps available in the robots.txt but not accessible to mortals

• Heading logic: H1 and H2 contain keywords related to the page target keyword that appears in the URL

• Meta description and page title present

• Self-canonical present

• Schema present: dynamically loaded with JavaScript; articles, forums present. Schema validator doesn't pick up on it, so the question stands: what is the impact?

Structured data picked by Rich Results Testing tool for one of the /popular/ URLs

Traffic and SERP features trends

The December core update helped Instagram reach new traffic heights, pushing it to 6B globally. Even though all social network platforms saw a traffic increase, some page types performed better than others.

The example below shows a jump to more than 15M organic visits for Instagram's /popular/ directory. Landing pages are made with a programmatic approach, targeting predominantly the most recent trends, names, celebrities, memes etc. Parallel to TikTok's /discover/, it is believed that reels end up under /popular/ based on having high engagement signals.

Semrush screenshot showing traffic increase to /popular/ directory

SERP features also saw development through 2025. Rolling out AI overviews meant a lot of traffic decline for many Instagram accounts (but that is another article). Below is outlined the difference between two most different markets: US and Germany.

The US saw a noticeable increase of "video carousel" with the December '25 update, while in Germany, "People Also Ask" feature got a strong presence. Both indicate a super informational intent where US SERP is noticeably more visual than German.

SERP features growth for 2025 US; noticeable growth of “video carousel”

SERP features growth for 2025 Germany; noticeable growth of “People also ask”

Where indexable URLs rank: Germany vs US

My research shows where the popular page types rank in SERP and how Google understands them. Numbers show years data with the snippet taken in January 2026.

YouTube

Technical SEO best practices

YouTube follows best practices in terms of having detailed robots.txt and accessible sitemaps included.

Traffic and SERP features trends

YouTube, as Google's owned network, has seen a sharp increase in traffic since May 2025, totalling 18B globally after the December update. Below is an example of the YouTube shorts format, which saw a drastic increase.

Youtube /shorts/ traffic increase with the last core update in December ‘25

SERP features have been developing throughout the year as well, with "video carousel" being the predominant feature that increased its presence for YouTube videos in both Germany and US. The mix for both countries includes "People Also Ask" and AIO rising for both countries, while more noticeable in the US. As mentioned for Instagram, US search is evidently more visual.

SERP features growth for 2025 US; noticeable growth of “video carousel”

SERP features growth for 2025 Germany; considerably less AIO in total results

Where indexable URLs rank in US and Germany

My research shows where the popular page types rank in SERP and how Google understands them.Numbers show years data with the snippet taken in January 2026.

TikTok

TikTok also tries to adhere to SEO best practices, implementing critical SEO elements and overdoing it in the process. Unlike Instagram, people at TikTok have implemented some strong signals to tell Google how they want pages to be read.

Technical SEO best practices

What TikTok implements:

• Crawling allowed in robots.txt for /discover

• Heading logic: follows default H1 and H2 page summary

• Page summary mimics listing page description. It’s made with AI so it's always with a last date timestamp.

• Meta description and page title present

• Canonical tag present

• Robot meta tags: index, follow for /discover/ pages

• Schema: dynamically loaded with JavaScript; articles, forums present. Unlike Instagram's structured data, Schema Validator picks up breadcrumbs data.

• Schema Page type: CollectionPage found which is typical for listing pages https://www.tiktok.com/discover/how-to-do-sitemap-for-website

• No sitemaps in robots.txt

Structured data detected by Rich data testing tool for a programmatic page typ e

Traffic and SERP features trends

The Discover directory has been far less successful than Instagram Explore /popular/. Traffic has been declining since the 2024 June spam update.

There are several reasons for this, mainly because this arm of TikTok has been used as a spam vehicle and for parasite SEO practices. Think in terms of content websites from 10 years ago ranking for "how big is a sperm whale". There's also the political background of ownership and debate in US media, so overall it isn't surprising. The latter we cannot prove; however, the data is clear.

Organic traffic decline for /discover/ directory shown in Semrush

The majority of organic traffic goes to account profiles. There is less variation by page type in top pages that have high traffic (US). Unlike Instagram's /p/ and /reels/ and YouTube's /watch/ and /shorts/, TikTok's /video/ and /discover/ are not equally represented. This is why my later suggestion is not to use TikTok as a visibility vehicle but rather to grow the brand signals within the network.

How to include this in an SEO strategy

Google changed, and so should your SEO strategy. I'm not advocating for spamming of any kind here but for logical use of the resources available.

People want to see human experience first, and obviously the attention span allocated has decreased. Not to be judgemental, but the technology has changed, and we just don't need as many words as before.

I'm working with the assumption that once the brand gets higher visibility in the SERP features, it will be more likely for the LLMs to pick up on the brand signals. The good people at Ahrefs have done a study that shows that “brands which are mentioned more on YouTube, are more likely to show up across ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI mode.”

What I advise

• Make sure structured data implemented on your website follows best practices and is readable to bots

• Make Instagram profile part of your Web Source

• Make YouTube profile part of Web Source

• Use TikTok to grow engagement and brand signals

• Try not to interfere with the authenticity of Reddit if the brand is being spoken about

Optimisation focus

Based on the data, target networks to work with:

• YouTube

• Instagram

Potential tactics: Instagram

• Increase the number of non-brand reels and posts in the content creation, considering what Google wants to see based on page type

• Optimise reels and posts based on the research data: align with brand calendar for launch campaigns, align with content calendar for semantic targeting

• Focus on keywords, not hashtags

• Make an SEO template guideline for reels/posts

Potential tactics: YouTube

• Optimise playlists for logical intent: these can be how-tos and guides

• Videos for some niches can be repurposed for Instagram or TikTok

• Create playlists on the owned channel with reviews by other people (if products involved)

• Increase the number of product reviews and ambassadors per selected market

Website integration

• Integrate Instagram posts as social proof on the website: this can be an element that sources content from Instagram based on hashtags

• Integrate YouTube review playlists in users' journey: this can be for example a listing page with comparison videos

• Include YouTube videos and shorts in blogs

KPIs to track

• Increased visibility from SERP features where domain ranks (brand and non-brand): Video carousel, People also ask, Featured Video

• Increased number of indexed reels and posts

• This Wordlift workflow is great. Use it to analyse Instagram content alignment with your website and organic search rankings.

Now go and talk to your social team!

Sitebulb TL;DR

💡 Social platforms (Instagram, YouTube) are now critical SEO channels - their performance directly influences how Google understands and ranks your brand entity

💡 Instagram's /popular/ directory grew to 15M visits after December 2025 update, while YouTube reached 18B globally - both platforms are implementing SEO best practices to capture organic traffic

💡 Google treats page types differently: Instagram /reels/ appear in "People Also Ask", YouTube /watch/ dominates "Video carousel", showing clear intent patterns between markets (US more visual, Germany more text-based)

💡 Optimise YouTube playlists for "how-to" intent and Instagram reels for keywords (not hashtags) - integrate both into your website as social proof and contextual references

💡 Track SERP feature visibility (video carousels, People Also Ask) and indexed social content as KPIs - higher visibility in these features increases likelihood of LLM citations