Young People Shifting From Google To Tiktok For Search, Bye Bye Google

Google dominates the search market in an imperial way, but in spite of everything, things are changing for certain sectors of the population. A new study shows that the Mountain View search engine now has two serious competitors. None of them was conceived as a seeker.

Young People Shifting From Google To Tiktok For Search, Bye Bye Google

"TikTok is my Google" . A content creator named Chelsea Greber indicated on Twitter how the social network TikTok had become her search engine. “It’s the way I look for product recommendations, how to do things, or where to go.”

She is not the only one who thinks that way: more and more young people use TikTok or Instagram instead of Google Maps or Google Search, and the trend seems to be on the rise.

The studio . A survey conducted among US users between the ages of 18 and 24. Although the study has not yet been published, its conclusions were shared by Prabhakar Raghavan, a Google executive who indicated that about 40% of the young people in the survey used TikTok or Instagram as search platforms instead of traditional engines like Google. Raghavan noted how “the questions they ask are completely different.”

TikTok is my Google..

It’s how I search for product recommendations, how to do things, where to go, even apartment tours!

TikTok is slowly changing into Google especially with their update that is coming soon.

I’m excited to see how this helps and benefits creators + brands.

— Chelsea // UGC CREATOR ✨ (@ChelseaUGC) July 16, 2022

“It’s one thing to read about how to do something or how a product works, it’s another thing to see it.”

More visual searches . When asked why they use those platforms for their searches, young people explained on NBC News that the answer is simple: they prefer visual platforms.

Seeing is learning . For these users, this way of finding answers is much more powerful. Talia Magee, a 24-year-old, explained how “me and my friends, all around the same age… we’re all visual learners and with TikTok it’s quick and easy to watch a video of something I want to know more about.” ".

Amazon, another threat . Google is also beginning to choke on certain types of searches: already in 2016, 55% of those related to products were not made in its search engine, but in Amazon’s.

And the criticism grows . This reality is coupled with the fact that the Google search engine has been dying for some time according to some critics. The results, say certain analysts, are getting worse or do not even answer our question, but these pages are also full of ads and reinforce that " echo chamber " that adapts the results to our habits and tastes.

Alternatives . It also doesn’t help that Google feeds on the content of creators without compensating them directly for it —something alternatives like Ahrefs offer— , but although there are pure alternatives in the world of search engines —DuckDuckGo , Bing , Brave , Neeva —, more and more users are taking advantage of platforms like TikTok, Instagram for those more visual searches.

For the others there are also curious threats: we have already talked about Amazon for products, but here it is impossible not to mention Reddit in many other areas that Google previously covered. Things could get tough for the Mountain View giant after all.