I didn't use Google, but I had the same experience when I first started looking into it. In fact, most of the info I got came from people in the #Bitcoin space that I already followed on X. I then went to YouTube to watch their videos.

You're right. This will need to change if we want to reach beyond Bitcoiners.

I vaguely recall hitting a normie list with Mastodon, Bluesky, and Damus. I think they were presenting Damus as if it were a social network rather than a client for Nostr though. I think that was right around the time all the political left were talking about ditching Twitter because Elon bought it.