Social media is an ever-evolving landscape. It has been a place to reconnect with old friends, to share updates about your life and your career, to promote small businesses and specific products.
What can be accomplished with social media is constantly changing and growing, and the way people use each platform is changing, as well. LinkedIn is the hub for business and career updates, Pinterest is the platform for inspiration and creating moodboards, Instagram is the platform for curating a clear visual aesthetic, and TikTok… well, TikTok has become a little bit of everything.
Perhaps the most unexpected outcome of all those shifts and changes is how people use each platform. Short form video, especially on TikTok, is quickly becoming the most common way that people are searching on the internet. Traditional search engines like Google are losing their popularity as TikTok makes it easy to quickly search and get authentic, personalized results for any inquiry.
According to a 2022 study, 40% of Gen Z users chose to leverage TikTok over Google as their primary search engine. This number is only continuing to grow as platform usage increases, with more recent reports showing close to 50% of users turning to TikTok for search. While this is most prominent with Gen Z, older audiences are beginning to leverage TikTok for their own inquiries.
Instead of turning to Google to find local businesses or product recommendations through listicles and map results, people are leveraging TikTok to find the information they need in short-form videos.
The simple answer is that people trust word-of-mouth recommendations more than they trust results on a search page. The human element immediately builds authenticity to any recommendations they receive.
The longer answer is that TikTok has curated an algorithm that people regularly use and know they can trust. For some, TikTok influencers are people they see every single day, building audiences that rely on their thoughts and opinions. There’s a level of authority and authenticity in watching someone describe local businesses in a video that can’t be matched by a Google listicle. People want those trusted voices to give recommendations, as it eliminates the need to dig further into options.
“TikTok made me buy it” and “TikTok made me try it” are popular trends that are regularly used on TikTok to show the power of recommendations on the platform. People trust the recommendations they see in TikTok content, and are willing to try them based on the fact that it’s coming from TikTok. When they actually try those recommendations, whether it is a new product or restaurant location, there’s then a natural prompt to create content based on that experience. It creates an endless loop of recommendations, content, and more recommendations.
The TikTok of 2026 is a completely different platform than the TikTok of 2018. At its start, TikTok was just the next logical step for Musical.ly. It was a platform for singing, dancing, and looking good on camera. No one expected that the lip-syncing app would become a go-to search engine for users, becoming a trusted source for news, shopping, and recommendations.
As people began posting more than just lip-synching content, it became clear that TikTok had so much more to offer. Like other social media platforms, it evolved into a place for sharing a curated view of life through lifestyle content, authentic storytelling, and genuine human experiences. The platform was no longer just about looking good; it was about sharing and connecting over the human experience.
Celebrities, influencers, and everyday users realized they could all use the platform and have the same chance at going viral, depending on how their content was picked up by the algorithm. As TikTok’s usage has grown, brands and small businesses have taken notice as well. A viral video showcasing a product can potentially drive more sales than traditional advertising ever could.
According to a recent survey done by Adobe, 1 in 4 small business owners use TikTok or TikTok influencers to promote products or services. People know that TikTok can be a major driving force for selling their products. These businesses recognize that going viral on TikTok could be the big breakthrough moment they need. Virality on TikTok means new followers, new business, and new opportunities.
But if you want TikTok to take notice of your product or business, you need to make sure that your TikTok content is getting noticed. It is essential to optimize your content for the TikTok search algorithm, otherwise your content will go unnoticed by potential customers.
Without a marketing team to help, optimizing content for TikTok can be difficult. The algorithm is constantly changing what it prioritizes and sometimes, great content just doesn’t land in front of the right audience.
Here are a few key things to keep in mind when creating content to ensure you show up in the TikTok search algorithm:
Figure out the appropriate keywords you want to prioritize and make sure they’re being used strategically. TikTok SEO is checking for those keywords in multiple places: the caption, the on-asset text, the hashtags, and even in the spoken words within the video. Pick your keywords carefully and use them throughout the content to ensure it gets picked up by TikTok search. TikTok even has a keyword insight tool to find related words. The goal is to have your account and content pop up when people search for those keywords.
TikTok, like many other platforms, has started to limit the number of hashtags on each post. With a limited number of hashtags available, you need to make them count. Make sure to use a combination of major hashtags (100K+ uses), minor hashtags (10K+ uses), and branded hashtags to organize your content and help find your potential new audiences. TikTok especially loves to use hashtags to organize niche communities, which can help you boost your SEO visibility and find your own community.
Engagement on a post is a major factor in TikTok SEO rankings. Find ways within your content to push for likes, comments, and shares. This can be through on-asset CTAs, conversation prompts in the caption copy, or eye-catching hooks. If people aren’t engaging, TikTok won’t prioritize your content in search results.
TikTok is a platform built around trends. If you want to get people to engage, you need to share content that is relevant to TikTok users. Leverage trending sounds while they’re still trending, not several weeks after the fact. Use trending formats, as people love to engage with content that feels familiar. The more on-trend you can be, the more engagement you’ll likely see.
With all of those elements in place, TikTok will begin to pick up on your content. By ensuring your content is optimized, you can expect to start showing up in search results and growing your own niche audience. Once you find that audience, engagement and views will continue to increase as the TikTok algorithm learns more about you.
Can’t quite figure out how to capitalize on the TikTok search algorithm? The team at Socialfly is here to help. Our team is digitally native and social media obsessed. We’re here to help you optimize your content for all social platforms – not just TikTok. We live and breathe social media, so we’re ready to bring your social media success to life.
Our team can assist with content creation and production, community management, social listening, influencer marketing, and paid media to ensure that every element of your social media strategy is optimized for success. Social media is always changing, and you deserve a team that can help you navigate those changes easily. Get in touch today!
