TikTok is coming for more than just its social media competitors.
According to internal statistics from Google, about 40% of Gen Z choose TikTok and Instagram for searching over Google Search and Maps.
Over the past few years, TikTok, the fastest-growing social media app, has experienced an explosion in popularity to the point where it influenced Instagram and Snapchat to launch imitation video features in Reels and Spotlight.
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A Google executive has now acknowledged that TikTok’s style is altering how young people browse the internet and that Google is attempting to keep up.
Google senior vice president Prabhakar Raghavan told the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference that according to Google’s internal studies, “something like almost 40% of young people when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search, they go to TikTok or Instagram.”
Google highlighted changes it plans to make to its search engine to appeal to a younger audience, including the ability for a user to pan their camera over an area and “instantly glean insights about multiple objects in a wider scene.”
The takeaway here: the next generation of consumers is relying in large part on social platforms to confirm which stores and experiences are worth checking out.
Granted, this isn’t a big revelation. This is why social shopping has been a big buzzword, and it’s behind the success of tertiary services like the “link in bio” tool, Linktree, which has just this week launched a mobile app on iOS and Android.
For businesses that need to reach that audience, though, it means a shift in strategy. Buying ads on Google won’t find an audience that isn’t on Google.
At the same time, there’s no easy way to buy the most valuable way to be a hit on social media, since that requires organic posts that take off. Businesses should plan a social media strategy, but they’re ultimately at the mercy of the TikTok teens.
