Is TikTok Going to Replace Google?

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TikTok has absolutely taken the world by storm since 2020. And itโ€™s not just for the kids โ€” with over 1 billion users, itโ€™s popular across all demographics.

User behavior on TikTok has been evolving as its popularity grows. Weโ€™ve seen the app go from dancing teenagers to influencing shopping behavior across the world.

Now the next step for TikTok seems to be turning into the next big search engine.

Is TikTok the new Google?

Short answer: no.

TikTok is an internal search engine for TikTok content. Itโ€™s dedicated to a particular area of focus and a particular format: video.

There are a few different factors at play in is a natural psychological defense when we feel like someone is trying to manipulate us into buying, doing, or thinking something. We perceive persuasion as a threat and we try to move away from it or oppose it.

Over a decade ago, the online advertising industry started to worry about a decrease in the CTR of their display ads. Pop-ups got dismissed, banners went ignored. Users had caught onto advertisers: we were trying to sell them something.

This triggered a phenomenon known to psychologists as persuasion resistance. Advertisers called this response โ€œbanner blindnessโ€. As an industry, we developed four different strategies to counter this resistance to persuasion.

  1. First, we started making our ads look like they were part of the content. We called these โ€œnative adsโ€.

  2. Then, we started placing the ads in unexpected places, where users were less likely to be bracing themselves to be sold to.

  3. We started making ads a little bit more relevant to the context, so that they felt less intrusive.

  4. Finally, we moved into social proof, and we started leveraging the power of trust. Thus influencer marketing was born.

TikTok leverages these four strategies to counter resistance to persuasion by design. How do they do it?

  • Creators are paid for their content through the Creator Fund, based on how many views or engagement their videos get. They are incentivized to make quality, engaging content that users will enjoy, not just by making deals with brands.

  • They regularly showcase their beauty routines, fashion, or home products, with or without a brand sponsorship. This makes affiliate or sponsored content look just like regular content.

  • Their ads are served in exactly the same format as their regular content, with a small tag letting you know that itโ€™s promoted content.

  • All the videos have an identified creator, visible like and view counts, and open comments. Social proof abounds!

But SEO is not paid social or influencer marketing. So why should we care?

SEO is now omnichannel

Putting the right content in front of users at the right time is at the core of what we do. If we want to keep achieving this goal, we must provide content where the user is looking for it.

As technology integrates further into our lives, weโ€™ve seen the rise of multisearch. Google created the term as a way to integrate their Google Lens functionality into the way we speak about search and SEO.

Screenshot of mobile Google home page suggesting visual search.

We now search by asking our home assistant devices questions or taking a picture of a tree we donโ€™t recognize. We search on Google Maps, on Youtube, on Instagram and even on Amazon.

The days when SEO was about responding to a query in a search box are long gone.

By putting our content out on TikTok and optimizing it for search, we are helping users find our content when they need it, where they want it, and in the format they chose to consume it.

TikTok on the SERPs

SERP showing TikTok video search results for

An omnichannel SEO strategy will let you interact with your users beyond your own domain, and it can help your brand take up more real estate in the SERPs.

Google is trying to diversify the domains they show on search, so if you want to feature in the SERPs multiple times, youโ€™ll have to distribute your brandโ€™s content across different domains.

TikTokโ€™s website has over 31 million pages built programmatically around topics, hashtags, and sounds:

Screenshot showing number of search results for TikTok.

Topic pages make up the most of their URLs and traffic, and seem to be built based on hashtags used, along with some form of machine learning consolidation of their variations. These include related videos, topics, users, hashtags, and sounds.

Screenshot of increasing TikTok visibility index.

Based on the data available on different tools, we know that this section on TikTokโ€™s website has about 157 million monthly organic clicks.

Based on the numbers alone, the benefit of having your content feature in these pages is obvious.

Industries that should be on TikTok

TikTok serves you content based on what the algorithm has determined youโ€™ll enjoy, not based on who you follow. So users constantly discover new creators.

The TikTok algorithm does a genuinely good job at finding your interests or helping you discover stuff that you like. These topics of interest become small niches with their own name.

Much like a subreddit, TikTok has unofficial โ€œtoksโ€. You can find niches such as book-tok, finance-tok, food-tok, and many others.

Based on the data, case studies, and some expert opinions, there are industries that can truly benefit from being on the platform and surfacing content tagged for these various โ€œtoksโ€:

  • Sports teams

  • Streaming services and entertainers

  • Fashion and beauty brands

  • Restaurants and food bloggers

  • Travel brands and influencers

  • Home and DIY content creators and brands

If you think this list reminds you of the top industries on Pinterest, you are right.

TikTok and Pinterest have a lot in common. Both platforms prioritize content discovery based on your interests and serve mainly visual content.

When looking at suggested searches, the value becomes clear when I start typing keywords typically associated with an informational or commercial intent:

Side-by-side screenshots of TikTok search autopopulating suggested searches for

While these are personalized for each user, you can see that others are searching for content that brands or publishers have typically kept on their blogs and find valuable for their businesses.

Brands looking to increase their brand awareness can benefit from being on TikTok regardless of their industry. After all, nobody expected the success Duolingo has had on the platform.

@duolingo this dumpy is literally a single mom who works 2 jobs #Duolingo#fgoogletranslate#DuaLipa#Dulapeep#Dualingo#comedy#trend#twerkit_twerkitโ™ฌ Brujeria – โœฟ

Conclusion

Is TikTok threatening Google? No. Is it worth the attention of SEOs? Yes.

Over the next few months, keep an eye out for more pieces on how to make the most of this upstart and unlikely content discovery search engine. I will be writing about the TikTok algorithm, what the search experience looks like on TikTok, and how to make sure your videos rank.