Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, confirmed on X that follower count is not used as a search ranking factor by Google Search.
Sullivan said, "It is not," when asked "Google now shows the number of followers on SERPs. What I'd like to know: Is follower count a ranking factor for social media profiles? So far I haven't recognized a dependency, but maybe it's taken into account anyway?"
Here are those posts:
It is not.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) November 21, 2023
As a reminder, the follower count is now live in the Google search results for some social media website landing pages. Google began testing this feature in April 2023 and it fully went live this week.
Just because Google shows a follower count in the search results, it does not mean that it uses that for anything but display.
Forum discussion at X.
