Google search profiles now open at 10,000 followers
Google cut the bar for getting a Search profile by 90 percent, and added a few other changes for publishers and creators.
Google has lowered the follower requirement for Search profiles from 100,000 to 10,000. Robby Stein of Google posted the details, saying eligibility now runs at 10,000 followers on a single platform across Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube. Barry Schwartz wrote up the change earlier the same day.
More publishers and creators have access to profiles, as we’ve expanded eligibility to 10k followers on a single platform across Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube.
A Search profile is a Google page that shows who you are and can list articles from your site in search results. Until now it was mostly out of reach for anyone without a six figure following. The new bar is one tenth of that, and it only has to be met on one platform, not added up across all of them.
What else changed
Two other updates came with it. You can now manage multiple profiles from one Google account and switch between them, instead of juggling separate logins. And articles shown on a profile got a new layout with what Stein called more readable layouts, optimized thumbnails and longer headlines.
The rollout is not everywhere yet. Glenn Gabe posted that he was not seeing the latest design yet, though he expected it soon. Barry Schwartz also ran into a snag. He had already claimed his other channels under a different Google account, and could not move them to his main one because they were already claimed. He asked Stein publicly whether there is a way to remove a Search profile to fix it. No answer in the sources, so nobody knows yet.
Does this affect you
Only if you or your business has a real following on one of those four platforms. Ten thousand followers is still a lot for most small businesses, but it is reachable, and plenty of owners who write or post regularly are already past it on one account without realising they now qualify.
If you think you are over 10,000 on Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube, go check whether you can claim a Search profile now. If you are nowhere near that number, do nothing. This changes nothing about how your site ranks in normal search results, and there is no version of this you can hurry.
One small warning from Schwartz's problem. If you do claim profiles, claim them with the Google account you actually want to keep using long term. Getting them under the wrong account looks hard to undo right now.
Google lowered the requirements to just 10,000 followers across YouTube, Instagram, X, or TikTok (previously 100,000).