259k Instagram views turned into about 4k Google clicks. Full breakdown of what it did to Search Console.

I put out three videos on Instagram that did better than anything else I've made. 158k views, 78.3k, and 23.1k. Around 259k between them.

Everyone talks about what a viral video does for reach. I wanted to know what it does to your search data, because nobody seems to publish that part.

Before, Search Console was a flat line at basically zero. New domain, only a few months old, nothing ranking yet. Genuinely flat, not low, flat.

After:

4.03k clicks
8.87k impressions
45.5% average CTR
average position 5.4

So very roughly, about 3.4% of the people who watched a video later went and searched, and about 1.5% ended up clicking through from search. Those numbers are rough and i'll caveat them below, but thats the shape of it.

Two things surprised me.

The CTR. 45% average, at an average position of 5.4. Thats absurd by normal standards, youd expect 5 to 10% sitting fifth. But every one of these people already knew the name they were typing, they were just scanning the results page to find us. If you ever see a CTR like that on your own account, thats what it means, its not your titles being brilliant.

And the decay was slower than i expected. Day one was the big spike, but a month later branded search is still running well above where it was, its just settled into a lower plateau. The video was a moment, the demand it created wasnt.

The measurement bit, which is the part i actually found useful.

Instagram strips the referrer when someone taps out of the app, so a big chunk of that traffic showed up in our analytics as direct with no source attached. Meaning our own analytics was the worse measurement here. Search Console was cleaner, because branded search is a signal the video generated but Google actually attributes properly.

If youre running social for a product with a name people can spell, your branded search line is probably a better read on whether the content is working than your referral report is.

Caveats, because these ratios are rougher than they look. Not every search impression came from someone who watched a video. Some people went straight to the site without searching at all and never touch Search Console. And the three videos didnt all land on the same day. So treat 3.4% and 1.5% as directional.

What i'd do differently: tag the links. I didnt, and thats the only reason im reconstructing this from two dashboards instead of just reading it.

Cant post images here but happy to send the Search Console and Instagram screenshots to anyone who wants to check the numbers.