@neilpatel

Everyone is wrong about followers. Yes, they still matter. But don't just take my word for it.

Take Google. Here's what happened. Last week, Google quietly launched search profiles, a claimable spot within Google Search itself.

It's a permanent piece of digital real estate that you can customize where you control how Google describes you, what content shows up, even what gets pinned to the top. It can trigger a knowledge panel, which previously took years to earn and it feeds directly into the Google Discover algorithm. But here's a catch.

Even qualify, you need 1 hundred plus thousand followers on either Instagram, YouTube or X or 300000+ on TikTok. Google just gated one of the most valuable piece of real estate that they launched in years using the exact metric that pretty much every marketer said doesn't matter. So what's the actual truth about followers?

Followers didn't stop mattering. They just changed jobs. For 10 years, followers were distribution.

You posted, your follower saw it, that was a deal. Then algorithms change. Content became distribution.

So everyone said followers are dead. They were half right. Followers stop being distribution.

But they became something arguably more valuable, reputation, a signal about brands, sponsors, platforms, and now Google uses to decide who gets access to things, who gets a speaking slot, the sponsorship, the partnership. Followers used to be how you get seen. Now they're how you get chosen.

And Google just made that official.