07/10/2025
😇 The Technical Truth:
Search engines and AI systems (like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, etc.) are increasingly restricted from scraping data from major social platforms like Instagram and Facebook - that content is walled off behind logins, rate limits, or paywalls.
That means LOCAL information shared only on social media is invisible to search engines and AI tools.
Even Google can’t easily “see” or connect those posts to local intent searches (like “plumber in Herefordshire” or “events near me”).
Public, open web pages, like listings on im-in.co.uk, are indexable, meaning search engines can read, understand, and surface them - especially when they’re local, structured, and human-written. Contact details are hidden so inaccurate information can't be scraped, and expired posts fall away, this helps ensure it's all as true as possible.
When multiple local people and businesses list themselves on one open, community-focused site like this one, it strengthens everyone’s visibility because search engines can map relationships and relevance between listings - something they can’t do inside Instagram.
I’m never going to push this with a sales team - there’s no big premium product behind it. It only going to work if every business helps each other by trying it, sharing it, and using it as an easy way to tell Herefordshire what they do.
It’s completely FREE to list - this started as my personal project over a couple of months, and now it just needs the community to engage and steer where it goes next.
